Moscow’s sharing boom shows how quickly consumers can abandon the traditional car.
The venture—set up last year by a local Internet company—flooded the Russian capital with more than 7,000 cars to rent for as little as 5 rubles (8 cents) per minute, including fuel, maintenance and parking. That compares to 41 cents a minute for Daimler AG’s Car2Go in New York and is an offer too good to pass up for a growing number of Muscovites.
Almost out of nowhere, car-sharing in Moscow boomed, with the number of vehicles more than tripling last year. The city now has the biggest shared fleet in Europe and the second-largest in the world. The rapid shift spells trouble for automakers by providing a blueprint for how a deep-pocketed technology player can move quickly to woo consumers with alternatives to traditional car ownership.
“We’re approaching a point that could flip the entire car market on its head,” said Shwetha Surender, a London-based analyst with consultancy Frost & Sullivan. “Carmakers risk becoming mere suppliers to shared mobility services and losing direct relations with customers. That’s an unattractive proposition.”
Согласно Блумбергу, Москва сейчас занимает второе место в мире по числу машин в совместном пользовании после Токио (в основном яндекс.драйв но есть и другие компании). В общем, здоровая тенденция. Молиться на "крутую тачку" в гараже или за окном - одно из уродств современной цивилизации.