Stuttgart/Berlin/Essen, 2 March 2020 – APCOA PARKING, innogy and UFODRIVE today opened the first UFODRIVE hub in the APCOA multi-storey car park at the “Mall of Berlin” shopping centre in the heart of Berlin. From here, local customers and visitors to Berlin now have access to a zero-emission, innovative and flexible mobility service.
Intelligent electromobility solutions, such as hassle-free, app-enabled vehicle rental, are playing an increasingly important role in the context of digitalisation and sustainability for the urban mobility infrastructure. Last year, APCOA PARKING, innogy and UFODRIVE therefore decided to pool their resources and expertise to combine clean electric mobility with the best in convenience and customer service.
Now, UFODRIVE is opening its first location in the German capital in the centrally located APCOA car park in the shopping centre “Mall of Berlin”. With a fleet of premium Tesla vehicles, UFODRIVE’s customers can now arrive at the bay with just their smartphones and the app and drive away in a fully electric rental car. The bay’s charging infrastructure is provided and operated by innogy. The car park’s entry and exit barriers open automatically as the vehicles approach thanks to the APCOA FLOW RFID chips in each vehicle. The partners have seamlessly combined individual solutions to create an easy, innovative and customer-centric car rental experience that makes a major contribution to the sustainable transformation of urban mobility.
“In terms of sustainable urban development, the car park of the future has a crucial role to play”, says Philippe op de Beeck, CEO of the APCOA PARKING Group. In addition to providing the necessary parking spaces, centrally located car parks also provide the ideal base for intelligent shared mobility solutions. “By partnering with UFODRIVE and innogy, we are taking electric mobility one step further”. As well as providing the parking spaces for the UFObay, APCOA PARKING’s digital parking service, APCOA FLOW, also represents an essential building block in creating a seamless digital experience for UFODRIVE customers.
“With UFODRIVE.COM and our fleet of fully electric Tesla vehicles, we are bringing clean, instant, 24/7 electric car rental to private and business travellers in Berlin. After successful openings in Cologne and Hamburg, it was only logical that we should also launch our app-based car rental service in Berlin. We are looking forward to providing all of our Berlin customers with a best-in-class, attractive and innovative rental offer”, explains Aidan McClean, CEO of UFODRIVE. The start-up rents out purely electric Tesla Model S and Model 3 vehicles conveniently and easily via app and has already opened UFO Landing Bays in eight countries.
“Car parks have a central role to play, not only in the urban energy transition, but also in the expansion of electromobility and public charging infrastructure. Through this partnership, we are providing a glimpse of the city of the future and proving that the digitalisation of infrastructure and the expansion of electromobility can improve people’s quality of life”, says Dr. Armin Gaul, Head of Technical Development at innogy SE. The car park’s charging infrastructure is operated by the energy company innogy, which uses green electricity and innovative charging management to ensure that vehicles are always charged and ready for customers to simply arrive and drive.
The new electric vehicle rental bay in the “Mall of Berlin” is just the beginning for the three partners. Plans are already in place to establish a network of electric vehicle rental hubs in Germany and internationally. APCOA and innogy are also aiming to equip a large number of APCOA car parks with public charging infrastructure, thereby enabling electric car owners to simultaneously park and charge their vehicles. The partners’ proposals are designed to promote the expansion of eMobility across the whole of Germany and include the widespread deployment of sensor technology and value-added digital services across APCOA’s pan-European car park network. Thanks to the visionary partnership the car park of the future will be a central element of the smart city.
Part of the offer is APCOA FLOW: The free parking app makes it easier for business customers and regular drivers to use more than 200 selected APCOA car parks. They benefit from easy and convenient ticketless access and no longer have to make sure they have the right change for the pay machine. Users can decide whether they want to pay by credit or debit card and are automatically billed for the parking services they use. Billing is entirely transparent and users can review the costs of their parking transactions in the app and by email.
About APCOA PARKING Group
APCOA PARKING Group is Europe's leading parking operator with more than 45 years of industry expertise. With its 5,000 employees, the company manages approximately 1.5 million individual parking spaces at over 9,500 locations in 13 European countries. These include parking spaces at 1,800 city and shopping centre locations, 400 hotels, 150 hospitals and 58 European airports. With its consistent “asset light” business model, APCOA is the trusted partner who maximises value for private and public real estate owners.
Via its open digital platform, APCOA FLOW, the company connects on-street and off-street car parks with clients, partners, customers and their vehicles. Based on this technology, APCOA is transforming its car parks into mobility hubs, offering innovative services that enable a more convenient mobility experience. The environment also benefits: with its digital services and intelligent Traffic Management System, the company actively contributes to the reduction of emissions in cities by decreasing the volume of traffic searching for parking. By connecting parking and mobility, APCOA is positioned to become an integral part of the Smart City.
Contact: APCOA PARKING Holdings GmbH, Sebastian Merkle, e-mail: sebastian.merkle(at)apcoa.eu; phone: +49 711-94791-0; www.apcoa.com
About UFODRIVE
UFODRIVE is a start-up company founded in Luxembourg that provides an all-digital, all-electric car rental solution. Customers can book premium all-electric vehicles via the UFODRIVE website or app and arrive, unlock and drive via their smartphones with the UFODRIVE app.
The company’s solutions are designed for both private and business travellers and UFODRIVE is already available in many major European cities, including Dublin, London, Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam, Luxembourg, Hamburg, Cologne and Berlin. The company’s UFObay rental and return hubs are primarily located at airports and central transport interchanges within each city.
Press photos and additional information are available at: www.ufodrive.com/press; www.ufodrive.com
Contact: Jens Stoewhase; e-Mail: pr(at)rabbit-publishing.net; mobile: +49 151 275 33 262
About innogy SE
innogy SE is a leading German energy company with a turnover of around 37 billion euros (2018) and around 43,000 employees. With its three divisions, Renewable Energies, Grid & Infrastructure, and Sales, innogy addresses the requirements of a modern decarbonised, decentralised and digital energy world. The company’s approximately 22 million customers are at the heart of everything innogy does. innogy strives to offer its customers innovative and sustainable products and services with which they can use energy more efficiently and improve their quality of life. The company’s most important markets are Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Belgium, as well as a number of countries in Central Eastern and South Eastern Europe, in particular the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. With a total capacity of 4.0 gigawatts, innogy also generates electricity from renewable energies outside these regions, e. g. in Spain, Italy and the USA. As an innovation leader in future-oriented topics such as eMobility, innogy is also represented in international technology hotspots such as Silicon Valley, Tel Aviv and Berlin. innogy combines the broad know-how of its energy technicians and engineers with digital technology partners – from start-ups to large corporations.
Contact: Sarah Schaffers; email: sarah.schaffers(at)innogy.com; mobile: +49-152-54951481; www.innogy.com
