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Free Now (service)
Mobility provider with ride-hailing service and business travel management platform From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Free Now is a mobility-as-a-service provider headquartered in Hamburg, Germany. It operates a mobile app that allows users to book taxis, private hire vehicles and various micromobility options such as e-scooters, e-bikes, e-mopeds and carsharing services. The company was established in its current form as part of a 2019 joint venture between the BMW Group and Mercedes-Benz Group.[4]
On April 16, 2025, the American ride-hailing company Lyft announced it had entered a definitive agreement to acquire Free Now for approximately €175 million. The transaction is expected to close in the second half of 2025, subject to regulatory approvals. Upon completion, the acquisition will mark Lyft's primary expansion into Europe.[1] Free Now operates in over 150 cities across nine European countries.[5]
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Free Now's origins trace back to the founding of mytaxi in 2009 by German entrepreneurs Niclaus Mewes and Sven Külper.[6] The legal entity, Intelligent Apps GmbH, was also established that year.
In September 2014, Daimler AG (now Mercedes-Benz Group) acquired Intelligent Apps, entering the ride-hailing market.[7] In 2016, Daimler acquired Hailo, a British taxi-hailing app founded in 2011. This followed by a rebrand to mytaxi, which created a large app-based licensed taxi operator in Europe.[6] Over the following years, mytaxi expanded by acquiring companies like Beat (formerly Taxibeat) in Greece in February 2017 and Clever Taxi in Romania in June 2017.[8][9]
A significant restructuring occurred in February 2019 when Daimler and BMW announced a €1 billion mobility joint venture called Your Now, combining their various mobility services.[10] This new parent company consolidated their various services, including the car-sharing platform Share Now, the multimodal app Reach Now, Park Now and Charge Now.[4] As part of this, mytaxi was rebranded to Free Now on July 1, 2019.[4]
The joint venture also operated its own e-scooter brand, Hive, which was discontinued by mid-2020 as the company shifted its strategy to partner with third-party operators instead.[11]
The platform's consolidation under the new branding continued, with other services such as France's Kapten being fully integrated into the Free Now platform on 2 December 2020.[12]
In January 2021, Free Now announced it would allocate over €100 million in resources over the subsequent five years to promote the electrification of its vehicle fleet across Europe.[13]
In 2022, following a strategic review to focus on its core markets, Free Now withdrew from several countries, including Portugal, Romania and Sweden.[14][15][16]
On April 16, 2025, Lyft announced its acquisition of Free Now for approximately €175 million. Free Now's CEO, Thomas Zimmermann, stated that the company would continue its operations and that joining with Lyft marked "the beginning of an ambitious new phase."[1] The deal is slated for completion in the latter half of 2025.[5]
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Services
Free Now functions as a multi-mobility platform, aggregating various transportation options within a single app. Its core services are taxi and private hire vehicle (PHV) booking. It has also expanded to include micromobility services by integrating partners. Users can book e-scooters from companies like Dott, Tier and Voi, e-mopeds from Emmy, Felyx and Cooltra, and e-bikes. The platform also offers access to carsharing services through partners such as Share Now and Sixt.[17]
The company also operates Freenow for Business, a corporate travel management platform that provides companies with a centralized system for booking and managing employee ground transportation.[18]
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