A brief history of peer to peer car rental in the UK
There have been peer to peer car hire rental companies operating in the UK for over 10 years. Entering this market is difficult as the insurance regulations in the UK are much tougher than in most other countries. The combination of car and driver must be insured at all times and most UK insurers are slow to innovate meaning there are few policies available that are fit for purpose for peer to peer car rental in the UK.
Below is a rough timeline of the rise and fall of peer to peer car rental in the UK
| 2009 |
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| 2010 |
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| 2011 |
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| 2012 |
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| 2013 |
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| 2014 |
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| 2015 |
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| 2016 |
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| 2017 |
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| 2018 |
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| 2019 |
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| 2020 |
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Thoughts on the fallen
WhipCar was arguably the world’s first peer-to-peer car hire company and survived four years on a mere £1m in funding, in a time when the sharing economy and peer-to-peer services were not widely known or understood by the general public.
Despite being backed by web heavyweight Rocket Internet, RideLink shutdown a mere six months after raising £1.1m of funding causing some upset among their investors.
easyCar Club also ran for four years. It’s funding was primarily through it’s parent company the easyGroup so it is difficult to determine how much they raised and spent. Ultimately they failed because they could not secure a peer to peer car rental insurance policy to continue trading.
The future
Hiyacar is currently the longest trading UK peer to peer car sharing company. Hiyacar was not the first, and still more will inevitably join us in this market. We are in it for the long-term, building a sustainable business. Having learnt from the mistakes of the fallen, we’ve built a platform that is safe, secure & trusted and we’ve partnered with other like-minded companies with fit for purpose products to help us achieve our purpose of connecting drivers to a car when and where they want one.
