The money some users are making from renting their cars to rideshare drivers match or even exceed driver’s monthly car payments, new data from the rideshare services Turo and Getaround shows.
For example, the data — provided to Quartz — showed that Toyota Prius owners using Turo rented out their vehicles to the fleet a little over nine days a month on average between 2015 and 2016. Furthermore, those same owners made on average $305 per month, which actually made owning the car nearly profitable given that the average monthly car payment was $199.
One Turo user, Ryan Cwynar, told Quartz he bought a used $62,000 Tesla with a no-down-payment bank loan, and is making enough money off renting, the vehicle might end up being free.
“I have been driving a Tesla around for about half a year and to date I have paid nothing out of pocket for it,” Cwynar told the publication.
Tesla owners could even one day add their vehicles to a fleet autonomously in order to pay off the vehicle, Chief Executive Elon Musk said in his Master Plan, Part Deux, released in late July. That’s still thought to be a few years out, but it seems consumers are already capable of such feats today, bringing us closer to a future of shared car ownership.
For more auto finance insights like this, register for the upcoming Auto Finance Summit, Oct. 5-7 at Bellagio Las Vegas. Visit www.AutoFinanceSummit.com for more information.
