The car manufacturers Mercedes Benz and BMW Sell your taxi app to the US driving agent Lyft. The purchase price was around 175 million euros in cash, Freenow announced on Wednesday. The completion of the transaction, provided the authorities are approved, is expected for the second half of 2025.
In 2019, BMW and Mercedes founded a joint venture for mobility services with joint ventures, which also includes Freenow. The company was originally launched as a start-up in Hamburg under the name MyTaxi. In the meantime, the company also conveyed trips to rental car companies on a large scale. Freenow not only competed with traditional taxi centers, but also stood in competition with platforms such as Uber or Bolt. In view of the lack of success, the company withdrew from the controversial business with the rental car fleets in April 2024. Freenow then reached the profit zone last autumn. The taxi app is available in nine European countries and more than 150 cities.
Even with BMW and Mercedes, things did not go as planned. The two carmakers have now separated from a large part of the offers of their joint venture, including the Car sharing offer Shareow, the parking service provider Parkrnow and the timetable and ticket provider ReachNow. What is left in the joint venture is the Chargenow electric car charging service, where the oil company Bp participated. That Freenow is also on the sales list, Had already reported the Manager Magazin at the end of March.
Even then, Lyft was one of the favorite buyers.
In view of the superiority of the rival Uber, the US group is looking for new sources of sales on the home market. By buying Freenow, the company is in the European market. Lyft promises to increase the annual gross books by around one billion euros. According to your own statements, Freenow is the greatest purchase of Lyft outside of North America to date.
Freenow boss Thomas Zimmermann said that Lyft’s strong customer orientation complements with the many years of experience of his company in the taxi industry. The cooperation is about bundle the strengths, learning and scaling from each other, which works best. Mercedes and BMW hired the investment bank Lazard as a consultant, Lyft worked with Guggenheim Securities.