- Testing phase successfully completed
- New mobility service to start in July
- The number of users and test vehicles will increase incrementally
Berlin/Hamburg/Hanover, 25 June 2018 – MOIA received a license from the city of Hanover that officially permits the operations of its new form of ridesharing. Once the final preparations are complete, MOIA will officially launch its ridesharing services within the next weeks with around 15,000 users. At this point, the testing phase, with 3500 users, will close. MOIA plans to make ridesharing available to all Hanover residents by the end of the year.
The permit is valid for 150 vehicles to start. An accompanying independent research project will report on the effect of the new ridesharing offer on public transport and traffic interests. Depending on the outcome of that study, MOIA will expand its fleet to 250 vehicles in the summer of 2020.
“Hanover provided a good environment for our service tests from the beginning. Our ridesharing service is operating very stably and has been well accepted. That’s why we’ve decided to expand our offer and eventually make it available to all Hanover residents,” says Ole Harms, MOIA CEO. MOIA has become an integral part of daily mobility for users in Hanover over the course of the past few months. When operations officially launch in July, MOIA will increase the number of users step-by-step. “First, we’ll open MOIA to the people who applied for the service test but couldn’t be included because of the long waiting list. As we expand the fleet in the second half of the year, we’ll also expand to more users,” says Harms.
The license in Hanover allows MOIA to deploy up to 250 vehicles in two steps. The number of vehicles is limited to 150 until the summer of 2020. At that point, if it can be 3232/3 confirmed that MOIA has had no negative impact on public transport interests, then it can increase its fleet to 250 vehicles.
“MOIA is the right offer for people who want a direct, comfortable and safe mobility option at a fair price. We see ourselves as a supplement to the existing mobility options in the city and an attractive alternative to owning a car. By pooling rides together, we relieve the city and the environment of traffic and pollution,” says Robert Henrich, MOIA COO. He adds, “In order for pooling to work best, we have to get the optimal ratio of fleet size, service area, and number of users. We’ll start in a large area of the city but won’t cover the entire city just yet. At the latest, we plan to include the whole city of Hanover as soon as our fleet reaches 250 vehicles.”
The service area at the start will cover about 90 square kilometers. This means that MOIA will be available to about 70 percent of the population. For now, MOIA will use the 35 T6 benzine-engine vehicles from the service test. They plan to greatly increase the number of vehicles in the second half of the year and make the fleet electric the following year.
The price per ride during the test phase was 6 cents per person and kilometer for legal reasons. That will be increased for the official launch to a price somewhere between that of public transport and that of a taxi. The price will fluctuate depending on day and time, as well as supply and demand, and will always be displayed transparently to the user before booking. After booking, the price won’t change even if traffic or unexpected detours arise.
Many Hanover residents already know MOIA, who has offered its innovative ridesharing concept in the city since October 2017. The service tests started with 20 vehicles and expanded to 35. 3500 people have participated in the testing phase and used the ridesharing services over 200,000 times. Users had to apply to take part in the testing phase. The fully electric MOIA +6, developed specifically for pooling, was not part of the service test. It will make its debut next year in Hamburg.
Photos at www.moia.io/en/news-center.
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About MOIA
MOIA is a subsidiary company of the Volkswagen Group and a independent brand of VW. The company, based in Berlin, Hamburg, and Helsinki, develops its own mobility services, working together with cities and public transportation organizations. MOIA is currently developing and implementing various services along the mobility value chain with multiple offerings for different user groups. MOIA ridepooling is a complete system that helps reduce private transport and use streets more efficiently.
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