WeShare, Volkswagen and Skoda's free-floating car sharing service, is to expand into seven further cities in Germany and other European countries in 2020.
Prague and Hamburg in the spring are to be followed by Paris, Madrid, Budapest, Munich and Milan in the course of the year.
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In all these cities, WeShare will be offering an all electric fleet of about 8,400 vehicles. In Prague and Budapest, WeShare will cooperate with Skoda. In the other major cities in Germany, France, Spain and Italy, WeShare vehicles on offer will include Volkswagen's e-Golf and e-Up as well as the ID.33 from the end of the year.
Philipp Reth, CEO of WeShare, said the objective must be to make a breakthrough with the wider public together with the cities.
"We therefore hope that will receive support from the cities for example in the area of parking charges for car sharing vehicles or the designation of new car sharing areas in public spaces with a view to providing incentives for potential users and making car sharing even more interesting and relevant."
In Berlin, where WeShare was launched in June 2019, about 50,000 customers are now registered for the service. About three-quarters of these registered customers are active users – they have used the WeShare service at least once.
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By GlobalDataOver the past six months, the fleet in Berlin has completed 3m km which corresponds to an average of four to five trips per car and day.
One of the major challenges faced by WeShare in Berlin is battery charging. To compensate for the inadequate availability of public charging infrastructure, Volkswagen and WeShare have therefore started cooperation with the Schwarz Group which currently installing 140 public charging stations at 60 Lidl and 10 Kaufland locations in the city.
As a cooperation partner, WeShare can use the charging stations for its car sharing fleet on an exclusive basis outside the opening hours of the stores.
During opening hours in the daytime, the charging stations are available to all customers of Lidl and Kaufland. In addition to the Schwarz Group, WeShare plans to establish further partnerships with a view to expanding the available infrastructure.
