Stellantis has agreed to sell its stake in car-sharing provider Free2move to Mutares, a Munich-based investment firm. It’s the latest, and possibly final move in the largely unprofitable mobility services adventure that Stellantis and its predecessor companies have been running since 2016. 

The Free2move brand covers not just car-sharing, but also fleet management, subscription, and other mobility products. This sale is only for the car-sharing unit – the rest stays with Stellantis. The car-sharing business that is now being sold, is a free-floating, app-based rental business that allows customers to find, unlock, and drive a vehicle without visiting a rental office. The service is billed by the minute or by the day. 

Geographically diversified

In its own description, Free2move is “one of the most geographically diversified car-sharing platforms on the market”. Operations are concentrated in Germany (Berlin, Munich, Cologne, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Düsseldorf), with smaller presences in Italy (Milan, Rome, Turin), France (Paris), Austria (Vienna), the Netherlands (Amsterdam), and Spain (Madrid). Free2move is also active in Washington DC, but previously also had a presence elsewhere in the US (Denver, Portland, Columbus). 

Mutares, the buyer, is a turnaround specialist. It specialises in buying underperforming or non-core business units, restructuring them, and exiting once they’ve achieved financial stability. Mutares says it will overhaul Free2move’s international fleet management, continue to shift to BEVs, sharpen the focus on both the customer experience,  and on municipal partnerships. 

The financial terms of the sale were not disclosed. The transaction is expected to close by the end of this year.

FaSTLAne 2030

For Stellantis, the decision to sell Free2move “aligns with the strategy set out in the FaSTLAne 2030 plan”. Unveiled by CEO Antonio Filosa in May 2026, that plan calls for focusing investment on “the regions, brands, and technologies that can generate the strongest returns”. 

FaSTLAne 2030 commits Stellantis to pour roughly €60 billion in product investment by 2030, with close to 70% of that money concentrated on just four of its brands (Ram, Jeep, Peugeot, and Fiat), plus the Pro One commercial-vehicle business. 

With this plan, Stellantis hopes to push back against low-cost Chinese competition, and reverse falling market shares in both the US and Europe. Additionally, selling off Free2move frees up management attention that the company would rather spend on this fightback. 

Complicated version

But the sale is not just about executive attention spans. Stellantis has inherited a particularly complicated version of manufacturer-owned car-sharing – a proposition which has rarely proved profitable even in the best of circumstances. 

Free2move was launched by PSA Group (i.e. the now defunct OEM featuring the Peugeot and Citroën brands) in 2016, well before the Stellantis merger. In 2022, Stellantis acquired ShareNow, the car-sharing joint venture that BMW and Daimler had built by merging their respective car-sharing brands, DriveNow and Car2go. Following a failed push for profit, ShareNow had retreated from North America in 2020.  In 2024, Stellantis completed the integration of ShareNow into Free2move, creating a combined platform with more than 10,000 vehicles. 

Less than two years after that integration, Stellantis is now also exiting the car-sharing business. Not coincidentally, the car-sharing market is experiencing a noticeable retreat from the free-floating model. Car-sharing providers are now favouring more controlled, cost-disciplined operating models. 

8% increase

Paradoxically, car-sharing as such seems to be thriving. The 2025 INVERS Mobility Barometer found Europe’s total car-sharing fleet in 2025 exceeded 129,000 vehicles, an 8% increase from 2024. Revenue estimates vary widely, but all point to growth. 

In other words: Stellantis’ retreat doesn’t mean car-sharing is dying. Rather, it means that the free-floating, city-by-city model that requires an automaker to essentially run a rental and logistics business is persistently hard to make profitable. That, it turns out, is easier for smaller, dedicated operators. 

Johannes Laumann, CIO for Mutares, agrees. He described Free2move’s car-sharing business as “a strong, internationally recognized brand with clear potential for operational improvement following an intended carve-out from Stellantis”. In human speak, that becomes: this business can work, just not as a rounding error inside a 14-brand automaker’s balance sheet.

Mid-2010s vision

Mutares’ portfolio contains a number of automotive-adjacent carve-outs. One key example is its 2023 acquisition of Peugeot Motorcycles. In April of this year, it reported a record €4.8 billion transaction pipeline, suggesting more corporate offloading is coming from the automotive sector. 

For automotive in general, this sale is another sign that the mid-2010s vision of OEMs as full-stack mobility providers (owning not just the vehicles, but also the mobility services around them) has not been fulfilled. What remains is narrower and more defensible – Stellantis is keeping its leasing and fleet management services via Leasys, as well as various subscription and licensing arrangements. 

For fleet managers, the sale of Free2move means two things:

In the first place, if your fleet is a customer: check if, how, and when the change of ownership affects your existing contracts, app access, and vehicle availability.  More generally, the sale indicates that certain OEM-owned mobility services may be a fragile category to build a fleet strategy around – so make sure you have a contingency plan. 

Image: Stellantis