Industry | Mobility-as-a-Service |
---|---|
Predecessors | mytaxi, Hailo, Clever Taxi |
Headquarters | , Germany |
Area served | Germany, UK, Ireland, Spain, Italy, Poland, France, Austria and Greece |
Key people | Thomas Zimmermann (CEO) [1] |
Products | Vehicle for hire, mobile commerce network |
Services | Mobility as a service |
Owner | BMW Group and Mercedes-Benz Group |
Number of employees | 1850+ (2022) |
Website | free-now |
FREENOW is a mobility service provider headquartered in Hamburg, Germany. FREENOW was formed in February 2019 from a joint venture between BMW and Daimler Mobility. Thomas Zimmermann is CEO of the FREENOW Group. [2]
The FREENOW Group is the vehicle for hire vertical of this joint venture; other services within the vertical include Beat and formerly Clever, Hive and Kapten, which rebranded to FREENOW. [2] FREENOW is one of the largest vehicle for hire companies in Europe. [3] As Mobility-as-a-Service platform FREENOW aggregates numerous mobility brands and vehicle options to make them bookable within one app. Next to taxi and PHV, FREENOW offer car sharing and further micro-mobility options such as eScooters, eMopeds, and eBikes with its partners TIER, VOI, EMMY, Cooltra, Miles, SHARE NOW, DOTT, felyx and SIXT.
FREENOW serves over 150 European cities including Barcelona, Berlin, Dublin, Paris, Milan, Rome and London. FREENOW customer care and support teams operate from Dublin, Hamburg, Madrid, and Warsaw among other European cities.
The UK General Manager is Mariusz Zabrocki, and the Country Manager in Ireland is Niall Carson. [4] [5]
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 vehicle for hire market. [6]
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. The merger between mytaxi and Hailo made mytaxi the largest licensed taxi e-hailing operator. [7]
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, ReachNow, Park Now and CHARGE NOW. [8] On 1 July 2019, myTaxi was rebranded to FREENOW and has transformed from a taxi app into a fully integrated multi-mobility platform.
In January 2021, FREENOW 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. [9] Overall, FREENOW wants to allocate more than EUR 100 million of resources in the coming five years to push the electrification of its rides across Europe. [10]
The Mercedes-Benz Group AG is a German multinational automotive corporation headquartered in Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is one of the world's leading car manufacturers. Daimler-Benz was formed with the merger of Benz & Cie., the world's oldest car company, and Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft in 1926. The company was renamed DaimlerChrysler upon the acquisition of American automobile manufacturer Chrysler Corporation in 1998, and was again renamed Daimler AG upon divestment of Chrysler in 2007. In 2021, Daimler AG was the second-largest German automaker and the sixth-largest worldwide by production. In February 2022, Daimler was renamed Mercedes-Benz Group as part of a transaction that spun-off its commercial vehicle segment as an independent company, Daimler Truck.
Sixt SE is an international mobility service provider with about 2,000 locations in more than 100 countries. Sixt SE acts as a parent and holding company of the Sixt Group, which is internationally active in the business areas of vehicle rental, car sharing, ride-hailing, and subscription.
Here Technologies is a Dutch multinational group specialized in mapping technologies, location data and related automotive services to individuals and companies. It is majority-owned by a consortium of German automotive companies and American semiconductor company Intel whilst other companies also own minority stakes. Its roots date back to U.S.-based Navteq in 1985, which was acquired by Finland-based Nokia in 2007. Here is currently based in The Netherlands.
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, and formerly in North America. It has over four million registered members and a fleet of over 14,000 vehicles in 18 cities across Europe.
Gett, previously known as GetTaxi, is an Israeli B2B Ground Transportation Management (GTM) platform and marketplace, and B2C ride-hailing app headquartered in London, and owned by GT GetTaxi (UK) Limited
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Mobileye Global Inc. is an Israeli autonomous driving company. It is developing self-driving technologies and advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) including cameras, computer chips, and software. Mobileye was acquired by Intel in 2017 and went public again in 2022.
Summon was a vehicle for hire company operating in portions of Silicon Valley. The company was shut down in November 2014.
Hailo was a British technology platform that matched taxi drivers and passengers through its mobile phone application. Founded in London in 2011, the Hailo taxi service was available in 16 cities.
A ridesharing company, ride-hailing service, is a company that, via websites and mobile apps, matches passengers with drivers of vehicles for hire that, unlike taxis, cannot legally be hailed from the street.
Easy Taxi is a mobile app for taxi hailing available in 30 countries. The app allows users to book a taxi and track it in real time. The same iOS, Android, or Windows Phone app can be used in all places in which the partner taxis operate. Easy Taxi was founded in 2011 in Brazil and has since expanded globally, covering the network of 30 countries and more than 420 cities. As of December 2014, the company reported it reached the number of 17 million users and more than 400,000 taxi drivers are affiliated with an Easy Taxi network.
Blacklane GmbH is a German company based in Berlin which provides a chauffeur portal connecting people to professional chauffeurs via their mobile app, website and hotline. The company offers a prebooking service at a fixed rate and doesn't own its own fleet, but works with local chauffeur companies in each of its cities. Airport pickups include one hour of free waiting time, while all non-airport pickups include 15 minutes. Guests can also edit or cancel their bookings for free up to one hour before a one-way transfer.
A robotaxi, also known as robot taxi, robo-taxi, self-driving taxi or driverless taxi, is an autonomous car operated for a ridesharing company.
Bolt is an Estonian mobility company that offers ride-hailing, micromobility rental, food and grocery delivery, and carsharing services. The company is headquartered in Tallinn and operates in over 500 cities in more than 45 countries in Europe, Africa, Western Asia and Latin America. The company has more than 150 million customers and more than 3 million driver and courier partners. The company has plans for an initial public offering in 2025.
Didi Chuxing Technology Company is a Chinese vehicle for hire company headquartered in Beijing with over 550 million users and tens of millions of drivers. The company provides app-based transportation services, including taxi hailing, private car hailing, social ride-sharing, and bike sharing; on-demand delivery services; and automobile services, including sales, leasing, financing, maintenance, fleet operation, electric vehicle charging, and co-development of vehicles with automakers. The company is a subsidiary of Xiaoju Kuaizhi Inc.
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 fleet of over 1,000 vehicles. It was one of three car-sharing services in the city of Seattle, competing with car2go and Zipcar. ReachNow was similar to another BMW Group service DriveNow, but was focused on North American cities starting with Seattle. Unlike DriveNow which is a joint-venture with Sixt, ReachNow is a fully owned BMW subsidiary, with RideCell rather than Sixt, providing the technology platform.
Cabify is a multi-mobility platform for people and objects that offers various alternatives to reduce urban travel in private cars. The company operates in Spain and Hispanic America. Between 2016 and 2019, it also operated in Portugal and between 2016 and 2021 in Brazil.
Beat operates a taxi and ride-hailing mobile app for smartphones and other mobile devices. Beat's headquarters are located in Athens, Greece. About 90 percent of the company’s ride-booking activity is in Latin America, where more than 250,000 drivers work with the app.
Helbiz, Inc. is an Italian-American intra-urban transportation company headquartered in New York City with an aim to solve the first mile/last mile transportation problem of high-traffic urban areas around the world.
ParkMobile is a mobile and web app providing parking payments in North America. Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, users can pay for on-street and off-street parking via app on their smartphone, web browser, or through calling a phone number. ParkMobile also offers parking reservations at stadiums or venues for concerts and sporting events, and in metro area garages.