Will BMW and Daimler join car-sharing forces to battle Uber?
REPORT: DRIVENOW AND CAR2GO COULD COMBINE RESOURCES TO BATTLE COMPETITION
A handful of car companies are convinced that the concept of pay-per-ride car-sharing will be big in the near future as traditional, boring car ownership fades. And amid this early stage of business development, alliances are already forming. Several European automakers have rolled out pilot programs aimed to offer an alternative to Uber, Lyft and other app-based ride-sharing services, with BMW and Mercedes-Benz parent company Daimler reportedly discussing joining forces.

Germany's Manager Magazin reports that BMW's DriveNow and Daimler's Car2Go could adopt a common digital platform, with each service currently providing cars on-demand via separate apps. Daimler's service currently offers Mercedes-Benz and Smart vehicles, with users paying for the length of time used based on several different payment plans, while DriveNow offers BMW and Mini vehicles on a similar basis.

Earlier in 2016, BMW launched a related service in Seattle dubbed ReachNow, providing BMW and Mini models, though the majority of both services' vehicles and users are outside the U.S. Combined, the two services operate just over 20,000 vehicles, most of them in large western European cities.

While Manager Magazin reports talks of a partnership, Sixt SE, which owns DriveNow with BMW, played down the possibility of the two automakers joining forces -- for now.

The appeal of partnerships among the automaker-operated car-sharing services is an obvious one, especially when it comes to challenging ride-hailing services. By providing a common platform, individual automakers' car-sharing services can offer a larger number of cars to their customers in a wider geographic area, as ride-hailing services such as Uber are seen as eroding the demand for traditional ownership.

It's anticipated that the car-sharing and ride-hailing model will continue to gather steam, so some market analysts see the next big battle as being between existing ride-hailing services like Uber and automaker-owned car-sharing services. Automakers are believed to stand a better chance of prevailing by pooling their cars and geographic reach into a smaller number of app-based platforms, rather than offering "boutique" fleets in just a handful of metro areas.

Despite car-sharing services such as Car2Go existing for the better part of a decade, it is clear that we are still in the early stages of development and consolidation in this new industry, one anticipated to be transformed soon by the debut of Level 5 autonomous cars.