Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Lyft, Uber\u2019s biggest US rival, is expanding its ride-hailing business across the Atlantic for the first time with the \u20ac175mn acquisition of European taxi app FreeNow. The sale of Hamburg-based FreeNow by its current owners BMW and Mercedes-Benz marks the latest step in a long retreat from \u201cmobility services\u201d\u00a0such as ride hailing and car rentals that a decade ago were fuelled by automakers\u2019 fears of looming \u201cpeak car\u201d ownership.Lyft, founded in San Francisco in 2012, operates across the US and Canada but decided to branch out beyond North America after reporting its first full year of net profits in 2024, according to chief executive David Risher.\u201cYesterday, the company just wasn\u2019t ready\u201d for international expansion, Risher told the Financial Times. \u201cBut we\u2019re financially very strong now\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009we\u2019ve been putting a lot of the basics in place so that we can now build on top of that.\u201dDespite the progress, the $4.55bn company has seen its stock fall by 20 per cent so far this year. Shares in Uber, which has a market capitalisation of $155bn, are up 17 per cent since the beginning of January.Risher said the stock market gyrations that have accompanied the first three months of the Trump administration \u2014 which have forced many mergers and public listings to be delayed \u2014 should not affect Lyft\u2019s all-cash acquisition of FreeNow, which is expected to close in the second half of this year.\u201cWe are thinking long term about this,\u201d he said. \u201cLong term, I think we have good reason to believe that there will be great transatlantic partnerships of all kinds.\u201dCombining Lyft and FreeNow will create a business serving more than 50mn annual riders and bolster their competition against Uber, which dominates in the US and Europe.With the acquisition, Lyft is following its long-standing rival by embracing the taxi industry once seen as the Silicon Valley disrupters\u2019 arch nemesis. FreeNow, which operates in 150 cities across Europe, makes the vast majority of its revenue from its 6.3mn passengers hailing traditional taxis, including London\u2019s black cabs.In recent years, Uber has added taxis in dozens of markets, including New York, Paris and Madrid, giving it a greater foothold in regions that also heavily regulate its original ridesharing model.Lyft has recently begun to apply for taxi operating licences in some parts of the US. Risher said FreeNow\u2019s fleet management technology would boost Lyft\u2019s efforts to diversify its business and grow its addressable market. \u201cWe are embracing [FreeNow\u2019s] taxi-first business model,\u201d said Risher.Taxis in Europe tend to have slightly higher average fares than ridesharing apps, according to FreeNow chief Thomas Zimmermann.FreeNow, which has broken even since the middle of last year, posted gross bookings of more than \u20ac1bn in 2024 and continues to see revenue growth across its markets, said Zimmermann.According to mobile market intelligence provider Sensor Tower, FreeNow has seen the number of monthly active users of its app in the UK and Europe decline over the past year, at a time when Uber continued to grow.Zimmermann said app usage did not necessarily correlate to number of rides booked and noted that FreeNow had cut back on promotions and incentives in the past year to boost profitability, even as some competitors made \u201cvery unreasonable spend\u201d to lure customers and drivers.In 2019, BMW and Mercedes had pledged to jointly invest more than \u20ac1bn across a handful of mobility apps, including car sharing, parking and charging services. One such venture, ShareNow, was sold to Stellantis in 2022. In a statement this week, BMW and Mercedes-Benz Mobility said after being \u201cpioneers in the development of digital mobility services\u201d, they would now \u201ccontinue to focus on their core operations and their transformational development to electrification, digitalisation and AI as well as decarbonisation\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Lyft, Uber\u2019s biggest US rival, is expanding its ride-hailing business across the Atlantic for the first time with the \u20ac175mn acquisition of European taxi app FreeNow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-278206","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-tech"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=278206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278206\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}