Peugeot plans LA car-sharing operation with Bollore: CEO

PARIS (Reuters) – France’s PSA will launch car-sharing services in Los Angeles in partnership with Bollore Group, Chief Executive Carlos Tavares said on Monday, as the maker of Peugeot, Citroen and DS cars diversifies into mobility services.

“We’re working with a good number of cities, including LA, to offer car-sharing solutions with Bollore Group,” Tavares said at a seminar organized by business daily Les Echos, adding that the company had “other discussions in progress”.

Rattled by Uber’s [UBER.UL] success, carmakers from General Motors to Daimler are rolling out their own ride-sharing services – while sometimes struggling to explain how they could supplant their traditional manufacturing business if consumers were to abandon ownership in droves.

Paris-based PSA is investing in start-ups and expanding in areas ranging from vehicle leasing to parts distribution as it pursues a recovery plan in the wake of a brush with bankruptcy that led to Tavares’s 2014 appointment.

The following year, PSA announced a partnership with Bollore, which already supplies electric car-sharing services in Paris and other cities and had previously flagged Los Angeles as a potential location.

Tavares also said PSA aimed to generate 300 million euros ($337 million) in revenue from its new mobility services division by 2021, a goal he acknowledged was challenging yet “absolutely marginal” for a car manufacturer with more than 50 billion euros in annual sales.

(Reporting by Laurence Frost and Gilles Guillaume; Editing by David Goodman and Hugh Lawson)