ZIlok Auto announced yesterday a new round of funding from Marc Simoncini’s Jaina Capital & Ecomobilité Ventures, a Joint Venture fund by SNCF, Total & Orange. Zilok Auto is a peer-to-peer car rental service which hopes to help you monetize the 90% of the time you don’t use your car in order to subsidize the €6,000/year that car-owners pay on average for their car. Originally a subdirector of Zilok.com, founder Marion Carrette separated the site this year, launching ZilokAuto.com.
Investors have been betting a lot on P2P marketplaces, recently: BlaBlaCar has seen success with their P2P ride-sharing marketplace, and so has ZilokAuto competitor VoitureLib, who recently raised €2 Million. ZIlok Auto plans to have 10,000 cars available for rent by the end of 2012, “with the help of SNCF, Total & Orange,” according to Carrette.
With this round of funding, Zilok Auto will be able to deploy hardware in each car, allowing users to eventually rent a car without ever having to meet in person to exchange keys. This hardware approach has been pursued by Zilok Auto’s American competitors, while French competitor VoitureLib has opted to hold off on implementing hardware – find out more here.

Welcome Ecomobilité Ventures!

Zilok Auto is one of three investments announced by Ecomobilité Ventures, the first three of many dedicated to sustainable mobility. The other two startups, EZ-Wheel (Norway) & Move About(FR), reflect an investment strategy that balances mobility products and services, French and foreign companies, and start‐ups and more mature businesses.