Uber considering acquisition of Daimler-BMW’s Free Now ride service: Report

Uber expressed interest after Free Now invited additional investors to tide over impact from the COVID-19 pandemic, but it is also likely that other bidders may come forward

Moneycontrol News

September 30, 2020 / 10:45 AM IST

Ride sharing services (Representative Image)

Uber Technologies is looking to potentially acquire Free Now, Daimler AG and BMW AG’s jointly held cab riding service, to boost its market share in Europe and Latin America.

Early discussions for the acquisition have been held, but “there is no certainty the deliberations will lead to a transaction,” sources said as per a Bloomberg report.

Moneycontrol could not independently verify the report.

Further, deciding on a price would be “complicated” by challenges posed for the ride sharing market by the current crisis, one source said.

Uber expressed interest after Free Now invited additional investors to tide over impact from the COVID-19 pandemic, but it is also likely that other bidders may come forward.

COVID-19 Vaccine

Frequently Asked Questions

How does a vaccine work?

A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine.

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There are broadly four types of vaccine — one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine.

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