Because the capital costs of purchasing and owning cars is huge. No startup is going to be able to compete with that. They literally need to use other peoples

Because the capital costs of purchasing and owning cars is huge. No startup is going to be able to compete with that. They literally need to use other peoples money. You could ask why AirBnB doesn't purchase apartments in New York and San Francisco. A distributed model where other people contribute their money, and the business makes money as an agency is well established in other fields. I know of many holiday properties where each individual apartment is privately owned, but the building is managed by a single entity. The owners wear the depreciation costs and interest charges (if using borrowed money) but get to keep the majority of the revenue from rentals, and any capital appreciation from the property, or wear any losses from a drop in value. In the same way, a startup can allow others to contribute the capital value, wear any depreciation, financing and insurance, and just take an agency fee. This is really not much different to other rental car companies who presumably lease all of the rental vehicles either off some central owner of the vehicles, or directly from the manufacturer. Or, perhaps they just have a large, revolving credit line which they use to purchase the vehicles. They certainly aren't going to own them, so it really comes down to a definition of title. I think the blurring here is that most people see car ownership as a strictly private-use phenomonen, whereas in property or boats, mixed private/investment or pure investment is much more common.