Hamburg’s MOIA to put 500 shuttles on the road by 2020

The Hamburg-based VW subsidiary MOIA has announced further details to their planned shuttle service with EVs: The service will start towards the end of 2019, and by the end of 2020, the fleet will maintain 500 vehicles.

Reports indicate that the service will start with a double-digit number of electric minibuses, based on the VW Crafter. Soon after the start of the service, the number is planned to expand to around 200 vehicles. Within two years, the service will feature a fleet of 500 vehicles.

By 2021, another 500 electric shuttles may follow. At the start of the year, the VW subsidiary still planned to start the service within this year, however the delay has become evident. In April, the city of Hamburg officially gave permission for the venture to take off.

The basic idea behind the service is to ferry passengers with similar destinations. The MOIA vehicles will then be called via an app to virtual pickup locations. The price will be somewhere between that of a bus ride and a taxi.

The declared goal of the company is to take pressure off Europe’s and America’s roads – by about 1 million vehicles, to be exact. CEO Ole Harm sees an opportunity between public transport and personal vehicles.

MOIA was founded by VW towards the end of last year, and helped adapt the vehicles, in cooperation with VW Utility Vehicles and VW Osnabrück, to meet the demands of car-pooling services. The vehicle features six seats, a 300 km range, according to WLTP and can charge to 80% capacity within 30 on a CCS plug. Planning, development and testing took place over a period of only 10 months.

spiegel.de, electrive.net (Both in German)