It seems as if you can’t get away from the word “mobility” in today’s automotive vernacular. From BMW’s ReachNow to General Motors’ Maven, nearly every major automaker is looking for a piece of the personal mobility market.
Audi has plans to further expand its reach in mobility, as the German firm announced it would acquire Silvercar by expanding its minority share in the company to 100 percent. Audi has been invested in the mobility company since 2015 and has supplied Silvercar’s fleet of vehicles exclusively with A4 sedans. We’ll give you one guess as to what color the A4s that Audi supplied to Silvercar are.
Silvercar works out of handful of U.S. airports as a rental service with streamlined, premium customer service. That includes reservation and vehicle returns all through the company’s mobile app.
Audi isn’t specific on what it plans to develop with Silvercar, but merely states a range of mobility services will be in development for the U.S. At some point, it’s likely we’ll see cross pollination between Silvercar and the similar Audi On Demand which is still in a trial phase.
Audi’s crosstown rivals have been in the car-sharing business for some time, too. BMW rebranded its original DriveNow program as ReachNow last year and has been rolling the car-sharing program out across the U.S. BMW’s aim is to provide larger, more premium vehicles than Daimler’s rival Car2Go service.