This week in car rental & carsharing

153 million driver's licenses. Not usernames, not emails — actual scans of government ID documents, the kind that include infrared images and UV layers, sitting on a dark-web market. The vendor behind it is a name most people have never heard of, even though they've handed their ID to its software at a Hertz counter, a casino desk, or a dispensary.

That's the thing about third-party verification tools. You never pick them. You just show your license to a screen and move on.

Europe's rental rates fell 5% this summer, which sounds tidy until you look at the actual map. Ireland down 16%, Hungary up 27% — that's not one market moving, that's several markets doing completely different things for completely different reasons that nobody's fully explaining yet.

The European average is basically just arithmetic at this point. Malta at €13 a day, Faroe Islands at €111 — same continent, same summer, wildly different reality. The headline number is real, the story behind it is still anyone's guess.

Zagreb isn't exactly where you'd expect the first fully driverless robotaxi in Europe to show up. But here we are — a Rimac-backed startup called Verne, running autonomous rides through the Uber app on a 22 km route between their HQ and the airport, with nobody in the driver's seat and Chinese AV tech from Pony.ai doing the actual driving. No backup human, just a remote monitor somewhere watching the feed.

Whether "first in Europe" still means much in a year is anybody's guess.

Autonomy promised 23,000 EVs in 2022. They ended up with around 500. Then Musk started a price war, the fleet lost a third of its value, and the whole thing nearly collapsed. Now they're adding Mustangs and F-150s and calling it a pivot.

To be fair, "give customers what they want" is a reasonable lesson to learn after almost going broke chasing a trend. Just a shame it took four years and a near-death experience to figure that out.

Spain just handed out its first national Level 4 autonomous vehicle permit — WeRide, Uber, and AVOMO are the recipients. Which is genuinely interesting, though a permit is not a service, and "nationally authorized" still means someone's negotiating every city, every route, and every edge case one bureaucrat at a time. The technology keeps getting certified. The actual ride keeps not quite arriving.

Found the headline, couldn't find the article. Drop the text, link, or file and I'll work with it.

Running an EV in Europe is genuinely cheaper now — roughly a third less than petrol, even if you never charge at home. That's not a talking point anymore, it's just the number.

The part that's harder to argue with is that this gap holds even on public chargers, which is where the "but charging is expensive" crowd usually parks their skepticism. Apparently not enough to close a 28% difference.

Carsharing spikes every time transit workers walk out, which is almost poetic — the backup plan for the backup plan suddenly becomes the main plan. Dutch commuters scrambling for a Greenwheels because the tram isn't running is exactly the kind of demand surge that looks great in a press release but has nothing to do with normal growth. Strike's over Thursday, bookings drop, everyone goes back to ignoring the app.