Robert Bosch will launch an electric van-sharing service in Germany this year, expanding its reach in the field of pay-per-minute vehicle rental services and pitting it against some of its automaker clients.
The German supplier said it will team up with toom, a subsidiary of German retailer Rewe, to supply delivery vans at hardware stores, enabling clients to rent a van to transport bulky purchases. The van-sharing service will initially be offered at hardware stores in Berlin, Frankfurt, Leipzig, Troisdorf, and Freiburg
Quickly renting a car by app is something that nearly two million people already do in Germany alone, and the number of car-sharing users is on the rise. In this growth market, Bosch is launching a new sharing service for electric vans.
“Bosch is growing with digital services for urban mobility. A service for sharing electric vans has huge potential for growth,” says Dr. Rainer Kallenbach, president of the Connected Mobility Solutions division at Bosch. With more than 330 stores, toom is one of the top providers in the German home-improvement industry.
From December 2018, it will only take a few clicks for customers at five selected stores to directly book an electric van on site, and quickly and simply take stone slabs, balcony plants, and paint pots home with them. “As a company committed to sustainability, we are always eager to constantly improve our contribution to environmental protection. We’re therefore very pleased that we can now offer our customers an eco-friendly way of taking their purchases home,” says Wolfgang Vogt, toom’s managing director for finance and personnel.
Bosch is already well versed in the sharing services business, as demonstrated by Coup, its rental service for electric scooters. Since its launch in 2016, Coup has constantly expanded, and now has a fleet of 3,500 scooters in Berlin, Paris, and Madrid.
