Many sharing economy firms operate two or more business models at once to enhance their competitive position and grow: a so-called business model portfolio. This phenomenon is particularly salient in the shared mobility sector where both automotive manufacturers and pure digital players are diversifying their services. From the industry incumbents’ side of the shared mobility sector, Volvo Cars has partnered with SunFleet carsharing, and with Uber to provide leasing services to drivers as well as collaborate on autonomous technology development. Daimler has acquired, invested in, or developed several mobility services such as Car2Go, Turo, Flinc, MyTaxi, and ChauffeurPrivé to offer ridesharing, free-floating carsharing, ride-hailing, and peer-to-peer (P2P) car rental services. Similarly, Ford acquired Chariot, GetAround, and GoDrive as to be involved in ridesharing, P2P carsharing, and leasing services as well as providing vehicles to Zipcar. The Volkswagen Group also offers on-demand rentals of Audi and Porsche vehicles, and it has invested in Gett ridesharing services. General Motors has invested in or acquired SideCar, Lyft, RelayRides, and Mavenas to have a foot in different services. From the disruptors side of shared mobility, long-distance ridesharing platform BlaBlaCar started to offer to its loyal members the possibility to lease cars at discounted rates in partnership with ALD Automotive, it launched the BlaBlaLines app to facilitate ridesharing on short-distance commutes, and it acquired urban carpooling startup Less. Business-to-consumer (B2C) carsharing platform MyWheels began to also offer cars made available by neighbors (i.e. P2P carsharing). Conversely, Turo now allows professional rental agencies to list their cars on its P2P platform to diversify its revenue streams and increase the number of cars available to its customers. 

There have been some attempts at mapping sharing economy business models in the mobility sector. Despite the increasing number of platforms that operate several business models simultaneously, little research has examined how sharing economyplatforms successfully diversify into business model portfolios. The purpose of this research is to explore business model diversification in the shared mobility sector.