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Kyte wants to build the foundation for autonomous rental car delivery Posted on : Oct 06 - 2021
Kyte, a fleet-logistics platform that allows customers to order rental cars delivered right to their doors, has raised a $30 million Series A round. In the short term, the startup wants to expand into new cities, countries and verticals, but the long-term goal is to build out a platform that can deliver vehicles via teleoperation or an autonomous system.
“We need the foundation of a fleet operating system and a technology layer that is able to manage both the fleet now as well as a fleet of teleoperated vehicles or autonomous vehicles in the future,” Nikolaus Volk, co-founder of Kyte, told TechCrunch. “Part of that is really building the data platform that includes sensing and telematics capabilities, and really supports teleoperated launches in the future.”
To be clear, Kyte isn’t working on the software or hardware that will enable teleoperated or autonomous car delivery — there are plenty of companies already doing that, and Kyte says it’s in advanced conversations with multiple companies in the space with the goal of partnering on pilot deployments. Rather, it wants to ensure its fleet management system can connect to and enable future technologies. Kyte plans to begin testing out teleoperated delivery in 2022 and bring a small subset of the fleet to one or two markets by 2023.
But first, the company has to set up the commercial use case, drive unit economics and enhance the customer experience for rental car deliveries before it jumps into the “sexy” part of the business model.
Currently, Kyte operates in nine U.S. cities, including Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, New York City, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C. At the start of October, the startup expanded beyond Manhattan and into Brooklyn.
Kyte positions itself as the solution for all urban trips that are longer than general ride hailing. About 80% of its trips instantly leave the city environment for a few days, so long weekend trips are Kyte’s bread and butter. But as the company eyes expansion into more cities and, by next year, more countries, it also looks to expand its use cases.
Ludwig Schoenack, one of Kyte’s three co-founders, told TechCrunch the startup is pursuing a business travel vertical, wherein customers arriving in a new city might arrange for their rental car to meet them at their Airbnb or hotel. Kyte is also doubling down on longer-term rentals, or rather subscriptions of up to 12 months.
The car subscription model is quickly cropping up in many markets, and in a few cases, like U.K.-based Onto, it revolves around providing alternative access to electric vehicles. Schoenack and Volk say that because they are very customer-centric, their main goal is not to necessarily drive EV adoption, but rather to listen to what the customer needs. If the majority of Kyte users are Americans taking weekend trips outside the city, it stands to reason that range anxiety, warranted or not, is something the company has to keep in mind. View More