Peer-to-peer car sharing startup RelayRides tells us that long-term sharing — over days, weeks and months — makes up the bulk of their sales. Is this an emerging trend for this nascent service? Read more »
Peer-to-peer car sharing company RelayRides has bought up startup Wheelz, partly for its automated system that lets users easily unlock and drive away in a car without having to get a key from the owner. Read more »
Google has expanded the size of Google Ventures’s annual fund from $200 million to $300 million annually, which will allow the firm to expand the scope of its deals and increase its presence as a major venture capital firm since its founding in 2009. Read more »
Owning physical items — cars, apartments, office space — will be increasingly inefficient for a global market. This is driving a greater interest in the share economy. Companies like Zipcar and Airbnb have paved the way here, but a host of startups have surfaced recently, too. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The around 6 million subscribers to GM’s OnStar connected car service can now rent out their cars to other drivers via a deal between the auto giant and peer-to-peer car sharing startup RelayRides. The partnership was announced back in October of last year. Read more »
The tragic story in which a man rented a car in Boston via peer-to-peer car sharing company RelayRides and wound up seriously injuring four people while losing his life, raised a familiar question for the share economy: Who’s responsible? Read more »
UPDATED: The tragic story, reported by The New York Times’s Ron Lieber last month, in which a man rented a car in Boston via peer-to-peer car sharing company RelayRides and wound up seriously injuring four people while losing his life raised a familiar question for the ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Zipcar’s decision last week to make a strategic investment in peer-to-peer car-sharing startup Wheelz surprised many. But Wheelz is another way for Zipcar to access a young demographic, college students, which it has been courting for some time as a way to build its relationship with ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Will car sharing pioneer Zipcar move into the emerging industry of peer-to-peer car sharing, or enabling neighbors to rent out other neighbors’ vehicles? Well, Zipcar hasn’t launched such a service, but it’s invested in one of the new peer-to-peer car sharing startups Wheelz. Read more »
As we look toward the next year, the cleantech sector faces many challenges, which we examine in detail in this 2012 outlook. Renewable energy generators encounter an increasingly difficult subsidy environment, and key cleantech innovations like electric vehicles face an uphill climb in terms of connecting ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Despite Google shutting down its clean power philanthropic initiative, Google still remains committed to clean power in several ways far more important, which have represented the bulk of Google’s work with energy. Read more »
The momentum right now in cleantech is as much about connectivity and how it can drive energy efficiency as it is about advancing sources of renewable energy. And as the web and mobile connectivity change our consumer experiences, the opportunities to redefine cleantech are rich, and they are already happening. This research note examines the cleantech space in that context and analyzes the car-sharing, home-energy-management and smart-grid sectors and their relevant companies to see how connectivity will play into their future endeavors. Companies mentioned in this report include RelayRides, Opower, Silver Spring Networks and Nest. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Connectivity changes everything. That’s the credo driving just about every corner of our day-to-day lives. As human beings, we are now connected to one another through not just our social networks but also our cars, the books we read, the albums we download and even our own health and wellness habits (to name just a few areas). With that in mind, GigaOM Pro has singled out certain areas in the technology industry where we see this shift to constant connectivity taking place most drastically. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Peer-to-peer car sharing has emerged in select cities as a way for car owners to rent their vehicles to people in their neighborhood. But are car owners, drivers or the companies making money? The key will be that the economics pan out for everyone. Read more »
The third quarter’s numbers are out from the Green IT section of GigaOM’s research subscription service GigaOM Pro. Solar is struggling, while IT-based systems like car sharing are soaring. Dig into the details with us. Read more »
The trials and tribulations of the solar industry dominated the third quarter as warnings about a storm of dangerous market forces in the industry finally reached an outcome with Solyndra’s bankruptcy. But not all was dismal for the cleantech industry during the quarter. Car sharing continues to reduce resource consumption, and much capital flowed to that sector. On the data center side of the industry, Google provided insight into exactly how much energy the tech giant uses, as well as the carbon footprint of its data centers. Companies mentioned in this report include Solyndra, Zipcar, Airbnb and Silver Spring Networks. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Two peer-to-peer car sharing startups have launched in the Bay Area in recent months (there’s at least five here now), and there’s four peer-to-peer car sharing companies in France. Here’s my cheat sheet of a dozen companies offering websites to facilitate car sharing among neighbors. Read more »
Auto giant GM is making its first move into car sharing by partnering with San Francisco-based peer-to-peer car sharing startup RelayRides, using its communications system OnStar. RelayRides also says it is in advanced discussions with GM about an investment. Read more »
The peer-to-peer car sharing space is getting crowded. On Wednesday a startup called Wheelz launched at Stanford University with the idea to bring student-to-student car sharing to campuses. Read more »
Cleantech, meet mobile. The intersection between these two industries has grown over the past twelve months as companies increasingly look to use smartphones as a platform to enable their services. This trend will accelerate in the future as more and more companies realize that mobile phones ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
While many of you know this to be anecdotally true, here’s an official study on the trend: According to the University of California Transportation Center, car sharing leads to the reduction of personal vehicles owned. Read more »
Collaborative consumption refers to a class of new businesses that use the web to enable the sharing and bartering of goods and services — from cars to apartments to office space. The market evolved out of the first generation of general-purpose P2P marketplaces such as Craigslist and eBay and is now tied to the way we use the Internet and cell phones. GigaOM Pro conducted a survey of GigaOM readers to gauge the popularity of the collaborative consumption movement, which services readers are using and the impact certain security concerns will have on the growth of industry. This research note examines the survey’s results and provides analysis on the current state and future of the web-sharing market. Companies mentioned in this report include Zipcar, RelayRides, thredUP and Airbnb. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free GigaOM Pro trial subscription. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
There’s been an explosion of interest in web-sharing services, a growing movement of lending and bartering services that create economical and sustainable consumption methods. Take a few minutes to tell us how you feel about this movement in our new survey, and maybe even win prizes. Read more »
The emerging web-sharing movement, which includes startups like Airbnb, RelayRides, and ThredUP, has its roots in the maturing way that people use the Internet and cell phones, and its future economy will rise around location, niche groups and capital-intensive, under-utilized and time-sensitive objects. For entrepreneurs looking ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The Airbnb horror stories that have emerged in recent days expose the biggest pain point for the economy that has built up around using the web to share “stuff,” from apartments to cars to tools: security. Read more »
Ownership is old-school. The folks at Collaborative Lab have put together this infographic and startup list to highlight all the innovation that is happening around using the web to share “stuff.” Read more »
The problem of feeding and providing energy to 9 billion people by 2050 will require many technology solutions. But in a unique way, the web and mobile can act as a sort of operating system for physical stuff, leading to more efficient use of resources. Read more »
Mark down yet another clean power project that Google plans to back. This morning, Google announced that it’s providing $55 million for part of the construction of a 1.5 GW wind farm being built by Terra-Gen Power in Southern California’s Mojave Desert. Read more »
Zipcar’s stock is still flying high after the car sharing company debuted on the Nasdaq last month. To the CEO of neighbor-to-neighbor car sharing startup RelayRides, Shelby Clark, Zipcar’s IPO has shown investors that there’s real money to be made in car sharing. Read more »
As kids, we were all taught to share our favorite toys. At Green:Net Shelby Clark from RelayRides and Joe Gebbia from Airbnb talked about how their companies are leveraging the power of social media to take sharing into the grown-up world. Read more »
Is the greentech industry headed for a breakout year or is it retrenching for hard times to come? The first three months of 2011 provided evidence that could support both assertions, with a big rise in venture capital investment and a big drop-off in global energy financing. Solar power remained the largest green technology sector in terms of venture capital investment, while in the world of electric vehicles, GM’s Chevy Volt hybrid and Nissan’s all-electric Leaf — the first two mainstream plug-in vehicles — hit the showroom floors in significant numbers. Meanwhile the smart grid sector’s relative dearth of VC investment was more than made up for by the massive round of acquisitions. Companies mentioned in this report include NRG Energy, Microsoft, Silver Spring Networks, Tesla and BrightSource Energy. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Combine a year in which IPOs are back and car sharing is hot and what do you get? A smash hit success. Zipcar’s stock debuted on the Nasdaq Thursday at an eye-opening $30 per share, up over 60 percent from its offering price of $18. Read more »
Our third annual Green:Net event is coming up on April 21 (yep, next week!) and we’re getting really excited about all the great speakers, announcements and discussions that will go on. Here’s a cheat sheet of 10 things you can’t miss at the show. Read more »
The latest wave of electric cars rolling into the market will be cars connected to the power grid and increasingly, to cellular networks. Along with smart meters and the smart grid, electric vehicles and EV charging stations will be areas to watch. Read more »
Neighbor to neighbor car sharing startup RelayRides has raised a little over $5 million. RelayRides announced the round, which was led by Google Ventures and August Capital, back in December, but the company didn’t disclose the size of the round at that time. Read more »
If you live in a city, you might have a car sharing service, but some day you could have car sharing 2.0. That’s what RelayRides, a young startup that offers neighbor-to-neighbor car sharing, and is backed by Google Ventures and August Capital, is trying to offer. Read more »
Greentech marked its best year ever in 2010, and part of that is thanks to the wealth of activity across sectors during the fourth quarter. Global investment in clean energy surged, and while wind power remained the biggest greentech area, solar power saw the fastest growth. The energy efficiency sector appears to have more room for smaller players to make their mark amidst a rapidly maturing market. Meanwhile, China’s stance as a growing greentech giant continued to complicate its relationship with the United States. Companies mentioned in this report include General Electric, Intel, ZigBee, iControl, People Power and EnerNOC. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Over the course of 2010, a rich ecosystem of services, startups and innovations began to take shape around the idea of sharing cars and bikes. Here’s seven steps taken this year toward shared transportation: Read more »
