Volkswagen is specifically seeking to interact with cities at the ITS in Singapore (21 – 25 October 2019) to fine-tune its own intelligent mobility solutions to the needs of urban areas. The Volkswagen Group is a pioneer in e-mobility. Some 70 new electric cars are to be launched over the next ten years. Throughout the Group, Volkswagen is working on solutions for electric micro mobility to transport people – for example, with SEAT’s eXS KickScooter or Volkswagen’s Cityskater – thus taking electrification beyond the traditional automobile business. And the Cargo e-Bike from Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles offers a micro mobility solution for goods transport.
In the public transport sector, Scania and MAN will be offering municipalities electric buses such as MAN New Lion‘s City E and Scania’s Citywide LF electric bus from the end of 2020. The Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles range already features the e-Crafter, which will be joined from early 2020 by the ABT e-Caddy and the ABT e-Transporter once the ABT Sportsline goes electric.
The Volkswagen Group is creating modern mobility-on-demand solutions such as MOIA’s electric ride-hailing offering and WeShare’s electric car sharing service to solve the problems caused by congestion and the shortage of space in cities. In addition, ŠKODA has launched the pilot operation of BeRider, its electric scooter sharing service, in Prague.
New services also improve the networking of mobility options. In Prague’s city center, customers can put together their individual mobility mix of bus, tram, metro, rental bike, taxi and ride-hailing to suit current traffic conditions with the help of ŠKODA‘s CityMove app. The app also provides support for finding parking spaces, and features a payment gateway that processes transactions for all services.
With its strategy known as Together 2025+ “Shaping Mobility – for generations to come”, the Group sees itself as a partner for cities and a provider of solutions for futureproof, efficient, silent, safe and sustainable individual mobility. To that end, Volkswagen has already initiated twelve city partnerships. These include collaborations with other Volkswagen sites such as Hanover or Wolfsburg in Germany as well as international locations such as Prague, Barcelona or Hefei in China. Volkswagen maintains a particularly close city partnership with Hamburg, which is why the Volkswagen Group will be supporting the Hanseatic city to host the 2021 ITS World Congress.