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	📃 WhipCar incorporated Companies House 💰 WhipCar raises £1m Article
2010	🚀 WhipCar launches Article · Web Archive
2011
2012
2013	☠️ WhipCar shuts down Article 📃 Ascendia incorporated Companies House
2014	🚀 easyCar Club launches Article · Web Archive · EC Case Study 📃 Rentecarlo incorporated Companies House 💰 Rentecarlo raises £28k Crunchbase
2015	📃 DriveJoy founded Article 🚀 Rentecarlo launches Article · Web Archive 💰 Ascendia raises £300k through crowdfunding Seedrs ♻️ Ascendia rebrands as Hiyacar 🚀 Hiyacar launches Web Archive 🚀 DriveJoy launches Article · Web Archive
2016	📃 Car & Away incorporated Companies House 💰 Hiyacar raises £200k through crowdfunding Seedrs ♻️ DriveJoy rebrands as RideLink Tweet · Archived tweet 🇬🇧 Turo enters the UK market Article No peer-to-peer insurance policy initially, only aggregated existing self-drive hire fleets. Previously raised over $100m
2017	🇬🇧 Drivy enters UK market Press Release · Archive Press Release Drivy had previously raised over $50m while operating across Europe 💰 RideLink raised £1.1m through crowdfunding Seedrs ☠️ RideLink shuts down RideLink Announcement · Drivy Announcement 💰 Turo raises $104m Crunchbase
2018	🚀 Car & Away launches Press Release · Web Archive 💰 Hiyacar raises £1.2m via crowdfunding Crowdcube ☠️ easyCar Club shuts down after losing their insurance Announcement · Archived Announcement 💰 Hiyacar raises £5m from Itochu Corp Article
2019	🇬🇧 GetAround enters UK market by acquiring Drivy for $300m Article GetAround had previously raised over $100m, and raised the $300m for this acquisition. 💰 Turo raises $250m Crunchbase ♻️ Drivy rebrands as GetAround Article
2020	💰 Turo raises $30m Crunchbase 🚀 Car & Away launches KarShare Article 💰 KarShare raises £1.4m through crowdfunding Seedrs 💰 GetAround raises $150m (+$25m of debt financing) Crunchbase

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.