What do you do when you’re a couple of legacy automakers with no real electric vehicle (EV) plans for the future, or one that only sold 55 units of their EV in 2019, and you have a subsidiary ride-hailing service? You go out and purchase 60 EV’s from Tesla.
German publication Sueddeutsche is reporting that FreeNow, which is dubbed as a mobility provider in Germany (formerly Mytaxi), is planning on purchase the Tesla’s to expand its fleet which is currently in over 100 cities.
Related: Las Vegas taxi service ‘Kaptyn’ introducing hundreds of Tesla’s to their fleet
The company was first formed in 2009, and was then purchased by Daimler in 2014. Then in 2019, BMW joined as a partner, and together pledged 1 billion euros to grow the brand, with hopes to overtake Uber in Europe and Latin America.
FreeNow saw impressive growth in 2019, with 20% more passengers hailing a ride compared to the previous year, and the number of drivers increasing to over 28,000, a jump over 27%. More than 39 million passengers have used FreeNow over the years, totalling 300 million trips.
