The Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi automotive conglomerate has its own strategic venture capital arm called Alliance Ventures. Alliance Ventures set out to turn new ideas in mobility into reality. One of its latest efforts in achieving that goal is its investment in a new mobility app called Transit.
This is an app for urban mobility that looks for all kinds of different ways to get around in your city. It doesn’t just look for public transportation, but for options in ride-hailing and in bike and scooter sharing. By using Transit, you can determine the best way to get where you need to go using real-time data and have an accurate ETA to work with.
Alliance Ventures, and by extension Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi, wants to be part of Transit because of its ambitions of being a leader in ride-hailing with autonomous vehicles someday. "This investment, which will advance Transit’s efforts to make mobility seamless and accessible in cities, fits with the Alliance 2022 strategy to become a leader in robo-vehicle ride-hailing mobility services and a provider of vehicles for public transit use and car-sharing," said François Dossa, Alliance Global Vice President, Ventures and Open innovation in a statement.
As automakers prepare themselves for the possibility of a decline in personal car ownership with the rise of ride-hailing, many of them are diversifying into different fields of mobility as not to get caught off-guard. Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi investing in Transit is a good example of a car manufacturer looking to the future, and finding new ways to stay relevant. No matter how people decide to get around, cars will be a big part of it in one way or another for a long time.
