The Volkswagen group founded MOIA, a new division to focus on the on-demand transportation service meant to compete with other companies like Uber.
First trials in a few months
MOIA will become an independent division within Volkswagen, officially launching on 1 January 2017 under the control of Ole Harms. He will get 50 people to guide and he hopes to launch trials in Berlin and Hamburg in a few months’ time, with other European cities to follow shortly after. At first, the division will be a taxi service like Uber, but it intends to introduce self-driving electric cars too in order to bridge the gap between personal and public transportation.
The company is already in talks with 20 major European cities, to see how MOIA can operate within the local legal boundaries. This is an entirely different approach to Uber, which usually just launches the app and only acts when forced to do so.
