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.”

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Toyota, Mazda collaborate on electric vehicles, connected cars
    August 4, 2017
    Toyota Motor Corporation (Toyota) and Mazda Motor Corporation (Mazda) have today formed an alliance that will see them invest in a US$1.6 million assembly plant in the US and jointly develop technologies for electric vehicles, connected-car technology, advanced safety technologies and expand complementary products. The new plant is estimated to be capable of producing 300,000 vehicles a year and is expected to open in 2021.
  • First all-electric car-sharing scheme in North America to launch
    April 19, 2012
    ECOtality has announced a partnership with Car2go, a subsidiary of Daimler North America Corporation, to provide electric vehicle charging infrastructure to support what is being claimed as the first 100-per cent electric car sharing programme in North America. With plans for approximately 300 Smart Fortwo electric drive vehicles, the programme in San Diego represents the largest fleet of EVs in the United States.
  • Michigan to lead way on V2V and V2I system
    September 8, 2014
    The world’s largest vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) system will be put in place in Michigan by 2017.
  • New ticket purchase methods expected to drive advance of US public transit
    April 2, 2015
    New analysis from Frost & Sullivan, Strategic Analysis of the US Automated Fare Collection Market in Rail and Urban Transit Systems, finds that the market earned revenues of US$324.5 million in 2014 and estimates this to reach US$634.8 million by 2021. The rising cost of fare management, coupled with the increasing presence of computing, sensors and connected devices, have made public transit systems more accessible to end users, thus boosting interest in automated fare collection (AFC) systems. With 33