Car Sharing 2.0 | boldventureblog

Have you ever wished for a taxi-like experience, but without the cost and depressing atmosphere of an actual taxi ride? Wundercar might have found the answer to that wish and started with an App last month in Hamburg and Berlin. The Hamburg-based startup founded by Gunnar Froh (former Airbnb) describes itself as a ride-sharing service offering more than just a simple ride from A to B but an urban experience with local drivers. The corresponding slogan: Catch a ride – Create a story.

For those of you not familiar with the ride-sharing economy, ideas like Wundercar’s aren’t exactly new – examples like Lyft or Sidecar are two relatively well-known services that are already operating in the US. However, in Europe there seems to be a lack of short-ride sharing hops. There are short time rental services like Car2Go and DriveNow, or companies like BlaBlaCar and Mitfahrgelegenheit for longer journeys but nothing yet that really offers an on-demand service.

The Wundercar model is pretty simple. All rides are on-demand and free by default. If the passenger thinks the driver and journey were worth paying for, they give a donation. The corresponding App suggests a certain donation (based on what other passengers donated for the same distance) and Wundercar will take a 20 percent cut. That way, Wundercar bypasses all the recent turmoils about regulatory issues in the car-sharing economy in Germany.

And for those that simply never pay for their rides, there is a feedback system for passengers and drivers. Too many bad reviews and there’s a good chance that people will simply stop picking you up. The same goes for drivers: only Wundercar pre-certified drivers with primarily positive feedback are allowed into the community. “At the end of the ride it’s up to the guest if they want to make a donation to the driver. The basic assumption is that you ride for free, but if you liked it you can make a donation through the app, but you have to keep in mind that the driver will rate the guest at the end”, Froh told TNW.

While Wundercar is launching its service first in Berlin and Hamburg, the Company is already targeting other German locations as well as international cities like London – a metropolis with virtually no viable alternative to incredibly expensive cab rides for short hops across town. The climate for expansion seems favorable, as Wundercar has secured a seven-digit seed funding amount in late 2013 and with no other competition in Europe in sight.

Froh’s experience at Airbnb will help the Company to fight against upcoming regulatory hurdles that may arise in the future. “With Airbnb, I spent a good part of my time meeting with city representatives in Hamburg, Berlin and other cities…making proposals for how to adapt local regulations, and we’re now again doing that in this context” he said in an interview with TNW. Having managed to become a viable, safe alternative to unnecessarily expensive cab rides in Berlin and Hamburg already represents quite an achievement for a company that has been founded only in fall 2013. I truly hope that they can pull off to bring their model to other cities as well – Car sharing 2.0 at its best.