During our internship period with OP, which is part of Hanken university program “Integration business lead 2017”, we got to know about DriveNow, as a new innovation in mobility field, and to see how effective solution it is nowadays for such a big and rush city like Helsinki.

We decided to test DriveNow and experience the service in purpose to see how it looks like in reality, by exploring the application, cars models, prices, and the service flexibility.

We set our test-driving day on Friday 13.10.2017, for that we have prepared ourselves with high expectations of confusions and difficulties in the first use (since it’s completely new service for us and even in Finland)!

We started the mission by installing and registering the application and filling all necessary details, which was really fast and easy - even available in English. Then, we went out looking for the nearest available car and it was “Heidi” BMW X1, in Esplanadi city center. We followed the instructions by checking the car’s condition and it was looking brilliant and very clean (almost brand new).

Dani from OP Helsinki opened the car by using the application and it was super-fast and easy. Our first step was checking the car’s operating system, which is available in Finnish, English and many other languages, which gives the system more flexibility and simplicity to use.

Our DriveNow driving journey with BMW X1 was from Helsinki city center to Leppävaara. We were lucky to drive such a nice car during fabulous sunny day. The drive was really smooth and we didn’t face any difficulties even to park the car, since it is allowed for DriveNow cars to be parked in any public areas. In addition to that, we were surprised to see in a small parking area five more DriveNow cars was available.

After Leppävaara we decided to choose another car to get back to Helsinki city center, we chose the electrical car BMW i3 as new experience for all of us to drive electrical car. It was really deferent experience in every detail of driving starting from the interior design and quietness of the engine, it’s really different sensation you’ll never feel it unless you try it.

Tameem said: “It was really nice experience for me and definitely I will keep using it especially as a family in cold late nights, also in Ikea trips it is a great solution, because I always face difficulties to manage the transportation from Ikea to home with many heavy stuff, in this case the bus will not help and taking taxi will be expensive, so based on this experience my next trip to ikea will be with DriveNow car.”

Larissa said: “DriveNow is helpful and good solution for people who is not willing to own a car, so it’s nice to drive many different nice and luxury cars without paying a lot of money for renting a car, or to worry about finding a free parking space in the city center, and taking care of maintenance or even filling petrol”.

DriveNow is a very good idea, it creates a new sector in the urban transportation as a huge leap for mobility business.

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Larissa Farhan & Tameem Rajab

from Hanken’s integration business lead 2017 program

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*) Blogin ovat kirjoittaneet OP Helsingin kansainväliset harjoittelijat ja se julkaistaan poikkeuksellisesti englanniksi.

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