Stellantis acquired ShareNow<\/a>, 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.\u00a0 \tIn 2024, Stellantis completed the integration of ShareNow into Free2move, creating a combined platform with more than 10,000 vehicles.\u00a0 <\/p>\nLess 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
8% increase <\/p>\n
Paradoxically, car-sharing as such seems to be thriving. The 2025 INVERS Mobility Barometer found Europe\u2019s total car-sharing fleet in 2025 exceeded 129,000 vehicles, an 8% increase from 2024. Revenue estimates vary widely, but all point to growth.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In other words: Stellantis\u2019 retreat doesn\u2019t 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Johannes Laumann, CIO for Mutares, agrees. He described Free2move\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
Mid-2010s vision <\/p>\n
Mutares\u2019 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 \u20ac4.8 billion transaction pipeline, suggesting more corporate offloading is coming from the automotive sector.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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 \u2013 Stellantis is keeping its leasing and fleet management services via Leasys, as well as various subscription and licensing arrangements.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For fleet managers, the sale of Free2move means two things:<\/p>\n
\tIn 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.\u00a0 \tMore generally, the sale indicates that certain OEM-owned mobility services may be a fragile category to build a fleet strategy around \u2013 so make sure you have a contingency plan.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Image: Stellantis<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stellantis has agreed to sell its stake in car-sharing provider Free2move to Mutares, a Munich-based investment firm. It\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37306,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[24204,23044,24202,24206,22322,24205,24203,103],"class_list":["post-37305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-stellantis","tag-car2go","tag-carsharing","tag-drivenow","tag-free-flowing","tag-free2move","tag-shared-mobility","tag-sharenow","tag-stellantis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37305"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37305\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}