LOS ANGELES — BMW North America LLC’s ReachNow mobility services program will be available in its third city — Brooklyn, N.Y. — in early December, the company announced Tuesday. The program will eventually expand offerings beyond the original carshare service, in all of its markets, into four capabilities: an on-demand rideshare service, car rentals as long as five days, the company’s original short-term fleet rental service, and a residential shared-ownership model. The last two features will be available on the East Coast by year-end.
“It’s an extension of the carshare programs for those that live in those urban dwellings,” ReachNow Chief Executive Steve Banfield told Auto Finance News. “We’ll come pick up the car, and we’ll leverage that as part of the fleet. We’re making use of it, and you’re going to be earning value.”
The fleet program is framed as an added amenity for residents, but can also benefit the buildings’ owners as well, according to Banfield.
“In those urban centers, they’re having to come up with transportation and parking mitigation plans, because cities are saying, ‘you want to build a 500-room apartment building, how many cars is that going to be and where are they going to go?’” he said. “It allows the building owner to encourage the actual end users that ‘hey, you don’t need to own a car, you don’t need to park a car, you can take mass transit or you can use other services, but when you do need a car, you can reserve ahead of time.”
The program costs $0.41 per minute to drive, and there’s currently no registration fee. (That’s $24.60 an hour.)
“We do not offer a subscription program. I don’t want customers, I want members, and by member I don’t mean you join a gym and pay a monthly membership,” Banfield said. “Right now we’re waiving the signup fee. A customer does something and it’s transactional, but I want to earn someone’s business every day. It’s running a service, I don’t want a onetime transaction.”
BMW is thinking beyond traditional two- to three-year leasing models, he added, but it’s not intended as a replacement for full-time ownership. “If we can give consumers another alternative, and say, ‘You can own a car, but you don’t have to use it every day, and when you’re not using it, you can make money off of it’ — I think that’s an exciting opportunity.”