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Formerly | mytaxi |
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Company type | Private |
Industry | Mobility as a service |
Predecessors | mytaxi, Hailo, Clever Taxi, Beat, Kapten |
Founded | 2009 |
Founders | Niclaus Mewes Sven Külper |
Headquarters | , Germany |
Area served | Austria, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Spain, United Kingdom |
Key people | Thomas Zimmermann (CEO) [1] Lennart Zipfel (CFO) [2] |
Services | Vehicle for hire, taxi, carsharing, e-scooter, electric bicycle, e-moped |
Owner | BMW Group and Mercedes-Benz Group (Pending acquisition by Lyft) |
Number of employees | ~1,000 (2025) [3] |
Parent | Your Now |
Divisions | Free Now for Business |
Website | www |
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]
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]
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]