Homegrown commercial and industrial vehicle leasing and distribution company Goldbell Group announced today (October 18) the completion of its acquisition of electric car-sharing firm BlueSG, which was first announced in February this year.
Goldbell previously shared that it plans to expand BlueSG’s business and technical capabilities with investments of more than S$70 million over the next five years.
Today, Goldbell said it is dedicating up to S$40 million to accelerate BlueSG’s growth by 2023, which represents 60 per cent of the entire investment.
BlueSG is on track to expand its fleet size and will also expand its staff strength by 20 per cent by end-2021, with the addition of a new technology team.
Ultimately, Goldbell aims to expand BlueSG’s business and technical capabilities to develop a business model that will be replicated in other smart cities across Asia Pacific.
As part of this plan, it will be building a “global headquarters for car-sharing” through BlueSG by the end of 2021, which sets the stage for overseas expansion within the next few years.
A key priority of which will be the establishment of an Open Innovation Platform in Singapore through BlueSG. It acts as a testbed for new and experimental pilot technologies such as energy storage and management, advanced mobility systems and charging technologies, smart cities applications and more.
Evolving BlueSG into a “living lab for Future Mobility innovations”
With the finalisation of the acquisition, Jenny Lim, who was previously BlueSG’s Commercial & Network Director, has now been appointed by the Goldbell Group as BlueSG’s Head of Singapore, responsible for overall operations.
BlueSG customers will continue to enjoy the convenience and efficiency of the services as before, following the proposed acquisition and rebranding of the BlueSG islandwide network of more than 1,500 electric vehicles (EV) charging points.
Earlier in July, French oil giant TotalEnergies announced that it’s acquiring BlueSG’s 1,500 electric vehicle (EV) charging network for an undisclosed sum.
“BlueSG will be entering a new era together with Goldbell. Since the announcement of the acquisition eight months ago, we have been laying the groundwork for bringing the company to its next level of growth,” said Arthur Chua, CEO of Goldbell.
“Not only are we interested in deploying newer generation, experimental technologies in our car-sharing fleet, we are also looking forward to working with companies, as well as local institutes of higher learning and research institutes, to realise our vision to evolve the BlueSG fleet into a living lab for Future Mobility innovations.”
The BlueSG acquisition is in line with the establishment of Goldbell’s Global Innovation Centre for Future Mobility, whose mission is to look into new business models or technologies in the mobility space such as vehicle sharing, app-based vehicle leasing, intelligent warehousing, mobility analytics, and mobility algorithms.
“We look forward to working with a variety of charging infrastructure providers in Singapore and are excited about the interest that this is already generating among potential international OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) who are looking to tap into our BlueSG brand to showcase their new electric vehicle models, as part of our fleet expansion quest,” added Arthur.
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Featured Image Credit: Goldbell Group / BlueSG
