Lynk & Co is focusing more on car sharing: making money with your stationary 01

It is already possible to borrow an 01 from someone via the Lynk & Co app or to offer to borrow your own 01, but the sharing service is still in the beta phase. Lynk & Co is now ready for the real work and so large-scale car sharing can start. In conversation with AutoWeek Lynk & Co-CFO Mathias Holst explains why this expansion is happening now: “It has been a trend for years to move from ‘ownership’ to ‘use’. We are growing as a company and want to address more different channels. We think it is It is important to join the sharing climate and really create something new.”

Something new? Car sharing has been around for years, right? That is correct, but Lynk & Co has its own sharing environment that is exclusively intended for the brand’s cars. It should enable people with a Lynk & Co to earn money with their car as easily as possible, whether it is purchased or leased, or driven with a subscription. The driver can use the app to indicate how long the car is available and what hourly rate applies. You can determine that rate yourself, although Lynk & Co explains to us that it does give an indication of what usual rates are.

The manufacturer honestly admits that part of the tariff flows back to Lynk & Co. That is currently less than €2 per hour that the car is loaned out. According to Lynk & Co, that money is currently only sufficient to cover the operational costs of the sharing service and it is not yet profitable. If more people join in, that could change. The rate that the owner determines goes 100 percent to the owner; the borrower is offered a slightly higher rate due to operational costs. Lynk & Co is responsible for the insurance of the car. That is still expensive for Lynk & Co, we hear from Head of Strategy & Product, David Green. The premium will probably drop in the long run, he expects, because he believes the number of claims is small.

Lynk & Co share in the Netherlands

According to Lynk & Co, the figures from the beta test show the potential of the sharing service very clearly. The Netherlands has an important role to play in this, because 22 percent of Lynk & Co drivers already share their car. CEO Alain Visser sees a considerable basis for more sharing actions, especially in the capital: “In the Netherlands it is really mainly in and around Amsterdam. With the fleet as it currently is in the Netherlands, you can already easily share. There are enough cars, now We mainly have to convince people to share. We really want to push that much more than the subscription.”

According to Visser, the biggest argument in favor of sharing your car is what you earn from it. It can be quite lucrative, he says: “There are already people who earn more from sharing than what they pay per month for their subscription.” According to Visser, there are about 55 customers in Europe who have already covered their own costs by sharing their car. Mathias Holst emphasizes that this does not mean that car sharing is the way to go core business van Lynk & Co. “We believe there is also a future for subscriptions. There are people who need a car for a few hours and people who want to use it for a few years. We want to serve them all. Thanks to sharing, cars are not only used better. More people will drive our cars and become familiar with us.”