Why Uber abandoned Carshare for Turo
Uber bought Australian startup Car Next Door in 2022 to launch its Carshare business. But two years later it abandoned the strategy in favour of a partnership with Turo.
Last month, Uber shut down Uber Carshare — formerly known as Car Next Door — just two and a half years after acquiring the Australian startup for $105 million. In its place, it announced a global partnership with US car sharing platform Turo. The tech giant had failed to make the Car Next Door model work.
Ironically, Turo had learned this lesson almost a decade earlier. It rebranded from RelayRides in 2015 after discovering the ‘rent by the hour’ model was fundamentally flawed.
“We learned early on in the US that the hourly, local mobility-focused model wasn’t for us. It led to high-risk, low-cost trips, and the economics just didn’t work. So we pivoted,” said Turo Australia managing director Tim Rossanis.
"We changed our minimum trip length to one day and shifted our focus to travel, road trips, longer-term vehicle replacement, and the many other use cases that align more with lower-risk, longer duration, more profitable trips."
