Mobility shuts down ride-sharing app
Offer and book rideshares: This is no longer possible with Mobility for the time being. The "Mobility-Carpool" app, which the company launched two years ago, is being discontinued. The reason is lack of demand.
Mobility has been active with its ride-sharing app since 2018. It can be used to share journeys with car-sharing cars as well as with private cars. This will come to an end for the time being as of May 13, 2020, as CEO Roland Lötscher explains: "Not enough users came together, and therefore not enough ridesharing opportunities." Although 12,000 people were registered at last - half of them non-Mobility customers - "it would have taken more requests and offers to keep them interested and active. This was not the case."
Swiss do not want to share privacy
The company sees the main reason for the generally sluggish demand in the fact that Swiss people are reluctant to share their private sphere and that public transport is very well developed. "Probably the time is not yet ripe for ride-sharing on a large scale in this country," concludes Lötscher. "But that doesn't mean it never will be. We'll watch the market closely and get back into it when we see a meaningful opportunity." One such opportunity is closed user groups, such as commuter solutions for businesses.
No connection with Corona
Even though the situation surrounding Covid-19 has brought the ride-sharing business to a virtual standstill, Mobility's decision to discontinue the service matured before the lockdown. Ergo, Covid-19 had no influence on the shutdown of Mobility-Carpool. (pd)
