Carmakers tieup with taxis to boost sales

A flurry of deals between big automakers and ride hailing and transportation startups is rewriting the playbook in the contest to control the future of personal transportation.

Automakers now recognise that they may turn ride-hailing services and car sharing companies into steady customers for all sorts of vehicles, particularly hybrid and electric cars, industry executives and analysts say.

Tie-ups with carpooling services or short-term ren-tal companies help auto-makers expose consumers to brands they might otherwise ignore. Technology companies offer access to troves of consumer data, and sophisticated ways to analyse them.

From the automakers, the Silicon Valley mobility companies obtain fresh capital, access to auto industry engineers who know how cars work and discounts on vehicles for their drivers.

In the latest tie-up between an automaker and a transportation technology startup, German luxury car maker BMW AG said on Wednesday its BMW iVentures venture capital arm has invested an undisclosed amount in California-based Scoop Technologies, which offers a smartphone-powered carpooling service called Scoop.

On Tuesday, Toyota Motor Corp, the world’s No. 1 automaker by sales, said it was investing an undisclosed amount of money in Uber. Germany’s Volkswagen AG said on the same day it would invest $300 million in Gett, a smaller ride-hailing company. Earlier this year, General Motors Co acquired a stake in Uber rival Lyft, and the Detroit automaker is launching its own car-sharing and mobility ventures under the Maven brand. Ford Motor Co, Daimler AG and other major automakers have unveiled efforts to embrace ride-hailing and car-sharing services.

Automakers “want to make sure they are in the game,” as more consumers use ride sharing or carpooling, said Mark Short, an Ernst and Young partner who advises automakers on transactions. “To be in the game, you have to make investments in these companies.”

In the case of Uber and Toyota, both could benefit from an alliance. Uber “actually knows very little from its own experience about cars — how they’re made, how they work,” said Jan Dawson, technology analyst with Jackdaw Research. Uber has said it wants to develop self-driving cars — as does Toyota — and the two indicated they will collaborate on research.

Toyota said it expects to offer new ways for Uber drivers to buy Toyota cars, and could market Toyota and Lexus vehicles to Uber in bulk fleet sales. Details of these programs have yet to be decided, a Toyota spokesman said.