FREE NOW is a mobility service provider headquartered in

Hamburg (male), (female) en, Hamburger(s), Hamburgian(s) , timezone1 = Central (CET) , utc_offset1 = +1 , timezone1_DST = Central (CEST) , utc_offset1_DST = +2 , postal ...

, Germany. FREE NOW was formed in February 2019 from a

joint venture A joint venture (JV) is a business entity created by two or more parties, generally characterized by shared ownership, shared returns and risks, and shared governance. Companies typically pursue joint ventures for one of four reasons: to acces ...

between BMW and

Daimler Mobility Mercedes-Benz Mobility AG (formerly Daimler Financial Services and Daimler Mobility) is the global financial and mobility services provider of the Mercedes-Benz Group. The company finances, leases and insures Daimler Group passenger cars and com ...

. Thomas Zimmermann is CEO of the FREE NOW Group. The FREE NOW Group is the

vehicle for hire A vehicle for hire is a vehicle providing private transport or shared transport for a fee, in which passengers are generally free to choose their points or approximate points of origin and destination, unlike public transport, and which they ...

vertical of this joint venture; other services within the vertical include

Beat Beat, beats or beating may refer to: Common uses * Patrol, or beat, a group of personnel assigned to monitor a specific area ** Beat (police), the territory that a police officer patrols ** Gay beat, an area frequented by gay men * Battery ( ...

and formerly Clever, Hive and Kapten, which rebranded to FREE NOW. FREE NOW is one of the largest

companies in Europe. As Mobility-as-a-Service platform FREE NOW aggregates numerous mobility brands and vehicle options to make them bookable within one app. Next to taxi and PHV, FREE NOW offer car sharing and further micro-mobility options such as e-scooters, e-mopeds, and e-bikes with its partners TIER, VOI, EMMY, Cooltra, Miles, SHARE NOW, DOTT, felyx and SIXT. FREE NOW is serving over 150 European cities including

Madrid Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the second-largest city in the European Union (EU), and ...

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

Dublin Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of th ...

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

Milan Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city h ...

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus (legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

and

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

. FREE NOW customer care and support teams operate from Dublin, Hamburg,

, and

Warsaw Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officia ...

among other European cities. The UK General Manager is Mariusz Zabrocki, and the Country Manager in Ireland is Niall Carson.

History

mytaxi was founded in 2009 by German entrepreneurs Niclaus Mewes and Sven Külper. Later that year, the pair founded the legal entity behind mytaxi, Intelligent Apps. In September 2014, Daimler acquired mytaxi's parent company, Intelligent Apps, entering the

market.

In 2016, the German e-hailing app mytaxi merged with Hailo. Founded in London in 2011, Hailo was a British technology platform that matched taxi drivers and passengers through its

mobile phone application A mobile application or app is a computer program or software application designed to run on a mobile device such as a phone, tablet, or watch. Mobile applications often stand in contrast to desktop applications which are designed to run on d ...

. The merger between mytaxi and Hailo made mytaxi the largest licensed taxi e-hailing operator. Following regulatory approval in February 2019, Daimler and BMW announced the €1bn mobility joint-venture; the parent company is known as Your Now which also operates

Share Now Share Now GmbH is a German carsharing company, formed from the merger of Car2Go and DriveNow. Since 2022, it is a subsidiary of the Free2Move division of multinational automaker Stellantis providing carsharing services in urban areas in Europe, ...

ReachNow ReachNow was a carsharing service operated by BMW Group in Seattle, Portland, and Brooklyn. It launched in 2016 and it shut down its services in Seattle and Portland on July 17, 2019. It used a mobile app for car reservations and operated a fl ...

, Park Now and Charge Now. On 1 July 2019, myTaxi was rebranded to FREE NOW and has transformed from a taxi app into a fully integrated multi-mobility platform. In January 2021, FREE NOW announced a €6 million investment to fund its 14,000 drivers in Ireland with home charging kits to encourage them to switch to electric vehicles. Overall, FREE NOW wants to allocate more than EUR 100 million of resources in the coming five years to push the electrification of its rides across Europe.

References

External links

* {{Sharing economy German companies established in 2016 Taxis Ridesharing companies of Germany Transport companies established in 2016