#72 Cornelius Kiermasch, Head of Shared Mobility, Deutsche Bahn Connect

In this episode of the Wunder Mobility Podcast, Gunnar Froh speaks with Cornelius Kiermasch, Head of Shared Mobility at Deutsche Bahn Connect. He has run the business since 2019: Call a Bike, in roughly 80 German cities with about a million registered users, and Flinkster, station-based car sharing with more than 800 stations, 15+ partner operators and service into the Netherlands, Switzerland and Austria. Before Deutsche Bahn he built car2go's B2B arm and worked on CASE product strategy at Daimler. He started his career in M&A and insurance due diligence at Marsh.

The conversation opens with the turnaround, in his own numbers. Customer service cost down 90%, a team of more than 70 people wound down, Flinkster brought to profitability, and Call a Bike growing rides double digit at the same time. Cornelius explains which of those moves were structural and which were simply overdue, and what running a shared mobility business inside a state-owned rail operator allows that a venture-funded operator cannot copy.

From there they turn to the car2go years. Cornelius built car2go's B2B business and left before free-floating car sharing in Germany was largely sold off, so he compares what he saw from inside that model with the station-based one he runs today. They also get into how German cities buy bike sharing: ten-year contracts with fixed fleet sizes, the funding squeeze created by a 63 euro Deutschlandticket, and why the Dutch OV-fiets is the model he would copy.

The episode closes on distribution and growth. Call a Bike is now integrated directly into DB Navigator, with no separate app and no separate registration, which changes who owns the customer relationship. And with Deutsche Bahn's own CEO on record that first and last mile services continue only if they make money, Cornelius is direct about where the next growth has to come from.