Why David should always fight back against Goliath

Life isn’t fair. So your mother told you when you were growing up, and the older you get, the more you realize her sage words are all too true. But you also realize the profound importance of fighting back against injustices.

Competition is what makes business exciting - everyone is always jockeying to be the first, the biggest, the brightest. But when the gloves come off and the punches fly, you realize that businesses don’t always play fairly.

Enterprise Rent-A-Car, the biggest car rental company in the world, has been waging a multifront war against Turo for over two years now, using misleading legislative tactics that show that they’re in to fight dirty.

Their narrative equates Turo hosts with corporate car rental companies and asserts that hosts should be taxed and regulated as such.

Enterprise has been aggressively perpetuating this story in state capitals around the US, using their sizable clout to tax, regulate and bully Turo out of existence.

A peer-to-peer car sharing marketplace, Turo connects people who need a car with folks who have one to spare.

It empowers people to offset the costs of these expensive assets, while creating a collaborative community and creating unparalleled choice for consumers, since our “fleet” is a vast network of privately owned vehicles — from daily drivers to exotic head-turners.

A study we conducted in early 2017 reported that over half (52%) of Turo hosts surveyed use their earnings to pay down their car loan.

As a result, the cars available run the spectrum from the affordable and practical to the extraordinary and rare, and the experience is personal, unique and categorically different from a rental car experience.

The most significant volley in Enterprise’s war of attrition came from the city of San Francisco, who, lobbied by Enterprise, recently sued Turo, claiming that we were dodging regulatory fees at San Francisco International Airport.

The lawsuit was filed despite California legislation explicitly differentiating peer-to-peer car sharing from car rentals, and Turo’s many olive-branch efforts to collaborate with SFO on a fair permitting regime.

Turo responded to these baseless claims assertively, counter-suing the city of San Francisco for unlawful and unconstitutional practices.

The most recent attack has been in Maryland, where Enterprise and the American Car Rental Association have pushed legislation that would define peer-to-peer car sharing hosts as rental car companies, imposing the same permitting and fee structures on both parties.

A new market

The American Car Rental Association tells the media they welcome competition, but their 2018 yearbook lists peer-to-peer car sharing as a top 10 industry threat that must be combatted.

Equating a multibillion-dollar corporation with a network of local car owners sharing their cars to help make ends meet is unfathomably unfair and unethical. Enterprise asserts that they just want a “level playing field.”

Equating a multi-billion dollar corporation with a network of local car owners sharing their cars to help make ends meet is unfathomably unfair and unethical.

Andre Haddad

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While they pass through the rental car tax to consumers, they fail to mention that they don’t pay sales tax on vehicle purchases (which everyday citizens certainly do) and enjoy tens of billions of dollars in annual savings from federal tax breaks nationwide.

For example, in Maryland, they save more in sale tax exemptions than consumers pay in rental car taxes – a tax which Enterprise simply passes onto the customer!

To truly level the playing field, Turo has been championing legislation that would recognize peer-to-peer car sharing as a distinct industry from car rental, and we’re firmly resolved to prove that innovation cannot be shoehorned into traditional frameworks.

The rental agency experience hasn’t changed in decades - you still linger in line at the rental counter, fill out form after form, and all for some lackluster car “or similar” bought wholesale from the manufacturer’s surplus supply.

It serves its purpose, but it couldn’t be more commodified.

Contrastingly, the peer-to-peer car sharing business model has been evolving for years and is now recognized as a legitimate threat to traditional models.

Sweating under the pressure, antiquated big businesses are trying to quash their modern, technology-enabled competition with their heavy-weight might instead of fighting where it counts — with innovation.

Until these big businesses invest in clever solutions to modern-day problems, they’re just fighting to preserve their outdated glory days. They’re using political and bureaucratic means to fight off their competition, knowing the free market will choose a better option.

Unfortunately they’re also acting like bullies, and no one likes a bully. Incumbent monoliths like Enterprise resist modern innovation, but innovation consistently wins in the end.

On behalf of all the Davids out there fighting their Goliaths, we fight with you.

We fight for our community, we fight for the innovators, we fight for the people turning towards a brighter, smarter future, and we fight against big business bullies in favor of a level playing field for consumers.