BMW & Daimler’s Free Now add Teslas to fleets

BMW and Daimler’s ride-hailing operator Free Now (formerly MyTaxi) is expanding its ride-hailing fleet in Hamburg with an initial 60 Tesla vehicles. The ride-sharing service wants to boost its expansion into other cities in Germany.

The German carmakers’ plans were revealed in local media reports. Free Now is a ride-hailing service established in Europe and Latin America that can be used to organise trips by taxi with private rental car drivers, or electric scooters via an app. The service provider is one of several mobility services that BMW and Daimler merged at the beginning of last year. In the course of the merger, MyTaxi was also renamed Free Now.

The Teslas will be used from the end of March. However, the start could also be postponed to the second quarter, according to company headquarters in Hamburg. The service does not procure the Tesla electric cars itself. “We will continue to be a ride-hailing operator,” says Free Now, explaining that the company is in close cooperation with the companies that order these vehicles.

According to its own statements, Free Now achieves a worldwide turnover of two billion euros as a platform. Free Now offers the classic taxi business in 25 German cities, ride-hailing in six cities. The latter has been used 1.3 million times. The  German national newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung also reports that the service carried 20 per cent more passengers in Germany last year compared to 2018. At the same time, the number of drivers rose by 27 per cent to more than 28,000.

sueddeutsche.de (in German), electrek.co