Europcar expands portfolio to include e-scooter sharing
Europcar though its car sharing subsidiary Ubeeqo wants to increase their presence in the urban mobility market. They have taken over Belgian Scooty, a startup running a fleet of electric scooters to share in Antwerp and Brussels.
The Scooty fleet currently consist of 176 electric scooters ready to rent and that are free-floating in Belgium’s capital and Antwerp. Europcar in a press release says: “The market of shared cars and shared scooters is changing rapidly and are a good alternative for owing a proper car, so this was a nice opportunity for our company to strengthen our presence on those markets.”
Their findings further suggests that “according to a recent study by Europcar Lab1, 72% of the interviewees, regular users of a car-sharing solution, intend to use a free floating scooter if it’s available.”
The take over was done via the firm’s car sharing service Ubeeqo and the plan is to integrate the two services. However, Scooty will remain its own business entity whist benefitting from expected synergies. The merger includes Scooty’s previous owner Poleis Consulting.
Europcar is active in 130 countries and wants to become more active in urban mobility services. Whilst it had a longstanding partnership with Car2Go, that union was recently unleashed when Daimler decided to merge with BMW’s DriveNow rather (we reported).
It is yet to be seen if further, similar acquisitions are in the pipeline for Europcar to re-build their vehicle sharing and electric mobility portfolio.
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