A subsidiary of German car giant Daimler has acquired two startupss — RideScout and myTaxi — that make mobile apps focused on transportation choices in cities. The move is part of Daimler’s continued push beyond car manufacturing and into developing technology for urban mobility, as a next generation of city-dwellers is increasingly giving up on car ownership and opting for transportation alternatives from on-demand car services like Uber to car-sharing services like Zipcar.
Daimler owns a mobility-focused subsidiary called moovel (formerly named Daimler Mobility Services), and under the moovel brand has operated a car-sharing network called car2go for a couple years now. Car2go has amassed 850,000 registered members across 26 cities, and the network enables its users to rent Smart Fortwo cars (made by Daimler) by the minute and hour.