Features
22 juil 19

Restructuring shared mobility in Seattle and Portland

BMW’s car-sharing service ReachNow stops operations in Seattle and Portland, in the aftermath of the joint venture of Daimler and BMW announced earlier this year. 

Reach Now will shut down its services in the next months, leaving 1,000 free-floating cars and more than 100,000 members across Seattle and Portland behind.

That does not mean that both cities will end up without shared cars at all. Rather, both OEMs are working on a strategy to compete with the big ride hailing companies such as Uber and Lyft and therefore bundling their forces in a new shared mobility business model. The joint venture of Daimler and BMW will unite its car sharing services under the Share Now flag, bringing together various shared services, such as car2go (Daimler) and DriveNow (BMW). In addition, the Reach Now entity will continue to exist to improve the accessibility of public transit. 

Car sharing in Seattle

Current members of Reach Now in both cities can sign up for car2go, which offers sign-up fee refunds for members who signed up after June 1. Car2go has even similar rates as Reach Now. The latter set tariffs at $0.49 per minute of driving and $0.10 per minute of parking, with flat rates of $20 for 1 hour, $50 for 3 hours, and $80 for 1 day. 

On top of that, other car sharing services are still active in Seattle as well, such as Lime’s Lime pod car sharing service, and Zipcar and Getaround. The latter is in fact a startup which allows people to bring their personal vehicle in the car sharing pool, gaining extra income while your car would be parked anyway. 

Authored by: Fien Van den steen