Automakers jump on on-demand transportation

On-demand transport mobile applications have introduced a disruptive way of making journeys. An important alternative to driving your own car, which can be accentuated when the cars drive themselves. The big car manufacturers are aware that consumers may choose not to own a car and they don’t want to be left out of the game. A few hours apart, the alliance between Toyota and Uber was announced on the one hand, and Volkswagen’s investment in the Gett startup on the other.

Toyota and the well-known platform Uber have announced a strategic collaboration that will initially take the form of a leasing option for Uber drivers, who will be able to purchase vehicles with the profits they generate through the application, reports TechCrunch. For its part, an emerging startup that works with taxis, Gett, has received a strategic investment of 300 million dollars from Volkswagen, reports Bloomberg, with the idea of ​​”becoming the world leader in mobility providers by 2025″, in the words of VW CEO Matthias Mueller. What are they looking for with these movements? The big-data technology and predictive algorithms that support these services to accelerate the results of their own R&D efforts, points out Wired.

These latest developments add to the investment, last January, of 500 million dollars by General Motors in the Lyft app, or Apple’s huge million-dollar bet for Didi, the Chinese Uber.