Mobility growth at Daimler Financial Services as CEO Klaus Entenmann targets “the urban mobility of tomorrow”

It reported that mytaxi, the licensed taxi booking app, posted the strongest growth, with demand rising 116% to 14.9 million customers.

Moovel, the urban mobility service that connects consumers to a range of different transport methods, has grown by 74% to 4.8 million customers.

Car2go, the free-floating car-sharing company, now has 3.2 million customers worldwide, a rise of 25%.

Daimler mobility offerings are now offered in more than 100 cities in Europe, China, North and South America.

Bodo Uebber, board member of Daimler, responsible for Daimler Financial Services, said: “Close to 23 million customers today rely on our mobility services. As the inventor of the automobile, Daimler will not leave the stage to others when it comes to urban mobility of the future.

“With the announcement of a planned joint venture with BMW, we are taking a further step toward strategic bundling and efficiency of our services. We expect our mobility services to further complement metropolises and future smart cities.”

Last month, Daimler Financial Services invested in the transport service provider taxify through a recent round of financing.

The Estonian-based company is one of the most rapidly growing ride-hailing services worldwide, already active in 20 countries and more than 25 cities.

This latest addition of digital mobility services expands Daimler Financial Services’ portfolio, which includes shares in the shuttle service Via, the limousine driver service Blacklane and the American peer-to-peer car-sharing platform Turo, among others.

In addition, Daimler Financial Services has been a shareholder in Flixmobility, the mobility provider for the FlixBus and FlixTrain brands, since 2013.

Flixbus is also preparing to enter the highly-competitive US market.

Mobility services are also at the forefront of changing fuel use patterns. In Madrid, Amsterdam and Stuttgart, car2go offers purely electric fleets. The electric fleet changeover began at the beginning of June, when the smart EQ Fortwo was introduced to the fleet in Stuttgart for the first time.

The new fleet of e-smarts can be fully charged in just 45 minutes, which is expected to reduce idle time at charging stations and significantly increase vehicle availability.

Around 10% of the 14,000 car2go vehicles around the world are electric. An electric car2go vehicle is rented, on average, every nine seconds.

car2go recently announced that its seventh location in the USA is opening in Chicago, Illinois, with 400 vehicles.

Klaus Entenmann, chairman of the board and chief executive officer at Daimler Financial Services, said: “Our offerings are already aligned to the urban mobility of tomorrow. 10,000 purely electric trips daily give us important data and information today for developing an intelligent infrastructure for the electric age. At the same time, car sharing, ride-hailing or app-based communal trips contribute to keeping the air clean and reducing traffic in inner-city areas. Our aim remains emission-free mobility.”