Glenn Schmidt head of sustainability communications has shed light on group’s future strategy to take both business models – car ownership and car sharing – side by side.

SMMT organised an event in London dubbed as SMMT Connected, where they considered all aspects of automotive connectivity. This conference was addressed by the sustainability communications head of BMW group, Glenn Schmidt where he delivered group’s perspective. In some parts of the world people are shifting from owning a car to accessing a car, he told the delegates.   Schmidt further added that the majority of their youngest customers don’t own cars, rather they go for hire. “People are able to access our vehicles, when they need to, but don’t own them”. The reason behind this approach is that young customers now have a lifestyle which is incredibly driven by connectivity and smartphones. It includes elements from all walks of life, information, entertainment, health and wellness, personalised content and of course mobility.     They are so addicted to these technologies that they can’t imagine a life without it. So it’s up to us to understand their expectations and changing needs and offer them solutions that address all these elements.   BMW is giving the new niche grave importance thus evolving its product offerings, tailored especially for the young ones who are not interesting in owning a car at all. If they are more into sharing vehicles then we have no problem letting them have it. What we see in these younger consumers is the tendency to have a shared car for fun, but as they’ll grow old majority of these customers will buy a BMW. We are just adding new business models that caters the needs of our valued customers. For us, it’s a good thing that they are attracted towards our brand and providing them a positive brand experience is what we are aiming for.   It was last year’s December when BMW launched DriveNow car sharing scheme in London as an experiment and in future, it’ll expand into 10 cities in North America and 15 cities in Europe.