Jul 31, 2017

How To Build Peer to Peer Car Rental Apps Like Turo

Peer to peer car sharing is a great way to earn money by renting your personal vehicle to those who need it.

It is definitely a win-win approach for both car owners and travelers, as first get money, and second, get an adventure. Add significant traffic reduction, lower pollution, CO2 emission decrease, and other ecological benefits to all this stuff, and you will get what I am talking about.

The car-sharing market is still in the development stage, especially in European countries.

Nevertheless, it has a far-reaching future and potential growth.

According to Global Market Insights, Car Sharing Market size is set to exceed USD 16.5 billion by 2024. Sounds promising. Want to make a difference and develop a car rental app for your city or country? It`s time to start!

First, let's check out the most famous competitors on the market.

Best Car Rental Websites

Turo

Turo is a pioneer of a car rental marketplace. It allows you to rent a car anytime and anywhere from a supportive local community of car owners. Turo is available in 2500+ cities and 300+ airports throughout the United States.

It is a great example of how a small startup can turn into a large peer to peer car sharing marketplace with $97 Million funding.

Skurt

Skurt is a Los Angeles-based rental car delivery startup. Here is how it works. Users request a car and it is delivered to them within 60 minutes after booking. Skurt also partners with fleet owners, which makes it operate somewhere between the ordinary car rental company and peer-to-peer service like Turo. Skurt is available in Los Angeles, San Diego & Miami.

Get Around

With Getaround, you can rent 1000's of cars from Toyota to BMW, to Tesla and unlock them all with your phone. Here is how they make it. When the owner lists a car, the Getaround personnel installs there a special electronic device called Carkit.

This device can unlock the doors with the Getaround app; tracks the car's location, allows Getaround to disable the ignition and locate the car if it is stolen and even control the fuel levels.

With this app, there is no need to meet with the car owner in person, which saves both yours and renter's time.

Without doubt, Turo remains the most popular car sharing marketplace available in over 4,700 cities across the US, Canada, and the UK.

Building Apps Like Turo: How Does Turo App Work

If you want to develop an app like Turo, you have to know the basic business model of car sharing apps. Let's dive deeper into it.

Car Listing

Describe your car (enter the year, model, transmission, and odometer info).

Add your personal photo and photo of your car Turo automatically sets the car`s rental price based on market value, location, season, and other data. You can also do it manually.

Put the available dates of the rent on a calendar.

Get notifications when someone wants to book your car.

Meet with your guest, check the license, together check your car, and hand over the keys.

After the trip, pick up your car and make sure that everything is in order.

You can also leave a review about the traveler.

What Is Important To Remember While Building Apps Like Turo

Insurance

Turo provides car owners with $1 million liability insurance policy that protects your car against damages during the rental period. Moreover, before renting a car you should take photos of each vehicle’s angle and check it before and after the rent. You can read more about insurance policy here.

Safety

Turo screens each traveler by gathering the following information: driver's license information, payment card information, auto insurance score from a consumer reporting agency. Additionally, the trip's scheduled start and end times must be approved via the system.

Car Renting

Enter location, travel dates, and price to see the list of cars. You can also choose more filters such as vehicle type, vehicle makes, category, color, transmission, etc.
Book the car
Meet with driver
Enjoy the trip

In order to make a car rental website, you need to choose the right features that will make it user-friendly and convenient.

Apps like Turo: Choosing the Right Set of Features

Here are the main car app features you may need.

Registration via Facebook or Gmail

Find a car by your current location or apply different filters

View the available cars on the list or on the map

View the information about the car

Book the car

Add to favorites

Read reviews

List a car

Calculate the market value of your car

User profile

Peer to Peer Car Sharing Business Model

The business model of most car-sharing apps is optimizing the available cars instead of buying new ones. Usually, car-sharing apps take a percentage cut from the car rental price.

This is actually the concept of sharing economy, where car owners share not only their car but also the revenue from its rent.

What You Should Know to Build a P2P Car Rental Marketplace

Provide a safety

No one will use your app until they are confident in the safety of sharing a car with an unknown person. Incorporate driver`s scanning into your app. The system must check the driving license and driving history in order to identify a person. Include reviews and logging-in via social media networks. This all will help you to build a community of responsible drivers and car owners that trust each other!

Work with insurance

Providing your users with insurance should be your first priority. Usually, peer-to-peer sharing companies partner with car insurance suppliers, as your ordinary car insurance policy will not allow you to rent your car out on a peer-to-peer marketplace.

Offer a value

One of the benefits of P2P car sharing is that a car owner can recover a portion of his or her monthly vehicle expenses. Car owners that use your app should get a profit from it. For example, Turo does take 25% of revenue from every rental but that covers insurance and the cost to list cars on the app. The rest is given to the car owner.

How much does it cost to build peer-to-peer car rental apps like Turo

According to our estimate, the average number of hours needed to create a car rental app is 1529. Here you can see more detailed estimation of the hours for each feature. Of course, this number is rough, as the price will range depending on the features you want to include and the developer's rate.

Use our app development cost calculator to find out approximate numbers:

Wrapping Up

If you want to build a car sharing marketplace, first of all think about your mission. Remember this all is not about what you make, but about why you make it.

Rachel Bostman, the co-author of the book “What`s mine is yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption” has said: “Peer to peer car sharing involves the re-emergence of the community. This works because people can trust each other”.

Your aim is to build a responsible community of car owners and car users, who will make a step forward to travel and transportation improvement.

Here is also a bonus, especially for you. We have created a free PDF checklist on how to build a successful startup: from business idea to MVP development.