BMW acquires the Parkmobile app in order to cope with urban traffic

BMW has acquired the company Parkmobile, which has developed a smartphone application for parking conveniently. BMW Group has been a minority shareholder since 2014 and owned a subsidiary of Parkmobile Group Europe but has now decided to invest in the parent company Parkmobile, LLC, which is based in Atlanta.

The Parkmobile application shows drivers where there are free parking spaces and provides an opportunity to pay for their parking. The service is available in more than 300 US cities and in the Canadian city of Winnipeg. Parkmobile employs more than 100 people.

You can also reserve a parking space on the company's website at venues that cooperate with the service.For example: parking near stadiums, shopping and cultural centers, banks, etc.

The acquisition of a leading player in the US parking market gives BMW the opportunity to add Parkmobile to the Mobility Services portfolio to integrate transport services in the urban environment. Such integrated solutions are of great interest to automakers.

Specialists from BMW believe that new investments in Parkmobile will help solve the problem of increased traffic in cities: up to 30 percent of traffic in any city is caused by people who are looking for parking spaces. It is especially difficult for those who came to a city for the first time and can not immediately orient themselves. With the help of the Parkmobile application, the driver immediately travels to a free parking space and will not circumnavigate around the bank, stadium, or theater in search of parking.

Over the past year, Parkmobile's service has been used 50 million times and the number of registered users has reached 8 million.