The tumult and the triumph
Overcoming pandemic pandemonium and aligning around a human-centric future
There’s something about the summertime that gets me really energized. The long days, warm nights, and zest for doing things and going places feels universally invigorating. It’s the peak season for travel, so any business in the travel sector has likely been prepping for months to meet the moment, making sure their offerings are front and center as consumers plan their summer vacations.
So as the temperatures rise and we head into what we expect to be our biggest season to date, I’ve been reflecting on the last few years, marveling at the unprecedented rollercoaster we’ve all been riding, and decided to dust off my pen to share where we’ve been, and where I believe we’re going.
Where we’ve been
The last four years have been nothing short of tumultuous. From 2020, when the world ground to a halt and travel businesses everywhere cratered, to 2021 with the initial collapse of Big Rental during the height of “revenge travel” as borders reopened, the travel and transportation industry has really gone through it.
2020 was an anomalous year for everyone — a year lost to time and one that disrupted consumer habits and economic trajectories for years to come. Turo, like so many businesses, experienced a profound slowdown that year, but roared back to life in 2021, due to three primary phenomena.
One, Big Rental had to sell off their fleets during the height of the pandemic, resulting in an unprecedented rental car shortage in 2021. Hertz even filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy in May 2020.
Two, the supply chain disruptions from the pandemic led to a severe microchip shortage, which had an outsized impact on vehicle production lines, so both rental companies and individual consumers faced challenges accessing new and used vehicles.
Three, a year of being confined to our homes made 2021 and 2022 marquee years for “revenge travel” — the phenomenon of getting out of town by hook or by crook as a stir-crazy population emerged from their lockdown haze. This was a heightened moment of making up for lost time, demonstrating the irrepressible human drive to do things and go places.
Taken together, Turo bounced back from its pandemic-induced slumber, given our unique position of connecting hosts with guests. Consumers who couldn’t find a rental car flocked to Turo for their travel needs, and our strong differentiators on selection, convenience, and experience empowered us to reach — and retain — a larger audience than ever before.
Another consequence of those supply chain disruptions and economic volatility, however, was a dramatic inflation of car prices, both new and used. From January 2020 to May 2023, new car prices grew by 30%, from an average of $39,000 in January 2020 to $51,000 by May 2023. And while those prices have finally started to cool in 2024, helping to slow the crippling speed of inflation over the last few years, the average price for a new car in 2024 is still north of $47,000, and $27,000 for a used car, straining everyday consumers. Compounding the strain, the cost of auto insurance is surging, fueling inflation more than expected. This year, auto insurance prices rose by an unadjusted 2.7%, with year-over-year prices increasing by 22.2%, making it the largest contributor to the Consumer Price Index (CPI) in 2024 — and thereby putting even more financial pressure on car owners.
This shocking convergence of phenomena in a relatively short period of time has demonstrated how disruptions to the automotive and travel industries can disrupt society at large. No one has been able to ignore inflation as the cost of living keeps creeping upwards.
It’s been humbling to say the least, to be at the mercy of these ebbs and flows of macro circumstances. But we at Turo have navigated this long season of intense change nimbly, growing net revenue from $142M in 2019 to $880M in 2023. Our community of active guests grew from ~1.3M as of the 12 months ending September 30, 2021, to ~3.5M as of the 12 months ending March 31, 2024, and active vehicles grew from ~161K to ~360K over the same time period. We’ve grown our unrivaled network to stretch into 14,000+ cities across five countries — after acquiring French car sharing leader, OuiCar, in June 2022, and launching Turo Australia in December 2022 — and our extraordinary selection now spans over 1,600+ makes and models.
And while we still have many, many miles to go, I’m proud of where we’ve been, and how the team has navigated the choppy waters of a volatile and unpredictable economy.
Where we’re going
As we look to the road ahead, I remain grounded in our longstanding mission of putting the world’s 1.5 billion cars to better use, and more committed than ever to rally our team around this charter. With the confluence of everything I just described — the soaring cost of car ownership, consumer exhaustion over the Big Rental status quo, the tireless human drive to go places and do things — achieving our mission is more relevant than ever.
And we’re making progress. We’ve just announced a suite of over 70 key product updates that we believe will help us cement our position as the leader in car sharing and further differentiate us from Big Rental.
On the consumer side, travel is increasingly expensive, and people crave change. The status quo of the last 60+ years of Big Rental has yielded a common, commodified experience that is devoid of innovation. Turo is bringing a refreshing wind of change to the industry, offering the opportunity to skip the rental counter and rent just about any car, just about anywhere. We just launched an innovative feature that lets customers browse all of the vehicles available on the Turo marketplace, regardless of date or location, which is the first of its kind in the car rental or car sharing space. You can also compile “Favorites” lists to share with your travel buddies, so you can curate cars you want to drive rather than just get whatever happens to be available. And you can browse “Collections” of cars, like “Electric elite,” “Sensational supercars,” “Rugged 4x4s,” “Vintage Americana,” or “Modern muscle,” to inject more fun into the car rental experience. We’re developing software that empowers you to find exactly what you want, and connects you with people who can provide you with a truly novel and memorable experience. Turo is the new way of thinking about car travel. It’s a way to drive your dream car, or test drive a car before you drop $50k on it, or find the perfect car that checks all the boxes for your family vacation.
And on the host side, the cost of car ownership and its outsized effect on the CPI speaks for itself. Our hosts need a reliable platform to build evermore sophisticated businesses and create exceptional experiences for their guests. I’m super excited about the launch of Turo Host Services, which offers bespoke financing and insurance products custom-built by our partners for Turo hosts, enabling them to grow their businesses more efficiently than ever before.
While we focus on continuing to empower hosts to build their businesses, we’ll also continue to raise the bar on convenience, consistency, and reliability, so we can deliver the best possible experience to our guests. Hospitality is more than just greeting a guest with a smile. Hospitality is overdelivering on their expectations, so we’re very focused on weaving in the highest levels of convenience, consistency, and reliability into our host’s offerings. We recently moved to 100% instantly bookable trips, since that’s what guests expect when booking a car. We continually raise the bar on vehicle quality. Our hosts are creative innovators, and when we give them the tools, services, and guidance they need, they deliver. To date, Turo hosts have earned over $4 billion on the platform, and there’s so much more economic value to be unlocked looking ahead.
And so, moving forward, we’re focused on ascending the mountain of our mission to put the world’s 1.5 billion cars to better use. It’s a big trek, but it’s a worthwhile one, because “better use” goes beyond its utilitarian underpinnings. To us, better use means creating more value — whether that’s economic value for hosts, or more enriching, personalized, convenient, and ultimately, valuable experiences for guests.
The automotive future — bridging the digital and the visceral
While I’m obviously focused on the future of Turo, I can’t help but observe the remarkable trajectory of the automotive, transportation, and travel industries.
The fervor and falter of electric vehicles, for example, has been something to behold. EVs were the belles of the ball for the last few years, with OEMs racing to bring EVs to market, fearing for their lives and lack of relevance. But lately EV fever has cooled, with some EV sales growing less quickly than expected, consequently leading to price cuts and challenging profitability.
EV growth may have hit a speedbump, but there’s no doubt that the industry is moving toward electric. As of the end of 2023, electric vehicles represented 9% of Turo vehicle listings, and 15% of our bookings for 2023 came from trips in cars fueled by alternative energy sources.
What does the EV narrative teach us? Not to pay too much heed to sensationalized headlines, for one. But two, I think it demonstrates a shift away from hardware, and a renewed focus on software. Nowadays, most EVs can go from zero to 60 in 3 seconds — it’s become old hat. With combustion engine technology becoming less important and battery technology becoming more democratized, the buzz is around the experience of driving and how you move through the world.
Look at robo taxis, and the abundance of connected screens in cars these days. The allure of these technologies is ease, effortlessness.
So as we look ahead into the transportation future, I expect software innovation to continue to outshine hardware, and that ease of experience and seamless digital integrations will continue to be more important to consumers than the analog and the visceral. Smooth and easy will win the day.
But while we want everything to be easy, we still crave the analog and visceral. Remember the irrepressible phenomenon of revenge travel in 2021. We long to go places and do things — in the real world. This urge to move is instinctive; we crave being in the driver’s seat, if not literally, then certainly figuratively. Digital will continue to dominate, but we’ll continue to find triumph in travel.
