FREE NOW sets sights on further growth after sailing through 300million trip marker

FREE NOW achieved platform revenues of more than two billion euros and reached almost 300 million trips as the BMW-Daimler ride-hailing app sets sights on growth.

FREE NOW (formerly mytaxi) is heading for record earnings for 2019, which includes the taxi and ride-hailing services FREE NOW, Beat, Kapten and electric scooter service Hive.

More than 39 million passengers took advantage of the services provided by more than 800,000 affiliated drivers. Growth was also driven in part by the highly successful launch of Beat in Mexico City and Kapten in London, as well as expansion of the FREE NOW car rental service “Ride” in Germany, which allows customers to book a rental car with a licensed driver at a fixed rate. 

The FREE NOW app is part of the successful launch of the YOUR NOW joint ventures in February 2019.

Almost 90 million people currently use the joint ventures’ mobility services for car-sharing, ride-hailing, parking, charging and multimodal platforms, which are offered in over 1,300 cities worldwide. 

The shareholders are now setting course for YOUR NOW’s next phase of expansion, which will be focused on profitable growth. The BMW-Daimler lead firm says it will continue to tailor to customer needs and clustered into three pillars:

• FREE NOW

• SHARE NOW

• PARK NOW and CHARGE NOW

The introduction of a new umbrella organisation, effective 1 January 2020, will support efficient management of these three ‘pillars’. 

Rainer Feurer, Senior Vice President Investment of BMW Group, said: “As a shareholder, we firmly believe that combining the services into three pillars will strengthen the joint ventures’ impact and focus in a highly competitive, fast-growing environment. Both shareholders are backing the YOUR NOW business model and are determined to develop the joint ventures into a leading player in the mobility market.”

Franz Reiner, CEO of Daimler Mobility AG, said: “We are setting the course for the YOUR NOW joint ventures to achieve sustainable profitability. At the same time, partnerships are increasingly important to success in the marketplace and, in this respect, we are open to further stepping up growth.” 

Image credit: Daimler