Deutsche Bahn Connect

Deutsche Bahn Connect GmbH (formerly DB Rent GmbH )
legal form	GmbH
founding	2001
Seat	Frankfurt
management	Jürgen Gudd (Chairman of the Management Board), Eva Mägerlein
Number of employees	about 300
Branch	Rental
Website	www.deutschebahnconnect.com

The German railway Connect GmbH (until 2017 DB Rent GmbH ) is part of the business unit DB Connect the Deutsche Bahn . The company is based in Frankfurt am Main , and had around 300 employees in 2018. The business purpose of Deutsche Bahn Connect is to offer fleet concepts and mobility modules. Individual mobility and networking strategies of transport systems are essential components of the offer.

DB FuhrparkService , another wholly-owned subsidiary, is also assigned to the DB Connect business unit.

offer

The company's product range includes the following services:

• Long term rental
• Short term rental
• Purchase and sale of vehicles
• Carsharing ( Flinkster )
• Chauffeur service
• Bike rental ( Call a Bike )
• Pool vehicles

Quickest

Flinkster vehicle (example model)

Vehicles from e-Flinkster and Call a Bike

Fastest station at Frankfurt Central Station

Flinkster- Ford Focus Electric at a Rheinenergie electric filling station in Cologne

Flinkster is Deutsche Bahn's car sharing service. With a market share of 55%, the company was the market leader in car sharing in Germany in mid-2012. 250,000 customers use around 3,100 of their own vehicles (100 of which are electric vehicles) at 800 stations in Germany (as of October 2013). Cars can also be booked in the Netherlands, Switzerland ( Mobility Carsharing ) and Austria. Customers who want to use car sharing must register beforehand and legitimize them with a driver's license and ID card at a railway sales point. They then receive a contactless chip card that either opens the vehicle directly or opens a key safe. The car key can usually be found in the glove compartment.

In the car sharing test conducted by Stiftung Warentest in September 2012, Flinkster received an overall rating of “Good” (2.1).

According to its own information, the company had around 300,000 customers and 3,300 vehicles at 1,000 locations in 200 cities in mid-2015.

history

Initially, the offer was marketed under the name DB Carsharing . DB Rent cooperated with BwFuhrparkService (BW Carsharing), which was also offered to the public, but offered a different tariff model for the use of the shared vehicle pool. From March 2009, the railway in Cologne and Stuttgart initially offered 130 small cars under the name Flinkster as part of a pilot project . With this offer, in contrast to the previous DB Carsharing, conspicuous three-color painted Alfa Romeo MiTo were distributed over the entire city area at short intervals . In the meantime, all activities in the area of ​​car sharing have been brought together under the name Flinkster .

In March 2012 it was announced that DB Rent had agreed on a car sharing cooperation with CCUniRent System . The two want to open their systems for mutual use in order to create more regional offers for customers.

Electric vehicles

To Flinkster fleet also includes e-Flinkster mentioned electric cars of the brands smart , Toyota , Peugeot , Opel and Citroën . The e-Flinkster have been on the road in the cities of Frankfurt, Berlin and Saarbrücken since summer 2010 . In Berlin they are part of the BeMobility project for the integration of electric vehicles into public transport. In addition, 350 electric vehicles from Multicity (Citroën) can be used in Berlin, which can be parked anywhere within the city (in the area of ​​the business area) (not tied to a specific station).

Since mid-2015, Flinkster customers have also been able to use Car2Go vehicles.

Locations

Flinkster operates 800 locations in Germany, the Netherlands , Austria and Switzerland .

Urban networks including train station

Amsterdam Arnhem Bamberg Berlin Braunschweig Chemnitz Darmstadt Dresden Duisburg Dusseldorf Eindhoven Erfurt

Frankfurt am Main Freising to water Goettingen Halle (Saale) Jena kassel Kiel Cologne Suffer Leipzig Lindau

Magdeburg Mainz Marburg Munich regensburg Stuttgart Weert Weimar Vienna Wiesbaden Wurzburg

Airport locations

Altenburg augsburg Berlin Tegel Braunschweig Dortmund Dresden Dusseldorf Erfurt

Frankfurt Frankfurt Hahn Friedrichshafen Hamburg Hanover Cologne Lübeck Leipzig

Memmingen Munich Nuremberg Paderborn Saarbrücken Stuttgart Weeze Zweibrücken

Car dealerships

Another field of activity of Deutsche Bahn Connect is DB Autohaus with locations in Maintal (greater Frankfurt area ), Cloppenburg , Bad Salzuflen and Schweinfurt . There the company is active in the vehicle trade with used cars. At the Maintal and Schweinfurt locations, there are also so-called “premium car dealerships” in which vehicles from the Mercedes-Benz, Audi and BMW brands are offered.

Call a bike

→ Main article : Call a Bike

The Call a Bike rental bike offer is now also operated by DB Connect . This telephone-based system of bike rental was started in 2001 in Munich by a company of the same name as a pilot test; After being taken over by DB Rent , it was expanded there and in other cities and can now also be used via a mobile app .

There are three variants:

• Call a bike fix

With this variant, the bikes can be borrowed from stations and returned. The system is implemented, for example, in Berlin, Frankfurt am Main, Stuttgart, Darmstadt, Marburg and Wiesbaden. In 2009, DB Rent equipped a further 100 ICE train stations with individual Call-a-Bike stations.

• Call a Bike Flex

In this variant, the characteristic train bicycles can be found in a defined core area at intersections. These can be borrowed by phone and returned at every intersection within the core area. This offer is currently available in Munich and Cologne .

• e-Call a Bike

This variant is still being tested and relates to the rental of electric bicycles ( pedelecs ).

The Hamburg rental bike system StadtRAD Hamburg is not an own product of DB Connect: DB Rent was commissioned by the city of Hamburg to operate it, while the city, for example, set the prices. Call-a-Bike customers can use StadtRAD Hamburg, and StadtRAD customers are automatically registered for CallBike.

Web links

• Call-a-Bike
• Quickest
• Deutsche Bahn Connect
• Interview with Rolf Lübke, Managing Director, DB Rent GmbH

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Company presentation . Retrieved April 6, 2015 . 
2. ^ Company profile of Deutsche Bahn Connect ; accessed on March 17, 2018
3. ↑ BMW, Daimler and Bahn are considering car sharing alliance . Wirtschaftswoche, May 5, 2012.
4. ↑ 250,000 customers with "Flinkster- Mein Carsharing". (No longer available online.) Deutsche Bahn, October 28, 2013, archived from the original on October 31, 2013 ; Retrieved December 23, 2013 .  .
5. ↑ Carsharing test by Stiftung Warentest In: magazine test 10/2012, pp. 68–73 and on test.de
6. ↑ ^{a b} car sharing with Deutsche Bahn and Daimler . In: mobile . No. 7 , July 2015, ISSN  0949-586X , ZDB -ID 1221702-5 , p. 64 .
7. ↑ Deutsche Bahn starts innovative car sharing project in Stuttgart. (PDF; 49KB) Deutsche Bahn, March 9, 2009, accessed on January 30, 2010 . 
8. ↑ Deutsche Bahn starts innovative car sharing project in Cologne. (PDF; 49KB) Deutsche Bahn, March 10, 2009, accessed on January 30, 2010 . 
9. ^ Rail car sharing: new brand identity. Deutsche Bahn, July 16, 2010, accessed May 8, 2011 . 
10. ↑ http://www.dein-touristik.net/touristik_news/24285-kooperation-bei-carsharing.html
11. ↑ DB moving image: Flinkster - My Carsharing ( Memento from July 23, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
12. ↑ Website of the project "BeMobility - Berlin e lektroMobil"
13. ↑ 800 stations in Germany - and even abroad. , flinkster.de (PDF)
14. ^ DB dealership. Retrieved March 13, 2020 . 
15. ↑ Even more mobile with the Call a Bike app!
16. ↑ The Auto-Bahn . In: mobile . February 2009, pp. 42-44.
17. ↑ Electromobility: Call a Bike launched electromobility over the weekend in Berlin. (No longer available online.) In: callabike-interaktiv.de. Archived from the original on December 23, 2010 ; Retrieved September 25, 2010 .