BMW Group, Mercedes-Benz Mobility to focus on Free Now and Charge Now JV

Share Now, BMW Group and Mercedes-Benz Mobility’s car-sharing joining venture, has been bought by automotive conglomerate Stellantis. The three companies have signed an agreement recently, allowing Stellantis to put its mobility subsidiary Free2move in a vantage point to expand its European operations through the said acquisition.

“Integrating Share Now’s strong position in major European cities will allow our customers to gain greater access to a wider range of services to satisfy their varied mobility needs. Equally important, this acquisition will also accelerate our profitable growth. We are now a step closer to achieving our goal of expanding Free2move’s worldwide presence to 15 million active users by 2030,” said Free2move CEO Brigitte Courtehoux.

That said, BMW Group and Mercedes-Benz Mobility are realigning their joint venture and will concentrate on Free Now and Charge Now, joint ventures that the companies see as two central business areas with high growth potential.

“We are proud to have founded the free-floating car-sharing segment with car2go. Although Mercedes-Benz will focus more strongly on its core business in the luxury segment, car sharing will remain an important part of urban mobility and an essential element in the mobility offer at Free Now. With Free Now and Charge Now, we are focusing on two growth segments that will continue to offer our customers the entire range of mobility services in the future and support the expansion of electric mobility,” said Mercedes-Benz Mobility Director of Strategy and Investments Gero Götzenberger.

“The mobility joint ventures have been pioneers in Europe — Free Now and Charge Now have been very successful in building a software platform for as many players as possible in their respective segments. With the apps of Free Now and Charge Now, we want to provide our customers with a comprehensive and wide range of digital services. The new orientation enables us to scale our activities faster and thus to achieve further profitable growth in the shortest possible time,” added BMW Group Head of Corporate Investments Rainer Feurer.

Free Now is a pioneer of multimodal mobility with its digital Mobility-as-a-Service platform. On the other hand, Charge Now is a market leader in digital services offering EV owners a range of solutions from comprehensive access to charging infrastructure to complete billing.

In the first quarter of 2022, both mobility joint ventures have consistently developed their products and involved other partners.

Photos from BMW Group

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