A Mercedes-Benz event on the eve of the Frankfurt auto show, Zetsche admitted that developing driverless transport services with limousines was “a concrete goal” of the German vehicle maker.
Advertisement
This week, Daimler AG (OTC: DDAIF) Chief Executive Dieter Zetsche told Reuters that the luxury carmaker was aiming to take on Uber with a fleet of autonomous vehicles.
Zetsche said the popularity of auto sharing would be enhanced by an autonomous vehicle service that was able to deliver cars based on customers’ schedules through an integrated calendar.
On Friday, Mercedes-Benz Korea opened a training center in Yongin, Gyeonggi, to improve its overall customer service quality, the first center developed in Asia and the third in the world after Germany and France. And German premium carmakers BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Audi are snapping up software experts to do just that.
Daimler appears to already be working on such a service; the company bought MyTaxi, a taxi-hailing app past year and recently acquired mapping service HERE.
Mercedes is eyeing its own limo service powered by a fleet of self-driving cars.
“I think you don’t need too much imagination to see that by combining these strengths, attractive business models are possible in future”, Zetsche said.
Daimler’s enlargement plans in automotive sharing are being intently watched by rival BMW, which operates the DriveNow car-sharing service, and by Uber which has stated it can increase into 100 Chinese language cities over the subsequent yr.
This project has not only seen other tech firms sit up and notice but has also sent carmakers in a tizzy to acquire technical expertise that will enable to develop a self-driving vehicle.
Advertisement
In August 2013, Mercedes-Benz developed an S-class limousine which drove between Mannheim and Pforzheim without driver input.
