Since the start of WeShare in 2019, Volkswagen has not been able to make any profits with the car sharing provider. The group therefore draws conclusions and sells the subsidiary with around 2000 vehicles to its competitor Miles. In return, VW receives a large order for e-cars.
Volkswagen is handing over its unprofitable car-sharing activities to the provider Miles Mobility under the name “WeShare”. “Together with the partner, we have better growth opportunities in the business,” said Christian Dahlheim, head of the Financial Services division, which bundles the group’s activities in the mobility solutions area, to journalists. As part of the cooperation, Miles has ordered more than 10,000 electric cars from various brands from the Volkswagen Group, which are to be delivered from next year. Customers should also be able to book Miles carsharing via the Volkswagen mobility platform.
Since the start of WeShare in 2019, VW has not managed to lead the subsidiary into the profit zone. Customers are only willing to pay a surcharge for purely electric carsharing to a limited extent, said Dahlheim as justification. WeShare currently operates around 2000 vehicles of the VW electric models ID.3 and ID.4. The Miles fleet consists of more than 9000 vehicles, mostly combustion engines. 70 percent of these come from Volkswagen.
While WeShare is limited to Hamburg and Berlin, Miles offers carsharing in eight German cities, including Munich as well as Berlin and Hamburg. Most recently, two locations were added in Belgium, Brussels and Ghent. Volkswagen recently took over the car rental company Europcar, which is to be expanded into a mobility platform of the group that offers car sharing and car subscriptions in addition to car rental and leasing. The Munich competitor Sixt already has such a platform, with the help of which the classic rental business, car sharing and driving services are to grow together.
With the sale of WeShare, the Wolfsburg-based company is partly following the example of Mercedes-Benz and BMW, who sold their car-sharing subsidiary “Share Now” to Opel’s parent company Stellantis. With Europcar, however, Volkswagen is giving the mobility business greater weight than its competitors.
