Free2Move, the car rental and car-sharing business developed by PSA Group, now has the capacity to start to court new outside investors, its chief executive Brigitte Courtehoux has said.
Created as a brand in 2016, the business became a fully fledged legal entity within the Peugeot owning-group last week, Reuters noted. It offers a range of mobility services which include taxi rides, as well as rentals and car sharing.
Go deeper with GlobalData
Discover B2B Marketing That Performs
Combine business intelligence and editorial excellence to reach engaged professionals across 36 leading media platforms.
The new status grants it greater autonomy to develop its own apps and opens the way to seek new investors, the report said.
"It remains completely open," Courtehoux said in an interview with Reuters. "It's one of the possibilities, but we aren't there yet."
"We're really in stage one (which consists in) profitable growth and pulling it all together."
The company's first half revenues grew by 23%, Courtehoux said, in spite of the novel coronavirus outbreak that led to the suspension of its car sharing service in Paris and Madrid.
US Tariffs are shifting - will you react or anticipate?
Don’t let policy changes catch you off guard. Stay proactive with real-time data and expert analysis.
By GlobalDataCourtehoux declined to provide any specific financial figures to Reuters but Free2Move's sales remain tiny compared to the ones generated by PSA's main car brands, Peugeot, Opel and Citroen.
The health crisis compelled it to postpone to 2021 plans to extend its car sharing network, which also includes Washington DC and Lisbon, to a new unnamed big European city.
FCA, with which PSA hopes to merge in the first-half of 2021, has its own rental and car mobility entity, Leasys, Reuters noted.
"We're very complementary, we have a very common vision of what we want to do in the world of mobility," Courtehoux told the news agency, without elaborating.
