El registro de asignaciones tiene cuatro dueños y ninguno responde

Mobility LabJorge Aguilar SalasPublicada 2026-09-20

Declaración de interés. El autor es cofundador de Nexio Fleet, una empresa que opera en fleet compliance, el mismo espacio que describe esta nota, y antes trabajó en Bolt y en Bliq, que operan en el mercado alemán de vehículos de alquiler con conductor que esta nota examina. Cada afirmación se apoya en una fuente pública que el lector puede abrir. La nota se sostendría igual si Nexio no existiera.

Esta nota todavía no está revisada por completo en español. Abajo están el resumen y la conclusión del autor; la nota completa está disponible en su idioma original. Leer la nota completa en inglés

La ley alemana obliga al vehículo de alquiler con conductor a volver a su sede después de cada viaje, salvo que reciba un encargo nuevo antes o durante el trayecto. La obligación dice lo mismo desde 1983; lo que ha cambiado es qué la resuelve. Que una flota pueda demostrar que cumplió depende hoy del log del dispatch, que es a la vez la herramienta de optimización de la plataforma, el expediente del regulador y, en una sentencia del Tribunal Supremo Federal de 2026, la prueba del competidor. En un expediente bávaro del mismo año, la parte que faltaba de ese registro bastó para revocar la licencia de un operador, en una resolución cautelar recurrida. Seguir ese registro por cuatro pares de manos muestra un proceso en el que quien decide no responde, quien responde no puede vigilar, quien genera el dato no lo convierte en expediente, y quien lo convierte lo hace a mano sobre números ajenos.

La visión del operador

Lo que me llama la atención de este caso es la distancia que recorre el riesgo desde la decisión. En la calle decide el conductor; el § 25 responde poniendo en juego la licencia del operador. En medio quedan una plataforma que genera buena parte de los datos y una autoridad que decide qué quiere ver cuando algo se investiga. Es mi lectura del caso, no un hallazgo suyo: nada aquí mide qué arriesga cada actor.

Quien dirige una flota no puede revisar cada viaje a mano: una autoridad necesitó un análisis semiautomático para valorar 210 viajes de quince vehículos en un solo día. Lo primero que hace falta es un sitio donde la operación pueda reconstruirse: cuándo terminó un viaje, si existía un encargo siguiente, qué hizo después el vehículo. No más datos. Visibilidad. Y encima de eso, un sistema que saque a la superficie las excepciones, las comunique mientras todavía pueden corregirse, documente la respuesta y escale cuando tenga que decidir una persona.

Lo que queda abierto es el papel de las plataformas. Si una plataforma genera información que después se convierte en prueba mientras el deber de llevar el registro es del operador, es razonable preguntar a qué debería poder acceder un operador, durante cuánto tiempo y en qué formato, y qué pasa cuando los datos dejan de llegar. Ninguna fuente de esta nota establece una obligación así para la plataforma. Y en sentido contrario, dos autoridades han convertido el mismo deber en dos auditorías distintas, una de ellas con un umbral de 250 metros que no está en la ley federal. Se espera que el operador controle una operación que ocurre en parte dentro de sistemas que no controla.

Un límite sobre dónde estoy yo. Lo que he visto de primera mano es Berlín y Brandeburgo, y nada de esta nota se apoya en ello: el argumento está construido sobre normas, expedientes judiciales y respuestas oficiales que cualquiera puede abrir. Eso le cuesta a la nota una cosa concreta: no puedo contarte cómo es la práctica de auditoría en los distritos donde no he trabajado, y esta nota sostiene que es justo en la práctica donde vive la variación.

No puedes controlar a cada conductor. No puedes controlar la plataforma. No puedes controlar la regulación. Lo que sí puedes controlar es cómo está diseñada la operación alrededor de esos límites: qué se hace visible, qué se detecta, qué se comunica, qué se documenta y cuándo tiene que intervenir una persona.

Fuentes, con evaluación

1. Personenbeförderungsgesetz § 49 — Verkehr mit Mietomnibussen und mit Mietwagen. Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 2021-08.Norma o resoluciónEvaluación: The statute itself: after completing a trip a Mietwagen must return to its base unless a new order arrived before departure or during the trip, orders may only be executed if received at the base, and the record may be kept electronically including via an app-based system. This is the rule, not its enforcement: it does not settle how local authorities read 'during the trip' or what happens in practice when an order lands mid-route.
2. Rückkehrgebot für Mietwagen, BVerfGE 81, 70 (1 BvL 14/85, 1 BvR 1276/84). Bundesverfassungsgericht, Erster Senat, 1989-11.Norma o resoluciónEvaluación: Holds the return obligation compatible with the constitution only as construed in its reasons, and imposes the reading that a rental car may accept radio-dispatched orders even during the return leg and break off that return to serve them, so the window stays open all the way back. It also states the purpose is not the return itself but preventing taxi-like standing, and that merely remaining parked already indicates a breach. Its technical premise is radio dispatch in 1989, so it does not settle what counts as 'during the trip' inside an automated assignment system. It is also the source for this note's dates: the decision records that the Fifth Act amending the Passenger Transport Act of 25 February 1983 (BGBl. I p. 196) appeared in issue 8 of the 1983 Bundesgesetzblatt Part I, whose stated day of issue is 1 March 1983, and that the act entered into force on 1 October 1983.
3. Urteil vom 3. Juni 2026, I ZR 123/25 (ECLI:DE:BGH:2026:030626UIZR123.25.0). Bundesgerichtshof, I. Zivilsenat, 2026-06.Norma o resoluciónEvaluación: The full judgment, not the press release. It records that at 10:13 a board member of the plaintiff cooperative who was watching the car placed a test order through Uber, that it was accepted at once, and that the confirmation named the defendant as the carrier, which is what ties the waiting vehicle to the company sued. It confirms the injunction for breach of the return obligation and holds that in a purely national case the duty is not measured against EU law, while stating that the appeal court's reasoning on freedom of establishment does not survive review. It decides this dispute on these facts: it does not establish how often the duty is breached, and it leaves open how the duty would fare in a case with a cross-border element.
4. Beschluss AN 10 S 26.536 — Widerruf der Mietwagengenehmigung wegen systematischer Verstöße gegen Rückkehr-, Vermittlungs- und Mitwirkungspflichten. Verwaltungsgericht Ansbach, 10. Kammer, 2026-07.Norma o resoluciónEvaluación: Attributes breaches committed by individual drivers to the operating company's managing director unless they would have occurred even with adequate supervision and organisation, and records how the authority counted them: 67 breaches across 210 assessable trips by fifteen vehicles on one day, semi-automated from the trip data supplied, treating the duty as met within 250 metres of the base. What lost the operator its licence was failing to report the return timestamp and the follow-on order identifier, not the return itself, and the evidential consequences of missing data fell on the operator. It is interim relief on a summary review and is under appeal in a decision that is not published, so it cannot be cited as settled law.
5. Personenbeförderungsgesetz § 61 (Ordnungswidrigkeiten) und § 25 (Widerruf der Genehmigung). Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 2021-08.Norma o resoluciónEvaluación: Section 61(1)(3)(h) makes breaching the rental-car rules of section 49(4) an administrative offence, worded against whoever breaches it intentionally or negligently rather than against a named role, while section 25(1) obliges the authority to revoke the licence and states that the operator's required reliability lapses where obligations are breached in his undertaking despite written warning. Together they establish that the severe consequence attaches to the operator rather than the driver; they are the provisions themselves and do not settle who is liable in a concrete case.
6. Antwort auf die Schriftliche Anfrage Nr. 19/16179: Konzessionierung im Berliner Mietwagengewerbe (II). Senatsverwaltung für Mobilität, Verkehr, Klimaschutz und Umwelt, Berlin, 2023-08.Norma o resoluciónEvaluación: Official Senate answer documenting how Berlin enforces the return obligation: operators using app-based dispatch must hand over the ride data as unaltered original electronic files for every licensed vehicle, and the authority checks compliance with the return obligation and shift lengths against those records, by sampling or where discrepancies are obvious. It also states that results of these audits and the grounds for licence revocations are not recorded statistically and that the Senate does not intend to start recording them. It covers Berlin in 2023 and its audit counts are aggregated across taxi, private hire and patient transport, so it cannot quantify how often the obligation is actually breached.
7. A timely match for ride-hailing and ride-pooling services using a deep reinforcement learning approach. Bao, Y.; Gao, J.; He, J.; Oliehoek, F. A.; Cats, O., 2026-01.Investigación revisada por paresEvaluación: Models when a platform should trigger matching, comparing learned timing against fixed-interval batching and first dispatch on a simulator calibrated with New York trip records: reported gains are 3.1% less waiting in ride-hailing and 20.1% in pooling. It is calibrated simulation, not a deployed system, and it optimises waiting and detour only. It says nothing about legal constraints on when a vehicle may take the next order, which is what this note argues about.
8. Übersicht über die Anzahl der konzessionierten Unternehmen und Fahrzeuge im Gelegenheitsverkehr mit Taxen und Mietwagen. Landesamt für Bürger- und Ordnungsangelegenheiten Berlin, 2026-03.Estadística oficialEvaluación: Monthly count of licensed companies and vehicles in Berlin: between March 2025 and March 2026 licensed taxi vehicles rose from 5,680 to 6,941 while Mietwagen vehicles fell from 2,335 to 1,656 and Mietwagen companies from 436 to 304. It counts licences, not activity or trips, and it states no cause whatsoever: reading the decline as market contraction or as administrative enforcement would be an inference this table does not support.
9. Personenverkehr — amtliche Statistik. Statistisches Bundesamt (Destatis), 2026-09.Estadística oficialEvaluación: Cited for an absence: German official passenger-transport statistics cover rail, tram and bus, and do not include taxi or Mietwagen, which is why national figures for the sector come from trade associations or data aggregators instead. It establishes that this particular statistic excludes the sector; it does not establish that no German official data on the trade exists through other collections such as service or VAT statistics.
10. Transformation des Taxi- und Mietwagengewerbes zur Emissionsfreiheit. Tschinibaew, I.; Grote, R.; Kwella, B.; Maiwald, F.; Pontow, J.; Schrab, K.; Schweppenhäuser, M.; Protzmann, R.; Massow, K.; Radusch, I. (Fraunhofer FOKUS), 2024-05.Informe sectorialEvaluación: Commissioned by wirfahren, the operators' association whose speaker is the managing director of SafeDriver Group, the group whose Ennoo subsidiary took on the role of Uber's general contractor in Germany, and it is the origin of the figures used to argue against the return obligation. Read in the original it reports 28% of distance caused by the obligation and 194,064 kilometres a day for Berlin, not the 30% and 200,000 that circulate in press releases. Its simulation covers 50 vehicles on two typical days extrapolated to the city fleet, it attributes the 28% to a study it describes as still unpublished, and its counterfactual assumes drivers wait for the next order at the drop-off point, which is the very conduct the statute forbids.
11. Registereintrag Bundesverband wirfahren, R003822. Lobbyregister beim Deutschen Bundestag, 2026-08.Norma o resoluciónEvaluación: Official lobby-register entry naming Thomas Mohnke as speaker of the association and declaring annual interest-representation spending of 1 to 10,000 euros with 0.20 full-time equivalents, funded by economic activity and not exercised on behalf of third parties. Neither Uber nor SafeDriver appears anywhere in the entry, so it establishes who speaks for the association and what it declares, and cannot by itself establish the commercial relationship that has to be documented elsewhere.
12. Impressum / Legal notice. SafeDriver Group GmbH, 2026-09.Documento primario de empresaEvaluación: The company's own legal notice, naming Thomas Mohnke as managing director of SafeDriver Group GmbH, registered at HRB 188652 B, Amtsgericht Berlin Charlottenburg, together with four further group companies at the same Berlin address. It establishes who runs the company and its register details, and nothing more: the notice does not mention Uber anywhere, so the contractual relationship has to be established from another source.
13. Safedriver könnte der große Profiteur des Uber-Streits werden. Kapalschinski, C., Handelsblatt, 2019-12.PrensaEvaluación: General business press, not trade press, reporting that the Ennoo subsidiary took on the role of nationwide general contractor between Uber and other operators, that SafeDriver formally sets the prices using Uber's technology, and that operators who previously drove for Uber became subcontractors of SafeDriver Ennoo. It dates from December 2019, so it supports how the structure was set up and identifies the founder, but it cannot show that the arrangement still stands today.
14. FAZ-Interview mit Thomas Mohnke: Wie der deutsche Flickenteppich den Mietwagenmarkt lähmt. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, interview with Thomas Mohnke (wirfahren), 2025-03.PrensaEvaluación: The industry's own account of enforcement: the head of the operators' association states that road traffic offices checking licences do verify compliance with the return obligation and that every operator keeps an order book recording in real time where vehicles are. It is a claim by an interested party, consulted in the reproduction hosted on that party's own website because the newspaper original is paywalled, and the 30% it cites is higher than the 28% in the study it commissioned.
15. Mit Uber Mietwagenunternehmer in Deutschland werden. Uber Germany, 2026-09.Material de proveedorEvaluación: Cited for an absence: the platform's own page addressed to the operators who carry the statutory record-keeping duty describes signup, vehicle requirements and the supplier portal, and says nothing about the return obligation, the order book, what data the platform hands over, or any app feature supporting compliance. Being commercial copy, its silence cannot show that no such feature exists or that no data is provided, since the Ansbach file is built on platform data; it shows only that the platform does not document that role where it speaks to those who bear the duty.

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