UAE’s ekar launches car subscription service in Saudi Arabia

Middle East’s car-sharing platform Ekar has activated subscriptions within its self-drive super app in Saudi Arabia in partnership with several car rental companies.

Customers who prefer not to own a car but still want the convenience of having one can take advantage of Ekar’s subscription leasing.

Since its launch in early 2021, ekar has demonstrated extensive growth in the UAE subscription leasing market and quickly became a market leader in both the size of its car menu and total rental counts. The mobility company is now poised to bring its subscription leasing expertise to Saudi Arabia and target a $2.5bn car rental and leasing market, as anticipated for 2026 by Mordor Intelligence.

“ekar Saudi Arabia car-sharing experienced a spike in demand for longer-term bookings during the pandemic, especially with female drivers who choose ekar as their first car solution. Launching subscription leasing is a perfect solution for our 100,000 users in the kingdom. The marketplace is nascent in Saudi Arabia, and the combination of subscription leasing with car-sharing will make ekar the only app in the market that offers the entire vertical of self-drive from per minute car-sharing to multiple months subscriptions,” said Vilhelm Hedberg, founder of ekar.

“Our integration with CarPro, the world’s largest ERP software in the car rental industry, allows ekar to ensure that the availability of any car is only a click away, avoiding painful declines due to car shortages in the rental car space. In a world with car shortages, optimizing fleets is the key to success, and ekar Mobility OS allows a seamless subscription leasing experience with guaranteed car availability,” continued Hedberg.

Subscription cars are door-delivered, vehicles come with the convenience of insurance, maintenance, roadside assistance and the vehicles can be switched, traded up, or returned at any time.

ekar is now taking on the global automotive subscription services market, which is set to surpass $40bn by 2026, according to a research report by Global Market Insights and is launching in Thailand, Malaysia, Turkey, and Egypt over the next 12 months.

Read: Self-driving platform ekar integrates with CarPro to enable 500,000 rental cars