Stellantis car-sharing service Free2move is rebooting after a bumpy American start

In recent years, the company Free2move set up free-floating car rental operations in such major American cities as Denver, Portland, Oregon, and Columbus, Ohio.

Like scooter rentals but for cars, the vehicles were spread out around each city, and drivers could book them from their phones at a moment's notice for a few minutes or a few days. The vehicles didn't need to be returned to any particular parking spot.

But the Stellantis NV-owned brand, which also operates in Europe, has been learning just how challenging — and costly — this type of car-sharing business is to operate. Free2move has outlasted many competitors in the space, and purchased another, but in recent months it pulled its fleets of mostly Jeep Renegades off the roads in all but one U.S. city, Washington, D.C., as it looks to reset its technology and operations systems.

There were "a lot of problems that now we are recovering on, and when we will be able to deploy our own tech, it will help even more," Free2move CEO Brigitte Courtehoux said in a recent interview.

She said the goal was to "stop the problems, stop the bleeding" by pulling the cars off the road, and then relaunch the service in more cities once a number of issues are resolved, likely over the next six months.

Courtehoux said the various costly problems included traffic violations, damage, theft, and simply losing track of the vehicles.

It's a tough business to make a profit in, as other major automakers who wanted to get into car sharing also found out. Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Co. shut down similar services several years ago. And Share Now, the service formerly known as Car2Go and previously owned by automakers Daimler AG and BMW AG, exited North America in 2019, citing rising operation costs — and then was bought up by Free2move in 2022. According to a joint Share Now and Free2move website, the service continues to operate in 15 major European cities.

Share Now "was making a significant amount of losses, and that's why two German carmakers sold it to us, and we fixed it," Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares said at a recent forum. "We are 50% market share of the car-sharing services in Europe right now."

Yet he acknowledged that big hurdles remain for the business, including securing parking for the rentals from cities, as well as keeping insurance costs down. The CEO said there has been "a lot of destruction and a lack of security" issues in some cities. Obtaining affordable electricity rates for the fleet's battery-powered rentals is another challenge, he said.

The United States represented less than 7% of Free2move's business as of November 2023, The Detroit News previously reported. The U.S. part of the service is now focused on integrating Share Now's technology into its systems, Courtehoux said. That includes improving the app that customers see but also back-end technology that allows managers to keep track of the rental fleets in real time.

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