# Upshift

Fractional EV car subscriptions: the future of car non-ownership

## Elevator pitch
Upshift is a flexible, convenient, and affordable alternative to leasing a car. Subscribe to a plan that you can upgrade, downgrade, cancel, or pause anytime and only pay for the days you drive. A hybrid or electric car will be seamlessly delivered and parked next to your doorstep on the days you need it. It will be waiting for you with your own driver profile already set up, clean, and fueled/charged. At the end of your use just park it and walk away. We'll take it from there.

- Canonical URL: https://wefunder.com/upshift
- Entity ID: wefunder:company:112688
- Last updated: 2026-06-12T05:00:45Z
- Generated at: 2026-06-12T15:38:15Z

## Quick facts
- $2.7M raised from MINI (BMW), Ford, Third Sphere, Climate Capital & angels.
- Reinventing car leasing for low mileage drivers: a $630B new fractional car subscription market
- Team: went to MIT, UC Berkeley, did YC, and worked at Uber, Fair, Zipcar, Meta.
- $435k+/year revenues, 2X annual growth, 97% retention. $1M+ all-time revenues.
- $805 acquisition cost, $5,724 lifetime value
- Raising $3M to expand to DC market, electrify fleet & add remote car delivery tech (teleoperations)
- 829,875pounds CO2 reduced from our EV fleet — like taking over 88 cars off the road for a year

## Active fundraises
- wefunder:fundraise:61197: 4(a)(6) successful (USD)
- wefunder:fundraise:76370: 4(a)(6) successful (USD)

## Story
Car ownership needs an upgradeYour car is like a part of you that lives on the street. Every time you go to your car, you are constantly worried. Is that a new noise? Did someone just damage my car again? Did I get another parking ticket? You are locked into years of payments – an average of $10,728/year ($894/month). That's $675,000 over your lifetime on car payments, maintenance, insurance and parking to have a car on standby. 124 million Americans drive less than 10,000 miles/year. Half of all car owners are driving half as much – and have all the same costs and worries. EVs have the added challenges of range anxiety and charging. Most people in cities only have 1 car (if any). They have no "backup" gas car for longer trips - and no garage to charge. The average EV owner spends $65,000 on a car they drive 5,300 miles/year! Sources: https://newsroom.aaa.com/asset/your-driving-costs-fact-sheet-august-2021/ and https://www.metromile.com/blog/metromile-auto-insurance-2020/ and https://www.nber.org/papers/w28451Fractional car subscriptions: the future of leasingLeasing hasn't been updated in over 100 years. It's time. Upshift is car leasing for the connected, autonomous, and electrified future. In the future, you won't own a car that sits parked 95% of the time. You will subscribe to a car that comes to you. That's Upshift. Subscribe to a plan that you can upgrade, downgrade, cancel, or pause anytime and only pay for the days you drive. An identical hybrid Toyota RAV4, Toyota Prius, Hyundai Ioniq 5 EV, or (soon) Tesla Model 3 will be seamlessly delivered and parked next to your doorstep on the days you need it. It will be waiting for you with your own driver profile already set up, clean, and fueled/charged. Drive whichever car you like, whenever you like - EV for around town and SUV for the mountains! Reliable and predictable – availability is guaranteed. At the end of your use just park it and walk away. We'll take it from there. As we scale to new markets, "your" car will always be ready for you, anywhere you go. We've built a full technology stack to support members and operations:Member app: available on the App Store and Google Play. App enables members to book, set preferences, locate, unlock and drive their car.Delivery app: supports logistics, including tracking damage, parking, cleanliness, and members’ personal car preferences.Vehicle telematics integration: allows real time vehicle data and ability to locate, unlock, lock, and enable vehicle from apps or backend.Dispatch and fleet management software: manages delivery job assignments, damage reporting, trip data, and real time fleet and delivery status.Backend: handles billing, reservations, accounts, and day credit accounting.Remote control fleets: delivery via remote vehicle teleoperators (Q1 2023 pilot launch target) so cars can be delivered by someone sitting at a desk without anyone in the car.2x annual revenue growthWe are currently operating in San Francisco. Our annual revenue has doubled in the past year. We are on track to do over $425,000 in revenues this year. We are now raising $3M in seed financing to grow 3x in the coming year.*Future revenue projections are not guaranteed.We're asset light, in that we do not have a dedicated office and have had a remote team since before the pandemic. We own our cars to maintain consistency in the quality of experience and to simplify the hardware integration and pricing model. We make money on the sale of our cars when we refresh them. We are currently making $1,403/car/mo with a cost of goods sold of $808/car/mo (car depreciation, insurance, parking, cleaning, and delivery) for 42% gross margin.We expect revenues per car to go up over time and costs per car to come down. We see opportunities to drive higher utilization with increased midweek business demand and hybrid commuting. We can drive higher revenue per member by monetizing existing value added services and business model innovation. EV charging logistics and building our first parking/charging/cleaning hub we expect to add some expense in 2023. We expect costs to come down with economies of scale for car financing and insurance premiums. Delivery cost can come down with density of demand (shorter delivery times), remote vehicle teleoperations (no wasted time between deliveries), and improved logistics software and hardware technology. Urbanites seeking simplicityOur target members are 28–43 year old urban professionals without kids, and 55–65 year old urban empty nesters who drive less than 10,000 miles/year. Our members used to be frequent renters on carshare and rental car who found those options expensive, unreliable, and unpredictable. Or they are people who sold a car they rarely used looking for alternatives to car and insurance payments, maintenance, repairs, and parking hassles. Either way, they are considering leasing a car and looking for flexibility, without all the headaches.Our average member spends $424/month over 13.5 months for $5,724 lifetime value. Some have spent over $25,000 or been members over 6 years. 13% of Upshift members have invested over $105,000 in the company.Our growth is solidified with 97% retention and solid 5 star reviews on Yelp, Google Maps, Apple App store and the Google Play store. Our members love us. We are even changing how people think about cities!Fractional car subscriptions with simple, transparent pricingOur simple, transparent, all-inclusive monthly pricing means no big down payment, no hidden fees and no long term commitments. Subscribers drive any days they like and days roll over 1 month before expiring. Rates include full coverage insurance and all our concierge services like delivery, maintenance.On day one every new member pays $299 one-time activation fee, with 3 available subscriptions. Every new subscriber, on day one, is worth at least $598. Members are saving an average of 64% over the total cost of owning a car in San Francisco, especially when you consider it's $350/month just for a garage!Additional revenue streams$49/month: share your plan with a significant other.$49/month: pause your plan and retain your days.We make money on the sale of our vehicles. The last 4 Priuses we sold this fall for almost what we paid for them 4 years ago. We earned $16,500 per car after paying off the outstanding balance on our loans. Our depreciation cost over 4 years was as low as $49/car/month ($98/car/month average).Unlocking a $630B marketWe make $424/month per account. Average 13.5 month retention. Average LTV of $5,724 per account. In the US alone, there are 124M cars being driven <10,000 miles/month. 124M cars x $424/member/month is a $630B for fractional car subscriptions in the US In the top 10 US cities, we see an opportunity to replace 3.5M cars being driven <10,000 miles/year.3.5M cars x $424/member/month is a $18B market opportunity for fractional car subscriptions in the top 10 US markets.Based on our expansion requests, we see further opportunity to expand internationally and into smaller cities and suburbs as an alternative to having a second or third car.Expanding the market, big opportunityCurrent demographic represents ~½ of cars in cities (~3.5m cars in top 10 US markets). Developing our unmanned delivery tech will enable our expansion to lower density markets (smaller cities, suburbs) to replace 2nd and 3rd cars, and address an additional 120M cars driven <10,000 miles/year.Trend: Post-COVID behavior change “Two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, roughly six-in-ten U.S. workers who say their jobs can mainly be done from home (59%) are working from home all or most of the time.” This study from Pew Research Center (Feb 16, 2022) shows that "hybrid work" is here to stay. People no longer need a car to commute every day.Trend: High demand for green carsVehicle supply constraints are driving up the cost of cars$5/gallon gas is driving demand for hybrid and electric carsTrend: The world is unstabletraditional car financing locks you into expensive 6 year termsno one knows what the world will be like in 6 monthsPeople need an affordable, flexible, green alternative to car leasing. A car when you need it, that's gone when you don't. That's Upshift.Source:https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2022/02/16/covid-19-pandemic-continues-to-reshape-work-in-...Competition: Upshift is redefining car leasingUpshift is an alternative to leasing that offers more flexibility and convenience and up to 75% lower cost for low mileage drivers. Car subscription services Company Example(s): Autonomy, Hertz My Car, Subscribe with Enterprise, Porsche Drive, Audi Select, etc.Value: subscription services that offer flexibility to have a car month-to-month.Missing: Car subscription services do not provide concierge services like handling parking, refueling/charging, cleaning, repairs, and maintenance when you are not using it. Upshift does.Rental car delivery servicesCompany Example(s): KyteValue: rental car company that provides the convenience of delivery of a car for the dayMissing: Car delivery-services do not provide vehicle personalization, consistency, or predictability (see reviews above for reference, our members tell it best). Upshift does.Upshift is 58% cheaper than what it would cost to rent a fully insured SUV and have it delivered in San Francisco. Note that our rates may vary as we scale to new markets.Rental car Company Example(s): Enterprise, Avis, Hertz Value: rent a car by the day or week, mostly at airportsMissing: locations and hours are inconvenient, and cars tend to be generic and entry level.Carshare servicesCompany Example(s): Zipcar, Turo, GetaroundValue: easy access to a car by the hour, parked near youMissing: Carshare services are not affordable and do not offer consistent availability in every location, especially during peak times. Cars are often dirty, unmaintained, or low on gas. Upshift cars are affordable, offer consistent availability and are clean, maintained, and fully fueled or charged.—These service providers could and might pivot into our space but won't be able to easily do so, and it's not their business model either.— *Future projections are not guaranteed.There when you need it, gone when you don't— scaledWe are now raising $3M to scale up in San Francisco, launch the DC market, integrate remote control car delivery technology (teleoperations), and to electrify our fleet. Launching DC will give us an east-coast presence in another $1B addressable market.Remote-control fleets give us the ability to deliver unmanned vehicles to help us scale. A remote driver can cut operational costs and shorten delivery times by eliminating travel time between jobs. It can also enable expansion into lower density markets that are already signaling that they want our product with expansion requests.Our fractional car subscription already:replaces 4 cars for every car we add (4 members per car) reduces vehicle miles traveled by 47% by incentivizing less driving (usage based pricing)cuts emissions in half with an all hybrid and electric fleet (47 MPG fleet average)Our driving is net zero, and we are making our cities more livable by reducing the number of cars sitting underutilized on our streets.Electrifying our fleet will further reduce our carbon footprint as we scale making our operations net negative emissions. We plan to 3x the business in the next 12 months before raising a $10M Series A to launch 5 additional markets so we can scale our impact.**Financial Projections are not guaranteed.Upshift is a vehicle for changeWe believe that:We need a healthy planet. All our cars are hybrid or electric and reduce gas consumption by 2-4x. Our cars have gone almost 1M miles and we have eliminated 763,121 pounds CO2 to date, equivalent to taking over 81 vehicles off the road for 1 year. Streets are for people, not cars. Every shared car we put on the road takes 4 cars off the road.Everyone deserves dignity and respect. Our concierges are employees and we pay $25/hr+ with pathways to growth and equity in the business. Diversity is strength. Our team is 66% minority and/or women and we aim to grow that way.Source: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/224247227_Greenhouse_Gas_Emission_Impacts_of_Carsharing_in_...$2.7M raised from investors including carmakers and VCsWe have raised $1.7M from MINI (BMW), Ford, Third Sphere, Climate Capital, previous Republic crowdfunding campaigns (3,406 investors), and Jake Gibson (Nerdwallet cofounder).The money was used for building our technology, proving product market fit and funded our go to market operations in San Francisco.We have raised over $1M in debt financing, primarily for purchasing the vehicles. Investors include HFCA and Toyota Financial Services. Upshift, Inc. is currently a C-Corp. We plan to incorporate a new Upshift, LLC to take on future debt financings to scale our fleet and create a firewall between debt and equity financings.Equity fundingWefunder campaign funds will be equity financing for Upshift, Inc. used for development of technology and go-to-market, not to buy cars.Planned structure explainedFoundersBackgroundEzra co-founded a dockless bike-share in 1999 and helped design a shared folding electric scooter at the MIT Media Lab with Piaggio in 2006 while doing his Master's in City Planning. Ezra has consulted on innovation for HP and was managing director of a tech startup in Copenhagen, where he also was a PhD candidate studying why Danish people ride bicycles. Ayako moved to Cambodia from Japan after college to launch a social enterprise when she could barely speak English, let alone Khmer. She now holds two Master's degrees, has consulted for the World Bank, and advised Stanford University students. She has a sharp mind for process improvement and a passion for creating delightful experiences.Early daysEzra drove for rideshare and Ayako did gig work to pay the rent while bootstrapping the company in the beginning. This inspired them to hire the Upshift concierge team as W2 employees, pay 1.5x minimum wage ($25/hr in SF), treat everyone with dignity and respect, and make concierges core team members.

## FAQ
1. **Why open another crowdfunding under the same terms? As an earlier investor in this round. You get to invest at a lower valuation when comparing it to the end of the previous crowdfund $15M 0% discount.**
   - We're raising on the same $15M, 0% discount terms as the last raise. We have a discount on the first $100,000 in commitments just to get the ball rolling on this new campaign. We have grown and built a ton but we are are also raising under very different market conditions than when we started the last campaign. We discussed these terms with Wefunder and feel the terms in this round are fair. You can also double down on your investment under these terms. Many already have!
2. **I live just outside DC. I'd love to just give money and do nothing, but would rather try to help build what I am investing in. Do you need workers in DC?**
   - Hi Jeremy, thanks for your investment and support! I'll reach out directly to discuss how you might plug in to support our expansion!
3. **As a "sanity check", how is this different than Zipcar (?)**
   - There is a section on competition on the page but to simplify: User experience: Upshift is a fractional lease. We provide a predictable and reliable alternative to leasing. We deliver an identical car to you door whenever needed that is personalized to your preferences. No matter where you go, "your" car will be there. We ensure the car is always clean, gassed/charged, routinely serviced and repaired. We offer fixed monthly plans of 4, 8, or 12 days/month and guarantee availability. Our membe...
4. **I noticed your current fleet is primarily hybrid vehicles. Who currently pays for fuel, Upshift or the customer? Does the customer need to return the vehicles with a full tank of gas? Also, how do you plan solve the parking situation in dense urban residential areas with limit...**
   - We are beginning to electrify the fleet now. We have a Hyundai Ioniq 5 and we are in the process of adding a Tesla Model 3. For gas cars, we deliver the car with a full tank, EVs we deliver 80% charged. Member is responsible for gas/charging during their booking. At the end of the booking, we gas/charge it and bill the member at cost. We have never paid for a parking garage in San Francisco and keep our fleet 'free floating' in the city. This has saved us hundreds of thousands of dollars. We ...
5. **Few questions. 1. How many subscriber you need to breakeven on say a Tesla model 3? 2. Don't you see suffer problem you are solving because of higher demand for weekend and low demand during weekday? 3. Would this not cause your cars to sit idle during weekdays and not able to...**
   - Depends on what you mean by 'breakeven'. We are currently gross margin positive with 3.3 members/car (eg, our revenues cover more than the cost of cars, insurance, and delivery). Cars are typically full on weekends and go out ~40% of the time midweek. Some of our members use the cars exclusively midweek for hybrid commutes. We see an opportunity as more people work from home to drive more midweek demand and increase revenues and utilization midweek. We also see opportunities to increase reven...

## Team
- Ezra Goldman (CEO & co-founder)
- Ayako Hiwasa (Operations co-founder)
- Lena Belogolova (Behavioral scientist)
- Keith Reinbolt (Growth marketing)
- Anil Chudasama (Mobile engineer)
- Alex Belikov (Art direction and Product design)
- Rabendra Sharma (Backend engineer)
- Arjun Dev Arora (Advisor and investor)
- Dave Brook (Advisor)
- Byron Shaw (Advisor)

## Recent posts
- Teleops insurance BOUND, hardware arriving in 2 weeks (2026-05-21T18:46:45Z)
- SIGNED: Teleops partner for scaling Upshift subscriptions (2026-03-20T14:10:58Z)
- 🚗 Upshift Will Help Dealers Sell Autonomous Cars (2025-10-21T20:52:51Z)
- Upshift CEO presenting at Plug & Play Tech Center Thu 2/20 (2025-02-19T21:30:25Z)
- Join a tele-operations demo ride TODAY 3-5pm PT (2024-11-20T18:44:08Z)
- Do you want to make your car autonomous? (2024-10-24T18:19:18Z)
- Exciting Milestone & Invitation to Connected Mobility Summit (2024-10-22T16:27:50Z)
- Amenti Capital Invests in Upshift! (2024-10-08T19:44:33Z)
- Upshift: 30% MRR Growth MoM 📈 (2024-07-11T21:11:48Z)
- $120k investment, $25k new LTV in a week, 3x accounts, Oakland launch (2024-06-26T19:00:27Z)
- Today, Upshift is reinventing car ownership (2024-06-07T15:14:27Z)
- $1M+ raised from the crowd, 24 hours left to invest (2023-04-29T19:39:09Z)
- $250-400k soft circled, 2 days left! (2023-04-28T22:30:32Z)
- 3 days left to invest in Upshift! (2023-04-27T20:49:47Z)
- Here is where people want Upshift to expand (2023-04-24T18:52:45Z)

## Q&A
- Q: Hey team - few quick questions. 1. It appears you've been working on Upshift since ~2012 (LinkedIn/Pitchbook), whats changed in recent years to make Upshift more applicable/desirable as a tool for consumers than in the past? Whats the "Why now?" 2. How do you view autonomous driving to affect your business model or service offerings? 3. Having been in market for years and raised from quite a few investors - is there any concern about the existing state of the cap table and how are you thinking about future rounds? Are you viewing this current round as a Seed prior to a future Series A? 4. Which competitor/alternative service are you most worried about and why? Thanks! Love the idea.
  - A: Hey Blake, thanks for the questions. I have a pretty long track record of being ahead of the curve in the new mobility space. Sometimes it takes a little longer for the world to catch up. Here's what I've worked on and when. Arguably I started thinking about this closer to 2008! We launched a "rental car on demand" model in 2016, pivoted to the current subscription model in 2018 and ran it for almost a year before the pandemic hit. 1999: dockless bikeshare (cofounder) 2006: EV scootershare (MIT Media Lab with Piaggio) 2008: real-time rideshare (created a business plan for an app to hail a ride before Uber, Lyft launched) 2009: P2P carshare (built a team, deck, and business plan before anyone launched) 2011: autonomous rideshare (pitched Google on building a robotaxi before Waymo was public) Today: Upshift (car leasing for the autonomous era) 2023 is the year and February is the month. There is no doubt in my mind. Everything is aligning at once right at this exact moment. EVs and teleoperations are both only just now truly viable. 1. EVs are becoming viable: going mainstream, robust charging infrastructure, EVs getting 250-300+ miles of range and can be charged in <20 minutes, Tesla Model 3 is now $37k and Chevy Bolt is $20k after tax credits, gas prices are high, dozens of new EV make/models, strong residual values on EVs, lots of incentives and support for their adoption and more awareness of the urgent need to address climate change. It's no longer a distant future problem, it's happening now. 2. Teleoperations (remote driving technology for delivery) will be viable this year. I interviewed all the leading AV experts a decade ago. They all said to focus on teleoperations, not AV. Now I'm seeing multiple teams abandoning leading autonomous R&D projects (Cruise, Waymo, Uber, etc.) to spin off teleoperations hardware companies. They all want someone else to manage the fleet. That's what I predicted and it's here now with the first test done on public roads without a safety driver happening just weeks ago. 5G network also enables this. 3. Telematics hardware: vehicle connectivity has been around for 20+ years to enable not just data collection but command and control (eg, lock/unlock, ignition enable). What's new is now we have 5G networks for stronger reliability. New hardware enables more flexibility and customization at lower cost. Hardware can now be installed without soldering keys into units which saves a ton of cost and logistical headaches. 4. Insurance: it's taken almost a year to sort out insurance for remote vehicle teleoperations. I just heard this week that we should be getting a binder to start any day. This is very cutting edge and a key component to innovating in this space. 5. Pandemic changed behavior: instead of driving to work every day, more people are working from home over Zoom or doing a hybrid commute of 1-3 days/week in the office. More and more people are driving less and less. They just need a car on the weekends or a couple days a week to go to the office. Why pay for a lease, insurance, and parking on a car that just sits parked more days than it's driven? Fully autonomous driving is exceptionally challenging to scale across all scenarios. It's best for controlled environments (eg, a campus, industrial site, The Boring Company tunnels), areas you can map intensively (eg, a specific city) or environments with fairly consistent traffic patterns (highways). Companies are typically trying to focus on one of these, build a service that works in this constrained environment, and then try to monetize that ... eventually, hopefully. Most of these are very expensive R&D projects and we expect to see quite a bit of consolidation near term. Upshift is focused on solving a real problem at its core and then incorporating the tech that is viable as it becomes viable. So initially that was just delivering cars with bike messengers to simulate AV delivery. Then we had the ADAS standard in cars (eg, adaptive cruise control, pre-collision avoidance, etc.). Then we integrated telematics hardware. Now we are incorporating teleoperations for deliveries to scale, expand, reduce costs, and facilitate charging. Next is fully autonomous parking in a mobility hub garage to make charging and parking more efficient. Eventually we hope to offer a fully AV solution if the tech is viable, but these varying levels of AV will improve and expand the service - they aren't requirements to run a viable business. Both Republic and Wefunder have solutions to keep the cap table clean. It does not impact our ability to raise institutional venture funding. I expect that Upshift will raise significant venture funding to execute on the full vision. Yes, I see this as a Seed leading to Series A. The projections we show here are just for the Seed, the Series A would get us to 10 markets and $38M ARR. But I am inspired by the fact that we have raised almost $1M from 3,500 people all over the world. It just validates the need for our solution everywhere. Plenty of companies raise from VC in this space with concepts that aren't really viable. There are reasons I didn't pursue the other ideas I listed above and it wasn't because they couldn't get venture funding. It's because I didn't think they had structural impact on replacing car ownership and that they weren't viable businesses. The closest competition is probably Kyte. However, their execution and strategy means they are lighting money on fire. They are executing on an idea I had and explored in 2013, launched in 2016, pivoted away from in 2018, and have no interest in returning to. It doesn't replace car ownership based on our data doing essentially the same business for a couple of years. You just get a ton of people who rarely use the service. It is an operational disaster to be doing unpredictable rental car transactions (not predictable subscription relationships), with no telematics (key exchange at a set time!), and a ton of gig workers (constant churn! no reliability or skilled labor!). I periodically get pitched on 3rd party vendors offering to solve a litany of problems they are having (fraud, stolen gas, stolen money on gas cards, lost damages, etc.) - even with their name on the product as an example marquee customer. I just respond "we don't have any of those problems, we designed them all out of our service model". Aside from delivering cars, we're basically opposite in our strategies. Makes my head hurt to even think about what they must be struggling with - compounded only by VC fueled growth of problems that don't have good solutions even at small scale. Glad that's not me!
- Q: What options are available for investors to liquidate their position?
- Q: Ezra, Thank you for the ambitious initiative. Business plan sounds good but I have some concerns to think it is a viable model for a large scale business 1) Your past financial numbers must be irrelevant in this high interest regime which can stay for some time. Whats the burn now? 2) Model works fine in that limited geography. How do you scale? Logistics are not that easy for model to scale . is your target market is always urban dense areas. That's limited market prone for many players 3) Why do you think the raise is going relatively very slow 4) Established players can easily adopt and saturate if this is holy grail. Don't you think? I am trying to understand why this business can succeed
  - A: Thanks for the questions. 1. These costs for rate increases impact everyone - from our potential members looking at leasing a car to our competition. The new IRA $7,500 tax credits are opening up a bigger opportunity for EVs than is being lost by increased interest rates. See this post regarding our fleet acquisition strategy backed by an OEM and regional air quality bureau that gets us below market vehicle costs. https://wefunder.com/updates/161748-loi-from-an-automaker-for-5m-in-debt-financing 2. We are seeing demand all over the country, even in markets that have 10x lower density than where we currently operate. Remote vehicle teleoperations should enable us to scale the business to these lower density markets to bring our model everywhere. The demographic we are capturing in cities is not being captured by existing solutions. Our demographic is currently buying or leasing cars that they only drive ~6,000 miles/year. Existing solutions are targeting people in dense markets that drive <500 miles/year. 3. Our model doesn't fit neatly into VC playbooks and is somewhat contrarian to many existing investor narratives about transportation. Then again, I was working on bikeshare in 1999, eScooter share in 2006, real time rideshare in 2008, P2P carshare in 2009, autonomous rideshare in 2011.... I'm pretty used to waiting awhile for people to finally get it! 2023 is when EV goes mainstream, hybrid work slashes demand for driving, interest rates make cars crazy expensive, the economy is giving people concerns about wanting flexibility, and teleoperations becomes commercialized and commodified. This is the year our vision all comes together. The fact we have raised almost $1M from over 3,500 people on Republic and Wefunder suggests that there is strong interest for what we are building among the broader public - not just in major markets, but our investors are from everywhere. 4. I wholeheartedly disagree here. We have spent years iterating and optimizing our model and operations, and building custom software and hardware integration to support and scale it. When we pivoted from pay-per-use ($99/day, click a button, get a Prius delivered) to the current subscriptoin model, we lost all of our customers and had to rebuild everything about the business from the ground up- marketing, operations, technology... Everything changed. And it was a completely different business. Dealerships sell cars, rental car companies rent cars, taxi companies lease cars to drivers, carshare companies have their operations - these are all completely different businesses which is why you don't see Hertz running a taxi stand. We've seen Ford and Audi both attempt fractional leasing and shut them down after acquiring zero customers. We've seen Audi attempt a rental car delivery and shut it down because they could not make it work. And we are seeing our closest competitor Kyte make operational decisions that must be simply lighting money on fire from our experience. Enterprise tried copying Zipcar for years and failed. Having resources doesn't mean companies will make good decisions, understand the nuances to your model that make it work, or execute well.
- Q: how do I sell my shares in Upshift
  - A: Learn more here: https://help.wefunder.com/wefund/294897-when-do-we-decide-to-sell-securities?from_search=110504394 and here: https://help.wefunder.com/returns/304312-how-do-i-earn-a-return?from_search=110504394
- Q: how do I sell my shares in upshift? A J Sciascia
  - A: Learn more here: help.wefunder.com/we…om_search=110504394 and here: help.wefunder.com/re…om_search=110504394
- Q: From the start Upshift in San Francisco until now, what has been the yearly cash burn rate (increase or decrease)?
  - A: 2022: $570k 2021: $598k 2020: $214k 2019: $121k These are also in the Form C we filed for the campaign aside from the latest 2022 numbers. I'm not sure this will tell you what I think you want to know however. Our burn has gone up because we have had more capital to invest in scalable software. As we have raised more money, our unit economics have improved (eg, we make more per car in revenues and spend less on core costs like car, insurance, and delivery) but our cash burn has also increased because we've grown our scale and added more headcount to build more technology faster. That's pretty typical for a tech startup.
- Q: Hello, a few questions for me - How many vehicles does upshiftcars currently own ? - How much do you reasonably estimate your fleet in 2 years ? - How would an accident with a remote-controlled vehicle be handled ? And in the event of a traffic offence...? - Finally last question, is upshiftcars profitable and if not when do you plan to be ? Thanks
  - A: - We have 22 cars and have owned 30 cars since launch (we sell them after a few years to refresh the fleet and finance the company. We made $29,000 selling a car this morning - it only cost us $118/mo + interest to own a $33k RAV4 XLE hybrid!). - We are projecting scaling to 500+ cars in 2 years (subject to raising debt & equity financing to do so) - That is still unknown as this is pretty uncharted territory. AV companies typically use teleoperations as a backstop for when the AV system fails. There are now a few companies doing teleops first operations but it is still very new. The difference is that there is a driver, they just aren't in the car. There is a potential to install a communication channel back to that driver. We have met with CA Dept of Highway Patrol, CA DMV, SF Municipal Transit Authority, and SF Dept of Public Works and gotten buy in. - Upshift is gross margin positive (revenues cover more than the costs of car, insurance, delivery). We see a path to profitability and up to ~75% more revenues/car with scale, improved tech, higher utilization (driving midweek business demand), and increased revenues/account through pricing innovation and monetizing value added services.
- Q: Two things....I'm in the DC area and currently use Free2Move along with traditional car rental, Turo and Getaround. How do you compare the expenses to operate in San Fran to future locations (ie. DC)? Secondly, how much do you all plan to spend on advertising and what does the advertising campaign look like for DC (or whatever city is next)?
  - A: We plan to build anticipation through waitlist and residential partners in advance of launch. Paid display ads to capture leads, lifestyle press with article and email marketing to leads. We anticipate local operations will be easier and cheaper as DC does allow on street parking with a permit (Free2Move). Lower parking and labor rates also work in our favor.
- Q: Few questions. 1. How many subscriber you need to breakeven on say a Tesla model 3? 2. Don't you see suffer problem you are solving because of higher demand for weekend and low demand during weekday? 3. Would this not cause your cars to sit idle during weekdays and not able to meet the demand during Holidays? 4. Between Zipcar & Turo, I would think this market is covered. How do you differentiate from both?
  - A: Depends on what you mean by 'breakeven'. We are currently gross margin positive with 3.3 members/car (eg, our revenues cover more than the cost of cars, insurance, and delivery). Cars are typically full on weekends and go out ~40% of the time midweek. Some of our members use the cars exclusively midweek for hybrid commutes. We see an opportunity as more people work from home to drive more midweek demand and increase revenues and utilization midweek. We also see opportunities to increase revenues through pricing changes/changes to our signup flow (eg, charge a flat monthly then add on premiums for higher level cars, weekend/holiday use, dog/surfing/skiing packages, charge insurance separately etc). Over this past holiday, demand was down. Most of our members were traveling out of town visiting family. Turo is a peer-to-peer rental car company. Their core demo is tourists from my experience putting cars on their platform. Never had anyone use our car more than once on that platform, mostly used it for sightseeing. Zipcar has about 80 members per car. That's over 20x more members per car than Upshift. Most of those people never even use the service and the 'heavy users' are driving less than Upshift's lightest users. Zipcar's average user drives 300 miles/year, 4 hours/month, mostly used for occasional errands (eg, Costco run). Our average user drives ~4,350 miles/year and 5 days/month. We're a fractional lease, they are a carshare or rental car platform. There's a big gap between <1,000 miles/year and a 10,000 mile/year lease. Roughly half of all cars in cities are driven around 6,000 miles/year (EVs are driven 5,300 miles/year) and we think they'd be better served by a predictable, reliable fractional lease than carshare or leasing. I put together a few statements that might help differentiate: car ownership/lease/subscription Constant worry “Please - just no weird noises, no random damages, no bird poop, and no parking tickets this time!” carshare (Zipcar) Unpredictable “The only car available is a minivan across town for $150! It’s covered in dog hair and burger wrappers, out of gas, and the maintenance light is on. Again?!” rental (Turo) Inconsistent “Rideshare across town to stand in line with tourists for a ‘$50 Corolla or similar’ that’s now a Chevy Spark for $100? Do I need to pay $30 for the insurance?” Upshift Peace of mind “I never have to think about anything. My car is always available and delivered the way I like it. Always clean, gassed/charged, and maintained.”
- Q: I noticed your current fleet is primarily hybrid vehicles. Who currently pays for fuel, Upshift or the customer? Does the customer need to return the vehicles with a full tank of gas? Also, how do you plan solve the parking situation in dense urban residential areas with limited parking/availability or metered parking (aka DC)? Will Upshift pay the parking fees? Is there a max distance customers will have to walk to pickup/drop off the vehicle in the event there’s no parking available nearby?
  - A: We are beginning to electrify the fleet now. We have a Hyundai Ioniq 5 and we are in the process of adding a Tesla Model 3. For gas cars, we deliver the car with a full tank, EVs we deliver 80% charged. Member is responsible for gas/charging during their booking. At the end of the booking, we gas/charge it and bill the member at cost. We have never paid for a parking garage in San Francisco and keep our fleet 'free floating' in the city. This has saved us hundreds of thousands of dollars. We keep them moving to avoid parking tickets and currently get about 3 tickets per car per year. Telematics in the cars enables us to deliver and pickup long before bookings start and long after they end - whenever is most convenient for our logistics, giving us a lot of flexibility. Even in San Francisco, parking is only enforced 9am-6pm Mon-Sat and most people live in 2 hour residential zones that are rarely enforced (a couple times a week at most). So really it's 11am-4pm when we might risk a ticket, which is also when members are most likely to be out driving a car. We deliver the car within 2 blocks of their home, often right in front of their house.
- Q: Its amazing that the company continues to grow! I invested long ago in the republic round. You mentioned that if someone wants to invest 5k or more to contact you. Is that true? What would we speak about? And I also wanted to know is the plan to get bought out and if yes at what price range or around what year? How do we make sure that we as the investors get our profit in the future? Do we need a lawyer that specializes in pre-ipo shares or something? How does one estimate or calculate a potential profit? Whats the formula to use and see how much one can make? Thank you and is NYC going to happen soon?
  - A: Sometimes people investing larger amounts would like to have their questions answered on a call. For larger investments ($25k+), we can also do a SAFE on the same terms as Wefunder. Were you considering that? It's hard to predict a timeline on potential exit as we can't really control when the company would be at a stage to be acquired. It depends on many factors like timing of closing fundraising. How your investment would convert would be spelled out in the SAFE you invested in. Based on the valuation cap, the company is worth ~2x what it was for our initial Republic round. I believe that Republic or Wefunder would manage that process of converting shares during a conversion event. NYC we plan to launch after raising a Series A round.
- Q: Hello, Are you available for some discussion on your campaign?
  - A: Are you considering an investment or looking to sell us your marketing services?
- Q: Thanks for reply Ezra. Couple of more question/comment. With 40% utilization midweek, you will still need to find parking for 60% of the fleet in cities or near by locations. So, how are you planning to reduce this cost? As far your current business model goes, is it not costlier version of a rental + subscription model? What will stop Turo to just pivot to this space, if it proves to be profitable?
  - A: We currently street park and have never paid for a garage. I'm not aware of any fleets operating with zero parking costs in a city like San Francisco, and this is often one of the biggest expenses. This savings approximates what we spend on delivery - and we get a TON of value out of delivery (2x higher utilization, convenience for members, flexible bookings, reduced losses from damages, gas, fraud, etc.). We will likely need some garage spaces as we scale and electrify but we're projecting 1 space per 3 cars. Even when cars are not on a booking, they are often delivered well in advance or picked up late. So for instance if a member takes a car out 9am-5pm we'll deliver it the afternoon before and pick it up the next morning, meaning it's street parked out out of our possession closer to 2 days. We can tighten this down and "flip" it immediately too if we need to squeeze more out of our fleet (eg, deliver it right at 9am and pick it up as soon as it returns - even earlier than 5pm if it's returned early). We see midweek utilization as an opportunity to double utilization (and revenues) off our fleet midweek. Many of our members use the cars exclusively midweek so we just need to find more of them. Not sure what you mean by costlier. Our rates are consistently half the price of renting or leasing a car in San Francisco. Our closest competitor charges close to $150/day to get an SUV delivered with full coverage insurance, unlimited mileage, taxes and fees and it's an entry level gas car not a mid-trim hybrid Toyota RAV4. If you were to lease the same car, park it, and insure it, you'd be out about $1300/month in San Francisco and that's before any other expenses. We have spent years building out custom software and operations to facilitate our business model. We have an admin panel to manage subscriptions and day credits, a dispatch system to automate car and delivery team assignments and collect data from each trip, a delivery app for our team to manage each delivery, and a member app which enables a differentiated and personalized member experience. We have integrated vehicle telematics to locate, unlock, and drive cars without keys and we are now integrating teleoperations hardware to deliver our cars remotely with no driver in the car. We have over 1M miles of data (nearly 800,000 data points including the location and time our cars have been historically). We can now use these data to build out AI predictive analytics to build a more personalized service and predict which members will want a car when and where based on the member's patterns of use, weather, seasonality, etc. Turo does not own its fleet so would not be able to force all car owners integrate all of this tech or deliver cars. Turo's value prop is variety of makes and models (great if you want some niche car you can't otherwise rent). Upshift is focused on building a car leasing alternative and we focus on convenience, predictability, consistency, and reliability.
- Q: Hello can you please expand on the telematics feature? Does this mean that you will be able to deliver and pickup cars without a physical driver? If yes, then do you think this will improve future margins because you will need less people to physically deliver and pick up cars? Thank you.
  - A: The vision is that an EV will arrive at your doorstep fully charged with no driver in the car, no one to meet. You locate it, walk up to it, and unlock and drive via your mobile app - no keys. Then when you are done, simply lock up via the app and the car is driven away by remote driver. You get "the same" personalized, reliable, predictable car experience in every market we are in. Your car, everywhere, on demand. Telematics enables us to unlock and drive cars without keys via our member and delivery apps. We have this now and will start upgrading to a newer more reliable hardware solution next week. This tech also gives us real time and historic trip data. We currently have 1M+ miles of trip data and almost 800k data points (time/location stamps for each car). Meeting in person to exchange keys at the exact start and end time is incredibly inefficient and does not scale. Telematics tech means we do not need to meet in person to exchange keys. Telematics saves us a TON of time and headache coordinating key exchanges, which must be done at actual booking time, and provides a lot of operational flexibility. For instance, if we have 10 bookings at 9am Saturday, we deliver them all Friday afternoon. Teleoperations is different. This is a different set of hardware that enables us to deliver cars via remote control. Fully autonomous vehicles are heavily regulated, have no driver, and require tremendous amounts of map data for each city (down to the square inch). Teleoperations has far fewer regulatory barriers as there is a driver, they just are not in the car, and require no mapping data. This solution is faster and easier to scale. It enables us to eliminate "deadhead" time (the downtime after the concierge delivers the car until they bike to the next car). This eliminates wasted time reducing costs and increasing delivery speeds by ~30% from 48 min to ~30 min. It enables us to scale to lower density tier 2 and suburban markets that have more distance between deliveries and currently have no viable alternatives. It also facilitates EV charging, which likely requires more vehicle repositioning due to the time the car needs to be on a charger. A Tesla Model 3 or Hyundai Ioniq 5 EV can quick charge in 18 minutes. But more affordable cars like a Chevy Bolt EV will need to charge overnight so they have to be picked up upon return at night, moved to a charger, then delivered again in the morning - twice as much delivery logistics time than a hybrid gas car which can get 600 miles of range in minutes at a gas station.
- Q: As a "sanity check", how is this different than Zipcar (?)
  - A: There is a section on competition on the page but to simplify: User experience: Upshift is a fractional lease. We provide a predictable and reliable alternative to leasing. We deliver an identical car to you door whenever needed that is personalized to your preferences. No matter where you go, "your" car will be there. We ensure the car is always clean, gassed/charged, routinely serviced and repaired. We offer fixed monthly plans of 4, 8, or 12 days/month and guarantee availability. Our members drive on average 5 days/month and 4,350 miles/year. They are typically actively in market to lease a car when they find us. It is common for them to be heavy carshare users whose most frequent complaint about carshare is that it is never available when they need it. Zipcar is a carshare service. It is an unpredictable and unreliable alternative to rental car. You never know whether a car is available, what kind of car you will get, whether it will be dirty or have an empty gas tank, whether it will be available nearby (often it isn't), or what it will cost. The average carshare member drives around 300 miles/year and rents a car about once per month to run errands for a few hours. Operations: Our delivery model provides more operational flexibility as delivery of identical cars makes it easier to stack bookings efficiently and dynamically to ensure availability and allow extensions. With our concierge team checking on cars in between each delivery and trusted recurrent members, we have very few lost damages, no stolen gas, and virtually no fraud leading to stronger unit economics. As Zipcar's model is unattended, they have huge losses from damages for which they cannot determine liability, stolen gas, and fraud/criminal use of their cars. Since members book specific assets by the hour, there is very little flexibility with bookings and much lower fleet utilization which all lead to weak unit economics. Our current fleet would barely service one neighborhood on Zipcar and would get 1/2 the utilization with a lot more user friction and higher cost. Our subscription + delivery model works with ~20x lower density of users than Zipcar, enabling us to scale to lower density second tier and suburban markets, unlocking a 30x larger market opportunity than dense metros alone. And we are poised for an autonomous future with a networked fleet and 1M+ miles of car delivery logistics experience. Upshift fills a gap between carshare and leasing for low mileage drivers. We provide all the benefits of a car when you need it, without any of the hassles of ownership. We are the future of leasing for the connected, autonomous, and electrified future