4 ms·

I live in Seattle and electric BMWs are everywhere thanks to BMW's own ReachNow car sharing service: http://www.bmwcarsharing.com/ http://www.bmwcarsharing.com

by jonknee 10y ago

I live in Seattle and electric BMWs are everywhere thanks to BMW's own ReachNow car sharing service: http://www.bmwcarsharing.com/ http://www.bmwcarsharing.com/ Basically the cars are paid for by the minute and come with free street parking. You can unlock/lock through the app or a smartcard. This feels like BMW is trying to both figure out EVs and a possible post car ownership society. Tesla will be similarly doomed when most people don't own their own cars (Tesla's most valuable asset is its brand and that means nothing when you aren't buying the car!).

arethuza 10y ago
I could see car sharing services being a route for having electric cars in older cities - we already have a City Car Club dedicated parking area close to us and I could see that getting chargers installed whereas I can't see them being installed generally for a long time.
usrusr 10y ago
Or maybe this is just their best effort at hitting fleet-average CO2 emissions goals without bolstering EV numbers by giving them away for free. It looks like cheating, but if this gets any kind of traction (and enable more non-poverty-driven carlessness), it will be a much better result for the environment than selling more, but slightly cleaner cars would have been. Creative bookkeeping by selling to their own rental subsidies is nothing new in the car industry. The BMW carsharing fleets improve on that by not only creating favorable numbers, but also making them take part in a new market that might well be a significant part in future of car usage.
- jonknee 10y ago
  Considering only 1 of 3 models in ReachNow is an EV I doubt that's the case.
baq 10y ago
1. Tesla is pivoting into an energy company that happens to make cars on the side. If it doesn't die because Model 3 flops (not saying that it will or won't, mind you) its future looks quite bright. 2. Teslas driving around right now are doing what they call fleet learning for self-driving purposes. 3. Tesla is absolutely getting ready for post ownership era of motorization, in fact the autopilot effort and announcements regarding for-profit car sharing only being available through Tesla network directly confirm that.
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  > Tesla is absolutely getting ready for post ownership era of motorization, in fact the autopilot effort and announcements regarding for-profit car sharing only being available through Tesla network directly confirm that. This is why I chuckle when everyone says "Look how few Tesla vehicles are produced!". They don't have to replace every vehicle purchased, just the vehicle miles driven. Cars sit idle 90-95% of the time, which means if you increase utilization with the Tesla Network, they need only 20-30% of total worldwide manufacturing capacity to replace all cars. Total cars sold in the US this year? Just shy of 18 million. How many does Tesla need to build to replace that capacity if they're self driving? 4-6 million cars/year to start, decreasing rapidly depending on rideshare uptake. Easily doable with their automated manufacturing efforts. Gonna be a bitch when Tesla manufacturing curve hits vehicle miles demand, and existing automaker sales plummet.
  - badestrand 10y ago
    The idle time will not change by much anytime soon. Everyone commutes in the same hours and at night all cars stand still. Yes, society becomes more flexible and diverse but this is a very slow process.
    - toomuchtodo 10y ago
      Labor force participation rate will continue to decline quickly as all of the Boomers age out into retirement: http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000 http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000 https://i.imgur.com/5YFhBpx.png https://i.imgur.com/5YFhBpx.png As well as the labor force declining in general: http://www.factcheck.org/2015/03/declining-labor-participation-rates/ http://www.factcheck.org/2015/03/declining-labor-participati... "Still, Priebus’ comment, tying the entirety of the drop in the labor force participation rate to “the Obama economy,” ignores some of the demographic and structural forces that have been driving the participation rate down for more than a decade, and that are expected to continue to drive the rate down for decades to come."
    - Fricken 10y ago
      5:30 PM in Seattle on a weekday is peak traffic, 1 in 5 daily use vehicles are on the road. So in a hypothetical wherein Robotaxis have acheived full penetration, maybe we'll need 1/3 of the vehicles we use today. There would likely be a lot less steel in those vehicles as well, since they'd largely be optimized for single commuters, and would need less of the redundancies built into current cars for safety.

by jonknee 10y ago

arethuza 10y ago

I could see car sharing services being a route for having electric cars in older cities - we already have a City Car Club dedicated parking area close to us and I could see that getting chargers installed whereas I can't see them being installed generally for a long time.

usrusr 10y ago

Or maybe this is just their best effort at hitting fleet-average CO2 emissions goals without bolstering EV numbers by giving them away for free. It looks like cheating, but if this gets any kind of traction (and enable more non-poverty-driven carlessness), it will be a much better result for the environment than selling more, but slightly cleaner cars would have been. Creative bookkeeping by selling to their own rental subsidies is nothing new in the car industry. The BMW carsharing fleets improve on that by not only creating favorable numbers, but also making them take part in a new market that might well be a significant part in future of car usage.

jonknee 10y ago
Considering only 1 of 3 models in ReachNow is an EV I doubt that's the case.

baq 10y ago

1. Tesla is pivoting into an energy company that happens to make cars on the side. If it doesn't die because Model 3 flops (not saying that it will or won't, mind you) its future looks quite bright. 2. Teslas driving around right now are doing what they call fleet learning for self-driving purposes. 3. Tesla is absolutely getting ready for post ownership era of motorization, in fact the autopilot effort and announcements regarding for-profit car sharing only being available through Tesla network directly confirm that.

toomuchtodo 10y ago
> Tesla is absolutely getting ready for post ownership era of motorization, in fact the autopilot effort and announcements regarding for-profit car sharing only being available through Tesla network directly confirm that. This is why I chuckle when everyone says "Look how few Tesla vehicles are produced!". They don't have to replace every vehicle purchased, just the vehicle miles driven. Cars sit idle 90-95% of the time, which means if you increase utilization with the Tesla Network, they need only 20-30% of total worldwide manufacturing capacity to replace all cars. Total cars sold in the US this year? Just shy of 18 million. How many does Tesla need to build to replace that capacity if they're self driving? 4-6 million cars/year to start, decreasing rapidly depending on rideshare uptake. Easily doable with their automated manufacturing efforts. Gonna be a bitch when Tesla manufacturing curve hits vehicle miles demand, and existing automaker sales plummet.
- badestrand 10y ago
  The idle time will not change by much anytime soon. Everyone commutes in the same hours and at night all cars stand still. Yes, society becomes more flexible and diverse but this is a very slow process.
  - toomuchtodo 10y ago
    Labor force participation rate will continue to decline quickly as all of the Boomers age out into retirement: http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000 http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000 https://i.imgur.com/5YFhBpx.png https://i.imgur.com/5YFhBpx.png As well as the labor force declining in general: http://www.factcheck.org/2015/03/declining-labor-participation-rates/ http://www.factcheck.org/2015/03/declining-labor-participati... "Still, Priebus’ comment, tying the entirety of the drop in the labor force participation rate to “the Obama economy,” ignores some of the demographic and structural forces that have been driving the participation rate down for more than a decade, and that are expected to continue to drive the rate down for decades to come."
  - Fricken 10y ago
    5:30 PM in Seattle on a weekday is peak traffic, 1 in 5 daily use vehicles are on the road. So in a hypothetical wherein Robotaxis have acheived full penetration, maybe we'll need 1/3 of the vehicles we use today. There would likely be a lot less steel in those vehicles as well, since they'd largely be optimized for single commuters, and would need less of the redundancies built into current cars for safety.