BMW and Mercedes-Benz sell car-sharing joint venture

BMW and Mercedes-Benz have agreed to sell their joint car-sharing venture Share Now to Stellantis, a company formed last year through a merger of Fiat Chrysler and Peugeot maker PSA.

The German premium carmakers said they want to focus on the software part of their mobility cooperation, which consists of the booking app Free Now and charging app Charge Now, and did not disclose further details of the sale.

Stellantis said the deal will add 14 major European cities and 10,000 vehicles to its own car-sharing business Free2move’s existing fleet of 2,500, and more than 3.4 million customers to its 2 million users.

Share Now was created in 2019 by merging Daimler‘s car sharing service car2go with BMW‘s DriveNow. The carmakers hailed the joint venture as a “gamechanger” in shared mobility, but struggled to make money.

Both car2go and DriveNow originally bet heavily on electric cars, but their number in the Share Now fleet was reduced in recent years.

In contrast, VW‘s car-sharing service WeShare has made emission-free mobility a central pillar of its strategy by exclusively offering VW’s fully electric models ID.3 and ID.4 in Berlin and Hamburg.

This article was first published on Clean Energy Wire.