After Car2go and Enjoy, BMW is also making its debut in Italian car sharing. The Munich house has chosen Milan as the 11th city in which to propose the new service. The debut is scheduled for mid-October thanks to the joint venture with Sixt, which has more than 600 customers in 10 European cities.
Sergio Solero, number one of BMW Italy, told reporters the details of the matter, speaking on the sidelines of the Paris Auto Show. The manager explained that "we will start in Milan with an interesting range, it will be premium car sharing, initially 500 cars, half between BMW (series 1 and X1 models) and Mini and there will also be the electric BMW i3 because we believe that the sharing in historic centers makes more sense if combined with electric mobility”.
Soon however, Milan could be followed by other cities. However, everything depends on the municipality, on whether other large Italian cities will think about implementing this service. We will need new calls for tenders from the Municipalities. For now there is nothing concrete. We are ready".
It should be emphasized that the good news is not over for BMW. “After the double-digit growth in 2015 BMW and Mini are exaggerating and at the end of August they recorded +23%, compared to +17% of the Italian car market. The results exceeded our expectations”. The positive performance of the group indicates, continued Solero, that "our strategy and product range are meeting the favor of customers and we are very happy with this". For this year Solero expects an Italian car market of around 1,9 million units, while he did not want to anticipate estimates for 2017 because "it will depend on macroeconomic and institutional events".
