Imagine walking out the door every day to go to work, meet with friends, or join a party all the way downtown with multiple stops and methods of transportation. On average, many consumers do that on the daily, and they have multiple apps, cards, and payment methods to keep track of just to make it to their destination. Now imagine doing all that with one app and having access to bus, tram, taxi, car, bicycles, and more transportation services when you want it. That’s the Whim app, a smartphone application by a Finnish company in Helsinki, and Mitsubishi Motors Corp just bought shares in MaaS Global Oy, the parent company behind Whim.
“This is what a car tends to represent to people, it’s this promise of freedom to go anytime, anywhere on a whim…We really need to concentrate on delivering that.” – Chief Executive Officer Sampo Hietanen
No longer would people have to switch between ride-sharing apps like Uber or Lyft and manage multiple bus cards. Like Lulu from The Fifth Element, we have a Multi-Pass, except it unlocks a variety of modes of transportation versus rolling an ID and credit card into one – the future, everybody! There’s just one problem.
Currently, Whim mainly operates in its homeland of Finland, mostly in Helsingin seudun liikenne or HSL. Since its launch in 2017, MaaS Global has been able to expand the Whim service to Birmingham, U.K. and Antwerp, Belgium, but so far that’s it. That’s where Mitsubishi Motors Corp (MMC) comes in.
