BMW DriveNow car sharing arrives in London

BMW and Sixt have teamed up to bring the DriveNow car sharing service to London, with the BMW 1 Series and MINI Countryman now available.

If you live in London – well, the boroughs of Islington, Hackney and Haringey for now – you can now jump in to a BMW 1 Series or MINI Countryman for journeys in the boroughs thanks to DriveNow from BMW and Sixt.

For a one-time registration fee of £29 (free DriveNow signup for the first 1000 if you use the code LONDON) and fees of 39p a minute -capped at £20 an hour – you can make a one-way journey anywhere in the three boroughs and leave the car where you like when you’ve finished, even residents parking bays; no hunting for DriveNow centres or designated parking spots.

A DriveNow App (for IOS and Android) lets you locate and unlock the car – no pre-booking is needed – or you can even use a customer card to unlock any DriveNow car you stumble across on the street.

The fleet consists of 210 BMW 1-Series and MINI Countrymans which, during the course of 2015, will rise to 300 cars, including the arrival of 30 BMW i3 EVs.

The DriveNow scheme is already a hit in six cities in Germany, and in San Franciso, with 360,000 registered users enjoying on-demand cars with no commitment.

Joseph Seal-Driver, UK Head of DriveNow, said:

Car sharing has really begun to capture Londoners’ imaginations but it’s still a fairly niche service. Londoners have told us that current services don’t reflect how they live and move.

Our goal is that DriveNow’s introduction of a location and booking free, drive-by-the-minute, park anywhere service will act as the tipping point in transforming car sharing into a mainstream mobility choice for Londoners.

The DriveNow scheme may only cover Islington, Hackney and Haringey for now, but BMW and Sixt are looking to extend to more Boroughs as soon as possible.