Kyte, who was invoiced as “Hertz’s best competitor”, closes

The start of the rental car, Kyte closed almost a year after cutting staff and leaving most of its cities in the United States. The company sold its Turo Customer List in July and then turned right and entered a form of compulsion in California, according to one communication This came out to Kyte’s creditors.

Kyte fell back to some of his loans earlier this year, according to the announcement. This caused the company’s top lender to relieve and liquidate the Kyte vehicle fleet.

The Kyte Board of Directors “followed various capital solutions” to keep the company alive, the statement said. But the company was unable to line up the funding and the Board of Directors voted to overcome Kyte.

While Kyte passed his customer list at Turo, several users who had prepared trips before closing have complained that they have been stuck waiting for hundreds of dollars.

Some who spoke with TechCrunch said they were able to get their credit card companies to perform a charge, while others were not lucky. Kyte Nikolaus Volk CEO told TechCrunch in a message that charges can be the fastest way for customers to get that money back.

Founded in 2019, Kyte provided rental cars that it also delivered directly to customers’ homes. It controls its own fleet of vehicles, making it a little more like zipcar and less like bids from peer players like Turo. Kyte increased to 14 markets and increased more than $ 300 million in funding during his lifetime and began to charge himself as a “best Hertz competitor”.

The business began to split in 2024, Volk told TechCrunch last year. Kyte was struggling to create free cash flows in markets such as Atlanta, Chicago, Boston and Washington, DC Volk said his team was investigating the sale of the business, but decided to restructure and focus on its two -year -olds.

Kyte is not the only start in this area to deal with problems – especially in the United States. Getaround, another peer rental service, destroyed its US companies in February this year to focus on its European business activity. The founder of Truecar Scott Painter revolved away from vehicle subscriptions in 2024 after struggling to create a business called Autonomy.