Vanessa Petre Linbenciuc opens the silver e-Golf with a small swiping movement on her phone. She looks into the interior: everything is clean. And the battery of the electric car is fully charged. You're ready to go!
“Here’s one of my 1,500 cars I have here in Berlin,” says the 24-year-old with a smile, puts her handbag in the trunk and adds: “That’s the practical thing about car sharing: My cars are parked all over the city – like here in the Mitte district of Berlin – and are never far away from my current location. But now let’s go, I know a nice café.”
Vanessa Petre Linbenciuc is one of 2,500 exclusive users who have tried WeShare before its official launch. So she helped to make the service fit for the start in Berlin. The test phase lasted almost two months before it really gets going at the end of June.
With WeShare, Volkswagen is launching what is known as ‘free-floating car sharing’. There are so many cars available that the customer can find one near them at any one time. “Free- floating,” means that there are no fixed collection points where cars have to be taken and returned. There are already a number of these car sharing services in Berlin. But the special thing about WeShare is that the service only offers electric cars. Electric, flexible and urban mobility of the future.