With rental cars still in short supply, enterprising car owners are renting their vehicles out to travelers through Turo, an online carsharing marketplace, Axios reports. It could cause a shift in the rental car industry similar to what was seen in hotels when Airbnb took off.
If you want to borrow a car in Baton Rouge this weekend, you can choose between a number of Mercedes Benz sedans, Corvettes, Teslas, luxury SUVs or super-duty trucks listed by local car owners on Turo for between $60 and $300 per day. In New Orleans, there are even more options. To be listed on Turo’s website, cars must be less than 10 years old and have fewer than 100,000 miles on the odometer.
According to Axios, Turo and other peer-to-peer car-sharing services like Getaround and Avail have made it easy for the average person with a few underutilized vehicles at home to compete with major rental car firms, which have suffered greatly during the pandemic.
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Rental car companies sold off hundreds of cars when Americans cut back on traveling but now can’t refill their fleets fast enough due to the supply chain issues plaguing the planet.
Turo, which first marketed itself as a side gig for extra income when it launched in 2010, is now helping small-business owners manage multivehicle fleets. Read the full Axios story.
This story originally appeared in a Sept. 27 edition of Daily Report. To keep up with Baton Rouge business and politics, subscribe to the free Daily Report e-newsletter here.