Speed Stable: why we’re excited about a motorcycle-sharing service

Speed Stable is a startup that will have no bearing on the Indian market anytime soon. But their vision involves motorcycle-sharing in the way that peer-to-peer ride sharing works in services like Lyft or Waze does for cars, except that the vehicle owner isn’t along for the ride. So to speak.

The idea behind Speed Stable is that owners of motorcycles list their vehicles in the database, along with location. A person visiting the city can look up the style of motorcycle and time period of rental, and the owner can confirm availability. It requires the person making the booking to have insurance, and is available only in Nashville, Tennessee and Atlanta, Georgia – it will then spread to other large cities across the USA. A mobile phone app is also being developed, but no launch date has been specified.

Car-sharing isn’t something that is prevalent in our country. We do have a few apps like Ryde that allow peer-to-peer ride sharing, but even one of the biggest ride-sharing companies in Lyft has not been able to gain a foothold in India. However, Speed Stable takes the peer-to-peer sharing to the motorcycle market, and India is the second-largest one by number in the world. Of course, there’s the usual speed bumps: Indians aren’t known for their respect of others’ property, and insurance doesn’t work here the way it does in developed countries. Despite that, Speed Stable opens up a whole world of possibilities to our imagination – imagine renting someone’s motorcycle’s ‘downtime’ to explore a new place – and not just in Goa or the Himalayas.