The tech explosion of the past 20 years has shown us, more than anything else, that if you combine greed with imitation, you get competitors. Now that Uber (McDonalds) and Lyft (Burger King) came up with the idea of “ride sharing,” along comes BMW with its entry into the game, ReachNow (Wendy’s). The burger joint analogy is on purpose. Anybody can run a good mom & pop burger joint, but going national and franchising your operation"
That’s a little more tricky.
Two In One
ReachNow is the mobility services division of BMW Group, maker of all things fast, boxy, and Bavarian. ReachNow says they are famous for being “the first company to operate both car sharing and ride hailing within a single app.” Sure, but I’ve never heard of it. This app, what ReachNow refers to as a “suite of mobility solutions,” can do essentially more than one thing, transportation-wise. ReachNow was first rolled out as a multimodal (i.e. more than one kind of transportation) strategy at Automobility LA in November 2016, and now they are putting it out in the real world to see how it works. Or, at least they’re putting it out in Seattle, which may or may not count as “real.”
What sets ReachNow apart from say, Lyft or Zipcar, is that ReachNow combines all of those services into one, big service. With this, you can get a short term vehicle, like a Zipcar sort of deal, or you can just get a ride from point A to B, like with a L...