I’ve just returned from Outdoorsy’s annual Outdoorsy Group Summit, where I moderated a panel discussion on new, startup, tech-heavy RV brands like Lightship, Noovo, and Grounded.
You may have already seen the tour of the Lightship AE.1 that I put out from the event, and there’s more to come on that front. But Outdoorsy dropped some big news of its own at the summit, and a lot of it points to the company expanding far beyond being just an RV rental company and into something more like a total mobility platform.
If you’ve been sleeping a little on just how big Outdoorsy has become since it launched 11 years ago, co-founder Jeff Cavins said the company has now booked $4 billion in total transactions and more than 10 million nights outside. He also said they’ve expanded, or are about to expand, into Japan, Korea, Australia, Europe, and more.
Fewer RVs, on Purpose
One of the more interesting things I heard at the summit is that Outdoorsy has actually been reducing the number of RVs on its platform. The company says it has dropped about 45% of its RV rental listings in recent years.
Why would they do that? Because they want better vehicles for customers to choose from and fewer underperforming hosts.
Outdoorsy has also become a home for a lot of RV fleet owners who rent out multiple units, not just individuals listing one camper now and then. Honestly, I was pretty surprised by the number and size of these rental fleets. I talked with the owner of one major fleet on this week’s episode of the RV Miles podcast, so that’s worth checking out if you want a better sense of just how much this side of the business has grown.
Expanding Into Cars and Autonomous Rides
But the bigger story here is that Outdoorsy has broadened its scope even further in recent years.
The company has moved into peer-to-peer car sharing and fleet car rentals through its Ride.Auto platform and the Ride app. The idea is to offer more affordable cars for longer periods of time, outside of the massive rental companies like Hertz and Budget. That could be useful for somebody who has their own vehicle in the shop and needs something for more than just a day or two.
That market has been growing quickly, but the biggest news is that Outdoorsy is making a major leap into the autonomous taxi space.
You’ve surely heard of Waymo’s autonomous taxis, and Tesla’s Cybercab is now starting to move closer to reality. As more car brands develop self-driving capabilities, Outdoorsy seems to think there will need to be a centralized place to hail those rides, and they want to build that platform.
Because somebody still has to own these vehicles. Somebody has to manage them, maintain them, clean them, and insure them. Outdoorsy thinks its fleet owners are the right people to do that.
The Ride Mobile app has now been updated to allow users to get an autonomous taxi ride and then, if needed, extend that into a longer-term rental. The company’s hope is that its fleet owners will eventually buy Tesla Cybercabs and rent them out through the platform.
Outdoorsy says it has already placed the first order for 100 Tesla Cybercabs, and it has partnered with Lloyd’s of London to create a new insurance product built around per-mile coverage.
A Wild Idea That Could Come Back Around to RVs
It’s a wild world.
But you can also see how this could eventually come full circle. One day, autonomous RVs could make it possible to book a really fancy trip from Point A to Point B in a way that feels a lot more like hailing a ride than planning a road trip.
That’s obviously not here yet. But after hearing what Outdoorsy laid out at this event, it’s clear the company is thinking a lot bigger than RV rentals.
You can hear our 2021 interview with Outdoorsy co-founder Jeff Cavins on episode 182 of the RV Mile Podcast.
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