Shared mobility operators have spent years learning to manage the risks and opportunities they can see. This issue is about the ones they can’t.
In this issue
Weasels chewing through hoses is a million-dollar problem
How MyWheels stopped paying for careless drivers
Fleets that balance the grid
A Canadian town focuses on mobility needs of residents
Industry news from Berlin to Seoul, Brussels to Sydney
Weasels chewing through hoses is a million-dollar problem
Last year, weasels damaged over 250,000 cars in Germany, causing €157 million in losses. Their favorite target: coolant hoses under the hood.
For operators, that's a bigger problem than it sounds. A hose gets punctured overnight. A warning light appears on the dashboard. The next driver doesn't notice it or understand it and keeps driving. By the time the car breaks down, it's an engine replacement, not a coolant top-up.
“We’ve had customers lose more than 10,000 EUR to a single weasel bite.” ~Valdrin, INVERS Product Manager, Vehicle Operations.
That gap between a vehicle detecting a fault and an operator becoming aware of it is where the real cost lives. Up to 6.5% of support tickets are maintenance-related. Most of them didn’t have to become tickets at all.
Some operators are fighting back with technology that catches those warnings the moment they appear. Operators using it report cutting maintenance complaints by as much as 70%.
We go deeper on which signals close the gap, and how the same data catches smoking and risky driving, in Part 2 of our Car Sharing Tech Compass.
As MyWheel’s fleet grew toward 3,000 vehicles, so did the cost of careless drivers.
"Damages are one of the biggest cost drivers in car sharing," says Claire Sipkema-Oosterholt, the company's COO. "When we can keep those costs as low as possible, it allows us to grow faster and expand our fleet."
The fix is a system called CARMA, short for Car Misuse Algorithm. It analyzes driving events tracked by INVERS Driving Analysis (ie., speeding, harsh braking, hard cornering, sudden impacts), turns them into a single risk score to predict damage before it happens.
What sets MyWheels apart is what happens after the flag. Every flagged trip still gets reviewed by a person, not the algorithm alone. A team member checks each event against context, cross-referencing a sudden bump with map data to rule out something as simple as a pothole. The default response isn't punishment. It's a conversation, and in most cases, that's enough to change behavior.
The results so far: damage costs down by up to €40,000 a month, and disputes that used to come down to one driver's word against another's now get settled with data instead. Since the launch of CARMA, MyWheels has recorded zero injury accidents.
In an industry built on trust between strangers and a shared car, the most valuable thing MyWheels built wasn't a penalty system. It was proof.
A parked EV generating more revenue than a booked one sounds counterintuitive. It may also be where fleet economics are heading.
The idea is vehicle-to-grid, or V2G, where parked EVs feed stored electricity back into the grid when demand is high, then recharge when power is plentiful. Gunnar Froh, CEO of Wunder Mobility, framed it plainly in a recent LinkedIn post: fleet management is becoming energy management. During a peak pricing window, discharging a parked vehicle back into the grid can generate more margin than renting it out.
That business case is moving from theory to practice. In Utrecht, a partnership between Renault Group, car sharing operator MyWheels, and energy provider We Drive Solar launched Europe's first large-scale V2G car sharing project in 2025. Starting with 50 specially equipped Renault 5 E-Tech cars, the plan is to scale to 500 vehicles, enough to deliver 10% of the flexibility Utrecht needs to balance solar and wind energy at peak times.
The timing matters. Utrecht has one of the highest concentrations of rooftop solar in Europe, and on sunny afternoons, the local grid struggles to absorb all that power. A shared fleet that soaks up that surplus and releases it on demand could double as the city's energy infrastructure.
The V2G concept is not entirely new; it has been used in other applications. For example, Japanese utility company TEPCO and automaker Nissan have tested similar vehicle-to-grid concepts in Japan since 2017, though mostly through employee and corporate fleets rather than public car sharing.
In Berlin, car sharing operator MILES is exploring whether its fleet of electric vehicles could follow a similar path.
If your fleet could begin selling power back to the grid tomorrow, would your platform be prepared to book, track, and bill these transactions?
A Canadian town focuses on mobility needs of residents
Banff, Alberta is one of Canada's busiest resort towns, drawing 4.23 million visitors a year. But when the town rolled out its first car sharing pilot this month in partnership with Communauto, tourists were not the target. In fact, they're not even allowed to use it.
That's not an oversight.
In Banff, only 18% of residents use a car as their primary way of getting around. 13% own no vehicle at all. Boxed in by the Rockies, with tourist traffic clogging the roads for most of the year, going car-free here isn't really a lifestyle choice — it's being practical. What's been missing is a way to cover the moments that lifestyle can't manage on its own: the grocery run, the trip to the Calgary airport, hauling home a new couch.
That's the gap car sharing is well suited to fill, and it's often a different job than what car rental does. Rental mainly covers a temporary absence of a car. Car sharing makes it possible not to own one at all.
From zero to 600 EVs: one operator's unfiltered launch diary
From deploying 450 vehicles to building EV charging infrastructure for a 600-car fleet. Two chapters in, it's already essential reading for anyone building or scaling a fleet operation. Chapter 1 →Chapter 2 →
Sharing goes strategic in Berlin Berlin has published its first comprehensive, city-wide "Sharing Strategy 2035", placing car sharing into both traffic management and urban planning. More proof that shared mobility has moved from a niche topic to a strategic priority for public authorities. Read the strategy →
London car clubs Zipcar's UK exit has cut London's car club fleet from 2,800 to 300 vehicles. According to CoMoUK data, 9% of former car club members have already bought a replacement car, and 55% are considering it. Read the Guardian report →
Poland metropolitan governance Poland's president signed a law creating a metropolitan authority with legal power over transport planning and parking across Pomerania's 61 municipalities and 1.6 million residents. Read about the new law →
MOIA autonomous ride-pooling in Hamburg MOIA has launched autonomous ID. Buzz shuttle test rides in Hamburg, part of the government-funded ALIKE project with transit operator HOCHBAHN. Read MOIA's announcement →
SoCar and Krafton launch an autonomous driving venture South Korea's SoCar and gaming company Krafton are launching what's billed as the country's largest autonomous driving venture, valued at roughly $103M. Read the venture announcement→
AGL signs on to manage an EV subscription fleet Australian energy company AGL has partnered with subscription platform Karmo to manage its EV fleet and explore a vehicle-to-grid rollout. Read the partnership details →
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