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 »
Car sharing company Zipcar has acquired a startup in Austria to help expand its presence in Europe, Zipcar’s CEO Scott Griffith tells me. Read more »
This quarter the EV market struggled to find its footing. Meanwhile, the smart-grid sector solidified and low-power technology proved itself important in the data center. Read more to learn what these news pieces and others mean for the larger space over the next few months. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Zipcar’s recent investment in peer-to-peer car sharing startup Wheelz signals just how important college students are to the car sharing pioneer. Read more »
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 »
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 »
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 »
