Premium carsharing in Moscow
Over the past year, carsharing market in Moscow has grown to incredible scale, thus making the capital of Russia the second city in the world by the number of carsharing vehicles. Such a rapid boost of this new kind of transport connected with the fact that such giant as Yandex has entered the market, which was supplemented with the response of existing players and under active assistance of the Moscow administration. There are among 17k carsharing vehicles in 2019, but what is more impressive: a variety of vehicles — from Lada Granta to Ferrari F430 Spider or Porsche 911. This review will introduce the situation on the Moscow premium carsharing market. Perhaps it would be an additional argument for visiting this fabulous city.
Premium carsharing?
The question may arise: what is the sense of premium carsharing? The philosophy of carsharing consist of taking somebody from point A to point B cheaper than a taxi, because there are no costs for a driver and users driving themselves. Today the streets of Moscow are congested of mass carsharing vehicles, such as VW Polo, Kia Rio or Hyundai Solaris. But it is not enough.
Premium carsharing offers you feel like an owner of a high-priced vehicle, but only for some time period. Moreover, it provides a higher level of comfort and movement speed. It is an awesome opportunity to test different cars, impress someone or just enjoy driving around the city. For the prosperous people, it is a chance to reduce the cost of parking and petroleum, as well as to follow modern trends. But before answering the question about the readiness of high-income people to transfer from private cars to VIP-class carsharing, it should be clear whether the industry is ready for it. Let’s check it.
Existing services
At the moment there are 4 services in Moscow that can be attributed to the premium-segment: Yandex.Drive Premium, Anytime, MatreshCar and BelkaCar Black. For a better understanding of the situation on the premium carsharing market, below is a diagram.
Yandex.Drive Premium. Beyond all doubt, Yandex.Drive is occupying a leading position, both for the mass and for the premium market. The scale and innovation of Yandex have played a role in it, as well as the presence of a developed infrastructure from Yandex.Taxi. Moreover, now actively developing direction Yandex.Auto — embedded multimedia system, which has already been adopted by the vehicles of Yandex.Drive. As for the premium segment, Yandex maximally follows the criteria of the executive class. All vehicles are the last generation and without carsharing pasting (unless the inconspicuous inscription “Yandex.Drive” on the side).
At the same time, Yandex has the most stringent criteria for selecting users: the unchildish age of 26 and driving experience over 6 years. Moreover, you have to convince the Yandex machine learning algorithm that you are a respectable driver, drive carefully and worthy of driving the 911-m Porsche, even not so carefully.
Anytime. It is the first carsharing service in Moscow, which have merged with Delimobil, removed the pasting from the vehicles and decided to capture the premium part of the market. Anytime is the most loyal carsharing service with the softest terms of rules. All their cars are available from 20 years, except recently added Mercedes E and GLC, for them enabled 24 years old restriction. They also launched Anytime Prime — additional product, in which you can take a carsharing vehicle for a day and it will be delivered directly to your specified location. BMW X5, Mercedes G500 and SLK, Audi TT are available only in Prime and only for 24 hours. The price varies from 120$ to 180$. Earlier there was a brilliant Ferrari F430 Spider, but it disappeared a few months ago… Try to guess what happened.
MatreshCar. Anytime’s closest competitor, but it has several differences. Firstly, their vehicles equipped with hidden cameras. Keep it in mind while singing and dancing in a traffic jam. Secondly, the color of the vehicles is red. Controversial issue. And finally, they have much less loyal terms of use than Anytime. For example, MatreshCar accepts foreign drivers, but before it’s necessary to visit their office personally, sign the contract and pay 45$ to your account deposit.
BelkaCar Black. The premium segment of the mass carsharing service BelkaCar. Their fleet is not very diverse, only 2 types of Mercedes. But the number of vehicles is quite impressive and the price is quite pleasant. Only users over 25 years old can be satisfied with their Mercedes. Including foreigners.
Closing words
The tremendous growth in the popularity of carsharing over the past year not only brought Moscow to the world leaders in the carsharing industry, but it also has opened to Muscovites and guests of the capital the opportunity to experience the emotions of driving an expensive and fast car on “the pay-per-minute” basis. Do not forget the traffic restrictions, by the way. There are a lot of things in life much more pleasant than crashing not your Ferrari.
