By Ceo Andre Haddad,Contributor,Jeff Fromm

Copyright forbes

Peer-to-peer car sharing has graduated from scrappy disruptor to serious scale. Gen Z embraces the sharing economy because it increases access and today so do plenty of older consumers with a Gen Z mindset.

Turo, founded in 2010 and led by CEO Andre Haddad since 2011, recently crossed $1 billion in revenue on roughly $3 billion in gross booking value, with 350,000+ active vehicle listings and 3.5 million active guests worldwide. The bigger question now isn’t whether the model works—it’s how a marketplace like this keeps compounding (if you don’t know Turo think Airbnb for cars).

In a conversation with Haddad and Rory Brimmer, Turo’s UK managing director, three growth engines emerged: a supply flywheel built on entrepreneurship and co-hosting, demand fueled by cross-border travel (particularly U.S. guests in the UK), and product innovation that helps guests discover the exact car—and technology—they’re curious to try.

Turo Founder/CEO Andre Haddad

UK Managing Director, Rory Brimmer

A supply flywheel powered by entrepreneurship

Haddad is quick to frame Turo as a utilization story. “Our mission from the very beginning has always been around tapping into this opportunity of the underutilized cars that belong to people everywhere,” he told me. “Cars are utilized less than 10% of the time, on average.” In an era of rising ownership costs—“the price of new cars has gone up significantly in recent years,” he said—the idea of a car paying its own way lands with both casual owners and professional hosts.

What’s changed lately is how hosts expand. “We have our most established hosts taking on the management of other people’s cars,” Haddad said. “It’s grown into co-hosting—friends, neighbors, family. That’s why we have so many multi-car hosts.” The model mirrors short-term rentals: some vehicles are owned, others are managed. Either way, the effect is the same for guests—more choice, closer to where and when they need it.

Choice itself is a differentiator. “It’s cheaper, better, faster, more convenient,” Haddad said of the guest experience versus traditional rental counters. “You get to choose the car that you really want to drive”—down to make, model, even color or engine spec—“without waiting in line, without paperwork, all through the app.”

Cross-border demand as a growth multiplier

Turo’s global account architecture (one account works across the U.S., Canada, the UK, France, and Australia) is translating into measurable cross-border flow—especially among Americans in the UK. “Year over year, we’ve seen an 8% increase in the number of Americans using Turo in the UK over the last couple of months,” Brimmer told me. “About 20% of our bookings in the UK are actually Americans.”

That pattern reflects longer stays and new reasons for travel. “Americans are coming to the UK not just for a week-long trip anymore,” Brimmer said. “They already have the Turo app on their phone, so when they’re here for a period—work, extended visits, even home-buying—they use us for mobility.” He credits behind-the-scenes plumbing as much as front-end polish: “We’ve done a lot of heavy lifting to make insurance and verification compatible across countries, so once you’re verified in one market, you can use Turo across all the markets where we operate.”

For a marketplace, this matters more than a marketing campaign: cross-border guests thicken demand in shoulder seasons, diversify the kinds of cars that book, and improve host economics. It also gives Turo a rubric for geographic expansion: open where Americans (and other core segments) already travel, then let the network effects do the rest.

Turo’s UK team is leaning into that American appetite with a new video campaign seen here designed to demystify British roads for stateside visitors. Fronted by UK TV personality Freddie Browne—”the ultimate English gentleman,” as Brimmer describes him—the humorous, quintessentially British guide tackles everything nervous US travelers worry about: roundabouts, narrow country lanes, and the unwritten rules of UK driving etiquette. “We know driving on the left can feel intimidating at first,” Brimmer said, “but this campaign is about giving Americans the confidence and the inside knowledge they need in an entertaining way. The beauty of the UK, especially this time of year, is beyond London and Edinburgh—and with Turo, you can open the app the moment you land and pick up a car to explore the countryside, the villages, all of it.”

Product innovation that follows how people plan

If “why” you travel is shifting—events and experiences increasingly anchor trips—then discovery has to adapt. Turo’s answer: browse-first search. “We innovated on our search experience… search without dates,” Haddad said. “People can browse cars anywhere, explore destinations, and then set their timing—because the car is driving the trip logistics.” For guests planning around a festival, a bike race, or a family visit, flexible browsing (rather than rigid date-first pickers) lowers friction and increases the odds they find something that fits.

Another magnet for demand: curiosity about new car tech. “EVs and plug-in hybrids represent a significant portion of our business,” Haddad said. “People use Turo to experience an EV for the first time—charging, daily range, the whole routine—before deciding to buy.” Autonomy features are a similar draw. “Consumers are very curious about self-driving capabilities,” he added. “As electrification and autonomy grow, Turo is a home for people who want to explore these technologies.”

The long-term implication is bigger than bookings. If the fleet of personally owned vehicles gets more connected and more capable of remote handoff, sharing becomes simpler. “As more cars become intelligent, electric, and self-driving,” Haddad said, “it’s going to enable even faster acceleration of this notion of sharing your vehicle with others.”

Category context—and a UK lens

Brimmer’s vantage point underscores the value of meeting guests where they already are. The U.S. rental market is 10x the UK by revenue, and Turo’s footprint roughly mirrors that proportion. But the UK plays an outsized role in cross-border utilization because Americans understand the brand at home and can land with their existing account and habits intact. “We’ve always wanted an app that can work everywhere, for everybody,” Brimmer said. “If you’re a car owner in London, we want the whole world of travelers to be able to book your car—not just local neighbors.”

That global posture also creates room for city-specific product experiments and marketing. The more Turo can match inventory to nuanced use cases—urban EVs, countryside SUVs, family haulers, weekend sports cars—the more frequently guests discover a match that feels tailor-made, rather than one-size-fits-all.

What drives the next $1 billion

Marketplace businesses compound when they get a handful of flywheels spinning in sync: better selection attracts more guests; more demand improves host earnings; stronger earnings invite more supply. Turo’s version adds three twists:

Entrepreneurial supply. Co-hosting and multi-car operators professionalize service levels while expanding coverage and variety.

Borderless demand. A single account and harmonized insurance unlock effortless usage across countries, raising utilization without linear marketing spend.

Discovery that mirrors intent. Browse-first search and tech-forward inventory help guests find “the right car for this trip,” whether that’s a first-ever EV weekend or the exact minivan they drive at home.

Haddad’s summary of the value proposition reads like a cue card for continued growth: “We’re bringing an entirely new model for consumers to get access to cars,” he said. “It’s a breath of fresh air compared to the traditional rental experience—cheaper, more convenient, and you actually get the car you want to drive.”

Brimmer sees the same thing from across the Atlantic: “There’s more value when our marketplace exists in more places,” he told me. “That’s the differentiator: global access that works the same for everyone.” And if curiosity is the on-ramp, Turo’s inventory is the hook. As Haddad put it, “We have pretty much every EV and plug-in electric model you can imagine on Turo.” For a billion-dollar marketplace, that’s the simplest growth plan of all: make the next discovery one tap away—and make sure the right car is waiting when the guest arrives.

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