- Car rental app Turo, which lets users rent individuals’ private cars, was allegedly used to obtain the vehicles allegedly used in this week’s New Orleans attack and the explosion at the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas. A company spokesperson said it is working with law enforcement.
Car rental app Turo was thrust into the spotlight this week as both the vehicle allegedly used in the suspected terrorist attack in New Orleans and the car explosion at the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas were rented using the app.
Here’s what we know about the unique car rental company:
The San Francisco–based company, previously named RelayRides, is like Airbnb for cars. The app matches “guests,” or users, with people looking to rent out their car for extra income. As opposed to a traditional car rental experience, Turo lets users skip the line at the airport and pick up keys from an in-person “host,” or from a lockbox. It also lets users unlock their rental car with the Turo app, according to its website.
Another distinguishing feature of Turo is that it lets users rent an exact type of vehicle, instead of a class of vehicle as many competing traditional rental agencies offer.
The company offers many types of rides from Jeep, Tesla, and upscale brands like Porsche. Its longtime CEO, former eBay executive Andre Haddad, previously earned $11,000 in less than a year by renting out five of his own vehicles, including an Audi R8 and three Teslas, using the app, Business Insider reported.
“We are actively partnering with law enforcement authorities as they investigate both incidents. We do not believe that either renter involved in the Las Vegas and New Orleans attacks had a criminal background that would have identified them as a security threat,” a Turo spokesperson said in a statement to Fortune. “We remain committed to maintaining the highest standards in risk management, thanks to our world-class trust and safety technologies and teams that include experienced former law enforcement professionals.”
Detective Rich Wistocki, who served as a SWAT team member with the Naperville, Ill., police department for more than two decades, told Fortune that because Turo doesn’t necessarily require an in-person interaction to get a car, it could have been seen by perpetrators as more anonymous and easier to trick using a VPN or other tools.
Yet Wistocki, who teaches law enforcement officers about investigating cyber crime, said this is not exactly the case.
“All of this stuff is IP-based, email-based, geolocation-based, and it’s easily trackable in an investigation,” he said. (Wistocki is not currently involved in investigating the New Orleans attack or the Cybertruck blaze.)
While Turo is nontraditional, it still requires users to enter their phone number, email address, and driver’s license information in order to rent a vehicle. Although in most cases approval is immediate, in others the app will ask for license photos, a selfie of the user holding their license, or a picture of the user’s passport for additional verification, according to the Turo website.
The app has about 3.5 million active users, as of Sept. 30, 2024, according to the company’s latest filing with regulators. It counts the number of active guests as those with at least one trip during the trailing 12-month period. Hosts who have rented their cars earned more than $4.8 billion on the platform since its inception, Turo told investors.
The company warned that its business could be harmed by violent or criminal activities of hosts and guests and that it cannot conclusively verify the identity of users who book on the platform, nor does it screen for third parties who might be there for a car trip booked by someone else. Instead, the company reported to investors that it focuses trust and safety processes on guests to reduce the risk of car theft and accidents.
“We conduct certain trust and safety screening processes to flag and investigate suspicious activities and in an attempt to prevent guests with certain criminal backgrounds from accessing our services,” the company wrote in a filing. “These processes are beneficial but not exhaustive and have limitations due to a variety of factors, including laws and regulations that prohibit or limit our ability to conduct effective background checks in some jurisdictions, the unavailability of information, and the inability of our systems to detect all suspicious activity or human or technical error or delay in addressing suspicious activity.”
The company filed for an IPO in 2021 but has yet to go public. Turo reported $879.8 million in net revenue and a $14.7 million profit in 2023, according to TechCrunch. The company is valued at around $1.5 billion and sports nearly 1,000 employees, according to PitchBook. Among its investors are Canaan Partners, Trinity Ventures, August Capital, and Google Ventures, according to PitchBook.
President Biden said in a Wednesday statement to reporters at Camp David that law enforcement and the intelligence community were investigating whether the Las Vegas and New Orleans incidents were linked, but have yet to find a connection. Las Vegas Sheriff Kevin McMahill said he believed it was a “coincidence” that both the vehicles used in New Orleans and Las Vegas were rented via Turo.
The suspect in the terrorist attack in New Orleans, Army veteran Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar, left at least 15 dead after he allegedly drove into a crowd on Bourbon Street in the early hours of New Year’s Day. The suspect was later killed in a shootout with police. The FBI said in a news conference Thursday that the suspect acted alone.
In Las Vegas, the driver of a Tesla Cybertruck died and seven people were injured after the vehicle, which was carrying firework mortars, camp fuel canisters, and other explosive devices in its bed, exploded in front of the Trump International Hotel. The deceased driver of the car that exploded is reportedly Matthew Livelsberger, a highly decorated U.S. Army Green Beret who deployed twice to Afghanistan, officials said Thursday.
