Stellantis faces tough task to be 'Amazon of mobility'

Stellantis' purchase of BMW and Mercedes-Benz’s Share Now car-sharing business has sparked a lot of questions.

How does Stellantis expect to turn a profit from Share Now, a free-floating car-sharing unit that accounts for a fraction of the revenue generated by its Free2move business?

How will it turn around Share Now, which lost Mercedes and BMW an estimated 200 million euros in the last two years?

Free2move CEO Brigitte Courtehoux's answer was this: "We are profitable at Free2move because we manage different business models."

She calls Free2move the "Amazon of mobility "because to her it’s a one-stop marketplace where customers can buy minutes, days or months of mobility, extending or shortening the length of their rides based on their changing needs -- all via a smartphone app.

Courtehoux’s view that ultra-flexible mobility is something people will pay for makes sense. Her belief in the future of car-sharing, however, seems much too optimistic.

Free2move is still in its infancy, running fleets of 600 units each in Paris and Madrid. Share Now is nearly 10 times bigger, running a fleet of about 10,000 units in 14 European cities with 3.4 million active users. That means Free2move will be Europe’s car-sharing giant as long as the deal clears all the regulatory hurdles.

But is bigger better? That wasn’t true for Share Now, which since 2019 has exited the U.S. and British markets.

Time will tell if Free2move will evolve into the "Amazon of mobility," with help from a powerful and successful car-sharing arm.

What we know is that the business Stellantis bought from BMW and Mercedes has failed twice.

First when the partners had to merge their respective car-sharing businesses to slash costs and reduce losses. The second being their decision to quit the sector by selling Share Now to Stellantis, at an undisclosed -- but probably bargain -- price, which some reports said was about 100 million euros.