In smaller cities, Mr. Harms said, MOIA could offer an inexpensive form of public transportation, even though rivals like Uber<br />and Didi Chuxing, a Chinese ride-hailing service, are already well established in many of these locations.<br />“The biggest skill you have to have is the ability to change.”<br />So he packed up and took his team to new digs in Berlin, where increasingly urgent attempts to tap into a growing tech scene<br />are part of German carmakers’ efforts to ride a digital wave sweeping the industry — before it rolls straight over them.<br />“The big question is always, Do we car manufacturers learn to become tech companies<br />more quickly than a tech company learns to be an automotive player?”<br />Non-German carmakers have readily embraced Silicon Valley through partnerships and investment deals.<br />“The future of Germany as an industrial nation depends on how companies succeed in bringing the manufacturing<br />and digital worlds together,” said Frank Ridder, research leader for Germany, Austria and Switzerland for Gartner, a technology research firm.<br />“The whole mobility market — transportation as a service — is just at the beginning,” Mr. Harms said<br />Daimler also owns Car2Go, a short-term car rental service; Blacklane, an upmarket ride-hailing app; and MyTaxi, Europe’s largest taxi-hailing service.
