San Francisco Car Rental Startup Kyte, Once Seen as Hertz Rival, Shuts Down (sfchronicle.com) 43
Kyte, a rental car startup once touted as a modern alternative to Hertz, has shut down after years of rapid growth followed by mounting financial troubles. From a report: Founded in 2017, the San Francisco company built its brand by delivering rental cars directly to customers' doors, eliminating the paperwork and long waits of traditional counters. At its peak, Kyte operated in 14 U.S. cities, managed a fleet of more than 2,000 vehicles and raised nearly $300 million from backers including Goldman Sachs and Ares Management.
"once seen as Hertz rival" (Score:2)
By who?
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If their direct-to-customer model were successful, Hertz would just copy it, subsidize theirs, and drive Kyte out of business. You know, the Microsoft Technique (who stole it from IBM who stole it from the robber-barons.)
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Do you not have that in America?
I've been using nationwide hire in the UK. They deliver sometimes pleasingly crap cars. Why pleasing? We if some arsehole cracks your bumper and fucks off, they appear to not give a shit. Works for me!
Re:"once seen as Hertz rival" (Score:5, Interesting)
And with any copying often the easiest way for a behemoth to do it is via acquisition, which is exactly how many VCs hope to exit.
This is something that took me a while to come to grips with because my natural reaction to nearly every startup idea is "If this actually IS a good idea why doesn't MS / Google /Amazon /Meta / Computer Associates etc already do it. Or, as you said, they COULD do this immediately if they chose."
And the reality is that it's often easier even for these big companies to let other people take the risks and then just acquire promising upstarts than to roll the dice themselves from scratch.
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If their direct-to-customer model were successful, Hertz would just copy it
The last time I had a Hertz rental it was selected online on a website, dropped off at my door at home, and picked up from outside of an industrial park where I left it after leaving the Volvo dealership with a new car and calling the number to tell them where the car was and who had the key. Hertz do offer a direct to customer model in many regions, as do many of their competitors.
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Re:"once seen as Hertz rival" (Score:4, Interesting)
Kyte billed themselves as a convenience and hassle-free experience for rental cars. they provided door-to-door delivery and pickup. They had an app, and argued that Enterprise and Hertz were still wedded to brick and mortar and "didn't have the technical foundation that customers demand." Also, from this Forbes puff piece [forbes.com], they 1) didn't do any airport service because their customers already caught an Uber or Lyft somewhere, were going to offer door-to-door drop off and pickup service (which Enterprise already offered), but most importantly they "believed autonomous cars and autonomous fleets were the future".
ANd right away there's the problem. They competed in a market that was heavily commoditized. They chose to not compete in the market where the largest share of rental cars were, airports, by assuming that their customers "would just take an uber to some place then pick up a Kyte later". But if the customer took an Uber some place, they could take an Uber to the next place too? Or the customer doesn't want an Uber, so they rent a car at the airport. Then they assumed that customers demanded a bigger tech stack, which clearly they didn't. They offered a Hassle free service, but Hertz and Enterprise already do that; you can book your car and just go get it without having to go to the counter now. And then they wholly relied on autonomous cars to take off and become a robotaxi service, but A) that's taken a lot longer to roll out, B) they weren't building the infrastructure to run a robotaxi service, and C) the companies that are (Waymo, Tesla, etc.) are operating their own services, meaning they had no way to become a robotaxi service.
Further they had to buy cars, so they financed them; they carried $450M in debt despite being unable to service the debt to buy their fleet of cars.
Actually, it's pretty obvious why this didn't work.
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they provided door-to-door delivery and pickup. They had an app
I don't understand how this makes them different to Hertz. My last Hertz rental was dropped off at my home (within 4 hours of me renting it using an app), and was picked up from an industrial park a few weeks later after I abandoned it outside of a Volvo dealership where I went and got me a shiny new car. Unfortunately I couldn't use the app to tell them where I left the key, I had to call customer service for that.
Maybe the USA is different, but from my European perspective I struggle to understand why Kyt
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they provided door-to-door delivery and pickup. They had an app
I don't understand how this makes them different to Hertz. My last Hertz rental was dropped off at my home (within 4 hours of me renting it using an app), and was picked up from an industrial park a few weeks later after I abandoned it outside of a Volvo dealership where I went and got me a shiny new car. Unfortunately I couldn't use the app to tell them where I left the key, I had to call customer service for that.
Maybe the USA is different, but from my European perspective I struggle to understand why Kyte thinks it was unique.
But they did it WITH AN APP!!!! WITH AN APP MAN!!!!!!!1!!1!!111!!!ONE!!!!!
Lets ignore that most car rental companies have had a terrible app for years now... We tend not to use them because they offer feck all value over using a simple web site and are less reliable.
This is just another wheel in a long line of wheels falling off the "but it's an app, such innovation!" band wagon. It didn't really have a USP as traditional companies have been doing deliveries for years, you've just had to pay for it an
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By whom?
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Themselves, and gullible investors.
Hertz beat them? (Score:3)
You have to totally suck if Hertz beats you. I mean, the risk with Hertz is that they report your call as stolen after you leave the block.
If a company known for falsely accusing their own customers of crimes beats you, you got problems.
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that will be an $250 damage clam + lost of use fees.
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Don't forget using an AI to "inspect" your car when you return it, and find damage (that they charge you for) that a) was there before you picked up the car, or b) is not there now.
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You have to totally suck if Hertz beats you.
Microsoft fucks over users, does that mean Linux totally sucks? Hertz is a mega corporation offering a wide range of logistics services and the largest car company in the world. It isn't a case of sucks, it's a case of the underdog always starting on the back foot.
Unless you can get in with the airports (Score:2, Insightful)
It's another industry that inevitably consolidates. Which is why hertz can do terrible things like use a scanner to find the smallest most microscopic blemish after you rent a car and charge you $500 for it.
Sure you can try somebody who isn't using the scanners but give it a few months and
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It must be pretty embarrassing (no wonder you post as an AC) when you make rsilvergun look like the smart one. [ajc.com]
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There is Touro as an alternative (peer to peer car rental). But it's rare that Touro beats the major rental companies on price. It mostly makes sense if you want to try out a specific car that wouldn't commonly be found on the rental lot.
Re:Unless you can get in with the airports (Score:4, Interesting)
There is Touro as an alternative (peer to peer car rental).
If your concern as a renter is that you're going to be dinged for a ding, just pay for the extra insurance upfront and be done with it. Turo is worse in this regard, because now you're dealing with your own auto insurance policy if you damage the car you've borrowed, and in many cases these are people loaning out their own personal vehicles where they're going to be even more persnickety about wear and tear that a real rental company is likely to let slide (such as scratches in the trunk area from luggage sliding around).
People tend to not read the fine print, but Turo's protection plans [turo.com] have a lot of "gotchas".
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Turo is the same as any other rental company in regard to damages and insurance. You either rely on your existing insurance or you spend more for the extra insurance from Turo.
One thing they do that's helpful is have you take photos all over the car with the app at check-in, unlike a traditional rental company where you can take photos and maybe tell the person at the gate about it but no guarantee the documentation will be accepted and properly noted.
Some renters are just renting their personal cars, but l
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It's another industry that inevitably consolidates.
It's doing anything but. Actually airports are only a small subset of the entire car rental industry. There is amazing competition from locations away from the airport because it turns out not everyone travels by plane. Hell my closest car rental place is an Avis about 100m walk from a train station in the suburb. They have a mom and pop rental next door providing competition. I actually need to go... to the airport to get a Hertz.
Last few times I've travelled I used small car companies. They provided a dro
enterprise we pick you up (Score:2)
enterprise we pick you up
Who? (Score:3)
I happen to live in San Francisco and I have never heard of Kyte. So, I'm not surprised they failed.
We have so many transportation startups founded here, Uber, Lyft, Getaround, Turo, Shift (RIP), and on and on. But never heard of Kyte!
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Right ?!
i care enough to know if my credit card has primary or secondary car insurance coverage, and to be ticked off that said coverage doesn't apply to Turo...
and i had never heard of these people (that i know of)
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We have so many transportation startups founded here
That may be why you've never heard of them. Why would you start in an oversaturated market?
Ouch, that ... (Score:1)
... Hertz.
Why Hertz, specifically? (Score:3)
What's special about Hertz that made Kyte be seen as a rival to Hertz, as opposed to other car rental companies?
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Maybe because it's the largest rental car brand in America? The only one larger is conglomerate of multiple brands. It's fairly typical for for media to compare any company to the most well known brand (even if it is notorious), and Hertz certainly has been in the media A LOT.
Wait what? (Score:3)
Startup that never made a profit, never had a significant market share, lost millions every year, has shut down?
That's shocking news!
Seriously though, how many people need a rental car delivered to their home?
I'd assume the vast majority of the rental car market is serviced from airport locations.
What are their customers supposed to do? Catch an Uber or taxi from the airport, and have their rental car delivered to their accommodation? Save the cost of hiring a ride by picking the car up at the airport.
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That's shocking news!
You joke, but it truly is. They had an app I could have sworn that would have meant investors would limitlessly throw money at them. Did they forget to say those two magic letters that makes every investor's penis twitch? A...I...?
Enterprise? (Score:2)
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I guess I did have one weird story from a Hertz dealer. They were attached to a Dodge dealership in a town we were passing through on vacation, and I had called ahead to a mechanic to get some emergency service done. We wanted to book another van for the night so we could make our plans for the evening. The Hertz outlet said they had no vans available, and even after telling them my sob story about being on vacation they said there was no way... they just didn't have one to rent.
I decide to go online to
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Many of the people who have had problems with Hertz have not damaged their cars or done anything else out of the ordinary. Hertz is noted for reporting rental cars stolen for no reason, leading legitimate customers to be stopped and hassled by police. They're also known for using laser scanners to spot microscopic dents, and then billing the previous customer for hundreds of dollars, even though the customer had never damaged the car. If you've had no problems so far, it's because you're lucky, not because
Re: Enterprise? (Score:1)
Some times its justa bad name (Score:2)