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

  • November 30, 2015
    Car-sharing service membership will grow to 26 million worldwide in 2020
    According to a new research report by Berg Insight, the number of users of car-sharing services worldwide is forecasted to grow from 6.5 million people in 2015 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 32.0 per cent to reach 26.0 million people in 2020. Berg Insight forecasts that the number of cars used for car-sharing services will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 29.6 per cent from 123,000 at the end of 2015 to 450,000 at the end of 2020. Car-sharing is one of many car-based mobility service
  • May 21, 2012
    Natural Gas vehicle sales to increase at a healthy pace
    Natural gas vehicles (NGVs) have been available to varying degrees since the 1970s, and earlier in some parts of the world. Despite this long history, adoption varies significantly from region to region, with NGVs used mainly for commercial vehicles in North America and parts of Western Europe and for consumer markets in parts of Asia and the Middle East. The primary growth drivers in these countries are the favorable economics of natural gas, the reduction of oil imports, the environmental benefits of lowe
  • June 7, 2017
    Technology and finance shapes up to make MaaS happen
    The technology and finance aspects needed for Mobility as a Service (MaaS) to become widely adopted are taking shape as Geoff Hadwick and Colin Sowman hear. Sampo Hietanen, CEO of MaaS Global and ‘father’ of MaaS, started his address to ITS International’s recent MaaS Market conference in London by saying: “All of the problems that can be solved by a company or group of companies have already been solved, and now we are left with the big ones such as housing, transport and health. He called MaaS the “Netfli
  • April 6, 2016
    European Truck Platooning Challenge gets under way
    Something huge in the field of connected vehicle technology and automated driving, which is grabbing headlines around the world, will arrive here at Intertraffic Amsterdam later today. Dirk-Jan de Bruijn, programme director of the European Truck Platooning Challenge 2016, sets the scene and looks to the future.