Skip to main content

Ridesharing market attracts investors in Europe and North America

Investors are racing to claim a stake in the potential multibillion-dollar ridesharing market. Advances in Technology that aid in the adoption of ridesharing, while governmental policy support, such as high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes and toll-fee waivers, are bolstering market evolution, says Frost and Sullivan. The North American and European ridesharing market will see strong growth, with rideshare operators rolling out new business models to target niche customer segments. And in the European marke
December 16, 2016 Read time: 3 mins
Investors are racing to claim a stake in the potential multibillion-dollar ridesharing market. Advances in Technology that aid in the adoption of ridesharing, while governmental policy support, such as high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes and toll-fee waivers, are bolstering market evolution, says Frost and Sullivan.

The North American and European ridesharing market will see strong growth, with rideshare operators rolling out new business models to target niche customer segments. And in the European market a fixed ridesharing is expected to dominate by 2025, although dynamic ridesharing is also picking up pace.

2097 Frost & Sullivan’s Automotive & Transportation Growth Partnership Service program, which offers, among other things insights into powertrains, carsharing and smart mobility management has recently released two analyses of ridesharing,  North American Ridesharing Market Opportunities and  European Ridesharing Market Opportunities

“Ridesharing has emerged as a smart, clean and powerful tool to deal with the fallouts of urbanisation and the development of mega cities,” said Mobility Research Analyst Albert Geraldine Priya. “Ridesharing can reduce the number of cars needed on urban roads globally by up to 2.49 million vehicles, decrease vehicle kilometres travelled by 40.19 billion and lower the corresponding end-of-life (EOL) emissions by 15.9 megatons.”

As business models continue to evolve in this new market, the most popular ones like RidewithVia and Matchrider combine the benefits of ridesharing and taxi hailing activity in this space, vehicle original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) are interested in partnering with or in investing in ridesharing ventures. Some prominent deals in the ridesharing market include BMW’s investment in Scoop, GM’s investment in Flinc and Daimler’s investment in Via. Technology companies have also joined in Facebook, for example, recently announced plans to add a ridesharing option to its events page.

In Europe, France is the biggest market for ridesharing, holding almost 26 per cent of it though this spot may well be relinquished   to Germany by 2025.  Germany, France, the UK, Italy and Spain together make up 85 per cent of the ridesharing market.

The largest player in France is BlaBlaCar, serving almost 10 per cent of the population. New dynamic ridesharing operators like Heetch, Karos, Citygoo are testing the waters in major countries like France and Germany only. With support from local governments other players such as Carma are also expanding their presence.

Corporate ridesharing is the most popular in the UK. The country boasts major corporate ridesharing players like Liftshare and Faxi. Corporate ridesharing is also picking up in  other countries with players such as  Wayzup and Twogo offering customised solutions to corporate.

However, large sections of prospective users are still relatively unaware of the ridesharing concept or the actual differences between ridesharing, hailing and carsharing.

“Nevertheless, the growing synergies among various ridesharing stakeholders will bring about a sea change in the shared mobility ecosystem,” noted Priya. “Ridesharing is expected to become a mainstream mode of mobility in cities by 2025 and is likely to expand to include different models on the same platform. Autonomous vehicles are expected to disrupt ridesharing models by merging ‘self-driven’ and ‘to-drive’ options beyond 2025.”

Related Content

  • January 23, 2020
    Investors point to bright future for micromobility
    Some big names are looking to invest in transportation companies – and this new confidence in the future of MaaS and micromobility indicates a step change, says Ito World’s Johan Herrlin
  • December 3, 2018
    When will Google wake up to MaaS gold mine?
    Mobility services are a potential gold mine for data-hungry tech companies. That being the case, Andrew Bunn asks: what exactly happens when giants such as Google and Amazon decide to get their teeth into MaaS? There are many different perspectives on Mobility as a Service (MaaS), with many different views on what the latest and future applications of technology are going to bring to transportation infrastructure. However, there is one question that does not seem to come up at all. Up to now, MaaS-relate
  • April 20, 2018
    Berg Insight: free floating car sharing served 5.6m members 2017
    Free floating car sharing services utilised 40,000 vehicles and served 5.6 million members in 2017, according to a report released by Swedish internet of things firm Berg Insight. The study also forecasted that membership of the service will reach 14.3 million using around 102,000 vehicles by the end of 2022. This service allows members to pick up and drop-off cars anywhere within a designated area where parking is allowed. Users can access available cars without prior booking or be required to schedule
  • February 10, 2015
    Traffic enforcement driving ANPR growth: report
    According to a new market report published by Transparency Market Research, Automatic Number Plate Recognition Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2014 - 2020, the automatic number plate recognition market globally is forecast to reach US$1,023.2 million by 2020. The key factors driving the growth of this market include increased adoption in traffic enforcement and surveillance applications and increasing trend of automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) integrati