The Car Sharing Trend: Why It Is Growing Again After a Rocky Decade

Note: costs mentioned below are given in US dollars as a general point of reference — actual prices vary by country, currency, and local market.

At a glance

Car sharing in 2026, by the numbers

Published market forecasts point to growth, but they do not agree on the size of the market. IMARC Group values the global car-sharing market at $10.0 billion in 2025 and forecasts $26.0 billion by 2034, a 10.89 percent compound annual growth rate. Global Market Insights puts the market at $18.6 billion in 2026 and $35.3 billion by 2035, a 7.4 percent growth rate. Market.us estimates about $11.6 billion in 2025 and forecasts a 13.1 percent growth rate from 2026 to 2035. Mordor Intelligence measures the narrower peer-to-peer segment at $3.36 billion in 2026 and forecasts $8.82 billion by 2031.

Anyone weighing sharing against a purchase should read those forecasts beside real borrowing costs in our car finance section. The gap between the forecasts is too large to treat any one number as a settled market size. The estimates also do not all measure the same thing: Mordor Intelligence covers the narrower peer-to-peer segment, while the other forecasts describe the broader global car-sharing market. The useful takeaway is that all four published forecasts expect growth, not that there is one reliable headline figure for the industry's current value.

Why demand is rising: the cost of owning the car you already have

Turo's 2026 USA Road Report, issued May 21, 2026, argues that higher ownership costs are pushing consumers toward more flexible access to cars. Turo cited gasoline prices up 44 percent over the previous year, new-vehicle transaction prices at an all-time high of $50,326 and car insurance premiums up more than 30 percent since 2023 - our state-by-state look at car insurance rates in 2026 breaks that down. AAA's national average for regular gasoline was $4.4825 a gallon on September 24, 2026, compared with $4.4386 a week earlier and $4.0991 a month earlier.

Turo's survey of 2,005 US adults, completed May 8, 2026, found that 72 percent said a car was essential to their routine, 64 percent said ownership cost more than they would like and 51 percent agreed that ownership required financial sacrifice. Turo also reported that 74 percent had changed their behavior to save on car costs and 41 percent said rising costs were affecting their summer travel. For the ownership side of that arithmetic, see our car ownership budgeting guide and the state of auto loan delinquencies in 2026. Those figures show cost pressure in Turo's survey population, but they do not by themselves prove that consumers will replace ownership with car sharing.

What went wrong the first time

The mid-2010s free-floating boom - cars parked anywhere in a city, unlocked by app - burned through venture capital chasing scale before unit economics worked. Vandalism, parking disputes with cities, and the sheer cost of fleet maintenance across sprawling zones made the model unprofitable almost everywhere it launched. Car2Go, ReachNow and several European operators either merged, shrank dramatically, or exited markets entirely by the early 2020s.

What's actually working now

• Station-based sharing with fixed pickup/drop-off points, which keeps fleet logistics predictable and cuts the vandalism and "lost car" costs that killed free-floating models.
• Peer-to-peer platforms that let car owners offset payments by renting out their own vehicle, spreading fleet risk across thousands of individual owners instead of one company's balance sheet.
• EV-only fleets in cities with strong charging infrastructure, which cut fuel costs and often get preferential parking or access to low-emission zones.
• Residential and workplace fleets, where a building or employer subsidizes a small shared fleet as an amenity rather than trying to run a standalone profitable business.

Who actually saves money

The math favors sharing for low-mileage urban drivers who'd otherwise pay for a car that sits parked 95% of the time - insurance, depreciation, and a parking spot alone often exceed $3,000-$5,000 a year before a single mile is driven. It stops making sense once someone drives regularly for work, has irregular hours a station-based service can't cover, or lives somewhere availability is unreliable.

The insurance and liability wrinkle

Car sharing operators generally provide commercial insurance bundled into the rental price, but peer-to-peer platforms have had more friction: personal auto policies frequently exclude commercial use, so hosts need to confirm the platform's own coverage (not their personal policy) actually applies during a rental, and many insurers now offer specific rider policies for people who host regularly.

What happened to Turo and Getaround

Turo reported a 21 percent year-on-year increase in US bookings for trips taken between June and August 2026 in its May 21, 2026 USA Road Report. That growth came after a more difficult corporate period: TechCrunch reported on February 13, 2025 that Turo had withdrawn the IPO filing it originally made public in January 2022, and Bloomberg reported on April 16, 2025 that Turo then cut about 15 percent of its workforce, roughly 150 employees.

Getaround's position was more severe. TechCrunch reported on February 12, 2025 that the company abruptly shut down its US car-sharing operations because of liquidity problems while keeping its European business. Getaround's 2026 SEC filings show that its subsidiaries agreed on April 22, 2026 to sell the European operation to GoMore ApS and completed the deal on April 30 for about €31.5 million in cash and a non-interest-bearing promissory note, plus up to €2.3 million of additional tax-credit receivables. Under an April 8 agreement, Mudrick Capital treated about $121.7 million of senior secured debt as fully satisfied when the sale closed and provided up to $3 million in new wind-down funding. Getaround's board determined on June 5, 2026 that dissolution under Delaware law was in the best interests of the company and its residual claimants, and a special stockholder meeting was held on July 29, 2026.

What the 2026 evidence actually shows

There is a demand signal, but it needs qualification. Turo reported that US bookings for June through August 2026 were up 21 percent year on year, while its survey found substantial concern about the cost of owning a car. However, Turo is both the platform reporting the booking increase and the company behind the survey, so neither is independent evidence of the whole car-sharing market. The wider company record is mixed: Turo reported booking growth after shelving its IPO and cutting about 15 percent of its workforce, while Getaround shut its US operation in 2025 and moved toward dissolution in 2026. Published market forecasts still expect growth, but their estimates differ sharply enough that they should be read as forecasts rather than a precise measurement of what the industry is worth today.

Where the trend goes next

Expect continued consolidation around station-based and peer-to-peer models, more EV-only fleets tied to city low-emission zone rules, and closer integration with public transit apps so a single trip can combine a train, a bike, and a shared car booking. Robotaxi and driverless ride-hailing services are a related but distinct trend - they compete more directly with taxis and rideshare than with traditional car sharing, though the lines are likely to blur over the next five years.