As we close out 2025, one thing stands out: what once took weeks now takes minutes. From hardware-free launches to AI-powered enforcement, this year showed us that the best progress in shared mobility is the kind that makes operations simpler.
In this issue
Our benchmark report on European car sharing is here
The hardware-optional era is accelerating
10% of fuel costs. That's what fraud looks like
Insurers are finally valuing car sharing experience
Single-mode mobility is consolidating. Fast.
One to feel good about
The wait is over! Our benchmark report of European car sharing is here
We are excited to announce that our highly anticipated 76-page INVERS Mobility Barometer on European Car Sharing 2025 is now live and ready for you to explore!
More than 129,000 free-floating and station-based vehicles
42 countries with station-based, free-floating, or P2P services
8% increase in fleet size from 2024 data (station-based and free-floating combined)
Discover the top five markets and dive into the latest trends, nine national deep-dives, and exclusive interviews with seven leading operators in station-based, free-floating and peer-to-peer car sharing.
The Barometer reveals how operators are building integrated mobility ecosystems, not just adding vehicles. The report features interviews with cambio, Getaround, guppy, Hertz 24/7, Bolt Drive, Omago, and Stadtmobil Stuttgart.
In one of the interviews, we learned that in Bolt Drive’s mature markets, one in three car sharing users also use at least one other Bolt service, such as ride-hailing, shared micromobility, or food delivery.
As Diego Ramirez-Gölz, Bolt's Regional General Manager Central Europe, explains:
"[...] multi-service engagement is no coincidence; it's core to our expansion logic."
We also see the ecosystem shift extending beyond its urban strongholds. As Arne Brugman, Shared Mobility Expert at Advier, observes:
“Car sharing is no longer just an urban phenomenon; smaller municipalities across the country are proving that with the right policies and attention, successful car sharing ecosystems can thrive beyond the major cities.”
Download your free copy of the INVERS Mobility Barometer on European Car Sharing 2025 for more market trends, exclusive operator interviews, and insights behind the industry's next evolution.
Polestar has just launchedFleet Telematics, providing real-time access to vehicle data without additional hardware or installation costs across their entire product range. The system offers live vehicle data, usage analytics, and integration with fleet management platforms
Another OEM opening up matters for the entire industry. More manufacturers offering native APIs puts pressure on others to follow. The ecosystem is shifting toward openness.
For car sharing operators, one question remains: Does Polestar's API support command functions? Read-only data, such as location, battery level, and diagnostics, is valuable for traditional fleet management, but shared mobility requires two-way communication. Remote unlock. Lock commands. Reservation-based access control.
Given Polestar's shared platform with Volvo, command support could follow. Worth watching.
The speed difference for API-ready vehicles is already striking. GoMoreadded over 80 Teslas to its peer-2-peer platform in just weeks. "It only took 11 minutes until the first Tesla was available for renters." What used to take hours now takes minutes.
Fraud and card misuse have always been persistent pain points for fleets, and most operators write it off as the cost of doing business. Someone skims fuel, submits questionable receipts, or charges personal expenses to fleet cards. Nothing huge on its own, but it adds up to death by a thousand cuts.
Payment integration is changing that calculation.
When GoCar partnered with Cubic on in-vehicle payments, they discovered the fraud preventionsavings alone exceeded 10% of fuel costs. Not optimization. Not efficiency gains. Just plugging leaks they didn't realize were so big.
The mechanics are straightforward. Real-time telematics data, transaction records, plus location history. If a fuel purchase happens but the vehicle wasn't at that station, flag it. If fuel levels don't match receipts, investigate. Fraud becomes visible when disconnected data streams finally communicate with each other.
No new sensors required. Operators already collect this information. They just weren't cross-referencing it with payment flows.
The same logic extends across operations. Toll charges that don't match trip routes. Maintenance invoices that don't align with the vehicle location. Cleaning fees for damage that predates the current rental.
When money flows through the vehicle, every data gap becomes a measurable revenue leak. The telematics infrastructure was always a financial infrastructure. Operators are just now realizing it.
Insurers are finally valuing car sharing experience
German insurer Verti has just launched something the industry has long sought: a program thatrewards accident-free car sharing drivers with better personal insurance rates.
Safe usage history now transfers to private policies. SoCar pioneered this model in South Korea. Verti brings it to Europe.
The significance isn't the discount. It's the recognition that insurers are beginning to view shared mobility behavior as legitimate risk data, rather than a liability gap to price around.
The catch: Verti requires operators to manually verify driving history. No automated data pipelines. No direct API connections. Every verification is a phone call or email. That doesn't scale.
Still, this reveals the real opportunity. As Nicholas Cole, Principal Consultant at AutoMobility Advisors,points out, telematics data is the missing bridge. Driver behavior, vehicle health, incident data in context. Insurers need exactly this to price risk accurately.
Consider what operators already collect: harsh braking events, acceleration patterns, time-of-day usage, trip frequency, mileage consistency. A driver who completes 50 incident-free car sharing trips shows their risk profile in ways a traditional driving record never could.
Operators have this data. Insurers want it. The automated pipeline connecting those two points still barely exists.
When it does, the value proposition for car sharing users changes. Safe driving in shared vehicles becomes a path to lower personal insurance rates. Operators who can verify that history aren’t just offering mobility. They're offering users a path to better insurance profiles.
That's a retention tool no one's really leveraging yet.
Single-mode mobility is consolidating fast
Image credit: Carture.com.tw
Taiwan's iRent just absorbed WeMo's entire fleet. 10,000 electric scooters. One app now manages over 20,000 vehicles, including cars and scooters. It is now the country's largest shared mobility platform.
This isn't a surprise. It's a prediction coming true.
When we interviewed Stanley Lo, President at iRent, earlier this year for ourCar Sharing in East and South East Asiareport, he described exactly this pattern: "As the car sharing market continues to grow and mature, increased collaboration and deeper system integration are expected. Leading players will harness their scale, technology, and capital to expand their footprint, while smaller operators increasingly join larger platforms."
Multimodal mobility apps aren't new. Translink's RideLink in Vancouver, as well as various MaaS platforms in the Netherlands and Germany. But those aggregate existing services. Users view multiple providers within a single interface.
This is different. iRent didn't partner with WeMo. They absorbed them. WeMo's scooters and brand remain, but all customer relationships, billing, and data have moved to iRent's platform.
That's not aggregation. That's consolidation.
The question for mid-sized operators: Are you building the scale to absorb others, or are you positioned to be absorbed?
One to feel good about
Book-n-drive justannounced they're upgrading their entire fleet to CloudBoxx technology. With over 1,000 vehicles across 450+ stations, they're the largest car sharing provider in the Rhine-Main area.
The reasoning goes beyond keeping up with the times. Book-n-drive’s Managing Director, Martin Trillig, has been open about the operational drivers. On a recent Wunder Mobilitypodcast, he explained how data delays were killing enforcement speed. Their detection worked flawlessly. Integration didn't move fast enough.
Andreas Hornig, Managing Director of book-n-drive, said, "With the innovative approach of CloudBoxx, we are well positioned for the coming years and know we have a reliable partner at our side going forward."
The detail that caught our eye: sub-half-second unlocks via app. Five years ago, that would've been a headline feature. Today, it is the baseline operators need to meet user expectations.
Twenty years of trusted collaboration. That's what this upgrade really represents.
And yes, cake is always good. 🎂
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