In Berlin, Volkswagen and ŠKODA’s free-floating car sharing service, WeShare was launched in June 2019. Since then, the fleet has completed more than three million kilometers, which corresponds to an average of four to five trips per car and day.
There are about 50,000 customers are now registered for the service and bout three-quarters of them are active users. Encouraged by this, the company has announced that WeShare will be expanded 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. In all these cities, WeShare will be offering an all-electric fleet with a total of about 8,400 electric vehicles.
In Prague and Budapest, WeShare will cooperate with ŠKODA. 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.
One of the major challenges faced by WeShare in Berlin was battery charging. To compensate for the inadequate availability of public charging infrastructure, Volkswagen AG and WeShare have therefore started cooperation with the Schwarz Group and currently is installing a total of 140 public charging stations at 60 Lidl and 10 Kaufland locations in Berlin.
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.
Source: Press Release
