Delays in obtaining the necessary regulatory approvals have forced Daimler AG and BMW Group to push back their effort to establish a joint-venture mobility company.
The delay will force Daimler Financial Services to lower its earnings forecast for 2018. The division now expects EBIT to be significantly lower than in the previous year.
The forecast for the Daimler Group’s EBIT in the 2018 financial year remains unaffected and unchanged. As previously announced, the transaction will not have any cash-flow impact on the industrial business, Daimler said in a statement, updating the plans for the joint venture.
Following the approval of the project by the European Union, Mercedes and BMW are continuing talks with the U.S. antitrust authorities. Completion of the transaction was originally planned for 2018, and is unlikely to occur by the end of the month.
(BMW and Mercedes-Benz will merge mobility services operations. Click Here for the story.)
With their joint venture, Daimler AG and BMW Group plan to combine their car sharing, ride hailing, parking, charging and multimodality services, creating one of major providers of mobility services.
Automakers face some difficult choices in the future as they confront unprecedented technical, social and environmental changes. Even relatively wealthy companies, such as Mercedes and BMW, which are bolstered by their success in the luxury-car segment during the past 30 years, are looking for ways to spread the risks created by the uncertain future.
(Click Here for details about Daimler investing millions in financing app.)
Joint ventures and alliances are on the way to becoming the preferred way to meet the challenges as the ongoing talks between Ford and Volkswagen have underscored.
In the announcement by Mercedes and BMW, both companies said the objective of the joint venture is to establish an enterprise that will shape the future of mobility and offer customers unique experiences while supporting partners such as cities and municipalities along the way to enhance sustainable urban mobility.
(For more on BMW’s plans to up EV and AV spending, Click Here.)
The new Mercedes-Benz-BMW joint venture will offer customers an intelligent and seamlessly linked ecosystem of services at their disposal at the touch of a button.
