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One of the Europe’s leading rental car company Europcar has announced recently the acquisition of Poleis Consulting and their brand Scooty, a free floating electric scooter sharing startup through Ubeego.
Scooty is a Belgium based startup, created in 2016 by Jan-Albrecht Jost, Bram Vandeperre and Michiel Van Roey and offers to his customers 176 electric scooters in free floating in Brussels and Antwerp. With Scooty, customer in a designated area of the city can locate, book, start and stop the scooter through a mobile app. There are no specific parking locations, as the scooters can be parked within the designated area respecting the city rules.
On the other hand, Europcar is running in 130 countries and territories including 16 wholly-owned subsidiaries in Europe and 2 in Australia and New Zealand, franchisees and partners.
A couple of months back, Europcar also invested in the Dutch car sharing platform Snappcar. So why a rental car behemoth is showing so much interest in the sharing startups? Well, it’s quite evident! The sharing startups follow the model of no strings attached and that’s letting them grow rapidly. Hence, most of the rental majors are investing in or acquiring sharing startups.
Meanwhile, here are 4 important reasons as to why Europcar acquired Scooty and Snappcar recently.
#1 Sharing services is easier than rental ones
Renting a vehicle is usually for 24 hours, but with more and more vehicle sharing platforms coming in, the facility to use rental cars is becoming easy. Now with car sharing platforms, you can rent a car for a few hours, pick it up locally, and expenses like gas and insurance are covered.
#2 Millennials avoid ownership
Compared to prior generations, millennials today don’t want to own a stuff. Reportedly, they also believe that renting/buying a car for a long period of time does not make an investment sense and it comes with a lot of cost baggage. They prefer sharing vehicles more at their convenience, rather than sticking to one single vehicle for a long time.
#3 Sharing a vehicle is cheaper than renting
Well, whether its car or a scooter, sharing services are way more cheaper than using a cab or renting a conventional automobile for a full day. So that’s why consumers these days prefer sharing more than renting a vehicle.
#4 Less parking and pick-up hassles in sharing services
Usually, after using a rental service or for returning the vehicle, you’ll have to fill up the fuel tank and return it at a particular location. So you cant just park it and forget it after the usage.
However, vehicle sharing services are usually hassle-free, when it comes to picking up points and parking locations. Also, if you need a vehicle under an hours time, sharing services will definitely save you.
Have an opinion on rental and sharing startups? Let us know in the comments section below and stay tuned to Silicon Canals.
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