A total of 300 vehicles are available in the Belgian capital occupying a 55km2 area. In the first phase of launch, the cars will consist of the BMW 1-series, the BMW 2-series Active Tourer, plus the MINI Clubman or Hatch (three-door).

The city follows the usual DriveNow ‘free-floating’ car- sharing concept, whereby the cars can be rented and returned to any legal parking space in the business area. Users will pay €0.33 cents per minute while driving and €0.19 cents per minute when the car is parked. Fuel, insurance, taxes and parking costs are all included in the price.

The DriveNow service also operates in London, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Berlin, Munich, Cologne, Dusseldorf, Hamburg and Vienna and now has far in excess of 600,000 customers.

“We look back on our five-year success story with pride and great satisfaction. When we launched in 2011, we were just a small start-up team in a single-room office in Munich,” said managing director Nico Gabriel. “Today, we employ well over 100 people at nine sites and have grown to become the leading German carsharing company in terms of customer numbers.”

Co-managing director Sebastian Hofelich, who has also been at DriveNow since day one, added: “We have always focused on growing healthily and sensibly. The upshot of this strategy is that we have already been able to operate profitably in Germany for two years. Our model has proven its worth, and now the expansion continues. We are looking forward to getting started in Brussels, which will now become our 10th city.”