With the emergence and surge in popularity of apps such as Airbnb, Uber and Lyft, it could be suggested that there’s a social transition to a sharing economy. Through Airbnb, you can share your house (or rent someone’s house) instead of a hotel, whereas Uber and Lyft enables a user to share a car or hire someone's car instead of a taxi. But what if you’re looking for a solution to replace the cost of commercial car hire? Enter Turo.

Turo, similar to Lyft or Uber, lets you rent cars from individuals or if you want to make extra money rent out your own car for others to use during a set period of time - just like a rental car.  To list your car: setup your account, describe the vehicle and upload images. You then decide what to charge for your vehicle, with guidance from Turo, but ultimately the value is up to you. The valuation process is fairly easy to use and can take as little as 10 minutes.

Reversing the process, it’s very easy to rent a car after creating an account. Just confirm your identity and eligibility and then you can find a car by searching dates, location, price, model and features. Once you find the right car, book it - and just like other sharing apps the owner has to approve (or decline) the booking, but some owners provide an instant-booking option, too. A pickup location will be determined, with airport meet and greets available if you’ve just stepped off a plane.

The app is very easy to use and it’s easy to get going and set your filters for cost and mileage per day and overall concept is great, depending on the location you can save anything up to 50% of what you would cost from a rental company. It does come with some limitations, including a vehicle mileage limit, which isn’t always the case from the majority of commercial rental car companies.

Like any rental service, there are certain risks. Make sure to check whether you are covered by the insurance, so read the small print and see whether you are fully covered should any accidents occur. Although Turo has a $2 million insurance package, we suggest you double-check you are covered and this should go for the person renting the car, so you have a peace of mind every time you hire your car to a unknown person.

Version 17.16:

This update
• features a clearer and better experience for adding another driver to a trip, both for hosts and their guests
• includes optimizations and fixes to make booking trips and managing listings on Turo easier