Breeze Shifts Focus to Fleet Management

Breeze is hinting at a sole focus on fleet management in the rideshare market, after suspending its program for new drivers, according to the company’s website.

“Breeze offers fleet management technology that modernizes car ownership by making it flexible and accessible to all. Stay tuned for more details…,” Breeze wrote on its site. The San Francisco-based startup also wrote that “it’s still business as usual for current customers,” and will continue providing all regular support.

The company’s Co-Founder and Chief Executive Ned Ryan, previously told attendees at Auto Finance Innovation in May that the company hoped to build a fleet-management platform, to increase its lease portfolio and “monetize those vehicles in efficient ways.”

“How do we use data to make recommendations to our customers to better create products? One possible answer is to share the vehicle to reduce the cost of that lease,” he said at the conference. “Those are things you only have the opportunity to do — and do intelligently — as a fleet owner,” he said. “There is a ton of technology that goes into building that, and that is what Breeze’s sole focus is going to be.”

Founded in 2014, Breeze’s original business model was like a marriage between the car rental business and traditional car leasing, Ryan previously told AFN. The company provided short-term leases on hybrid vehicles for rideshare drivers looking to supplement income for a short time.

“There is a clear void in the market between rental car offerings, which has an average reservation period of about four days, and the next term product you’d see, which is a one- or two-to-three year lease,” Ryan said in April.

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