Robin Chase (@rmchase) is the founder and former CEO of Zipcar, the largest carsharing company in the world; Buzzcar, a carsharing marketplace in France; and GoLoco, an online ridesharing community as well as co-founder of Veniam, a company that moves TBs of data between vehicles and cloud. Her recent book is Peers Inc: How People and Platforms are Inventing the Collaborative Economy and Reinventing Capitalism and current passion is working with cities to maximize the transformation possible with the introduction of self-driving cars.

Robin is on the Board of the World Resources Institute, the National Advisory Council for Innovation & Entrepreneurship for the US Department of Commerce and the OECD’s International Transport Forum Advisory Board. She also served on the Intelligent Transportations Systems Program Advisory Committee for the US Department of Transportation, the Massachusetts Governor’s Transportation Transition Working Group and Boston Mayor’s Wireless Task Force.

She lectures widely, is frequently featured in major media and has received many awards including Time 100 Most Influential People, Fast Company Fast 50 Innovators and BusinessWeek Top 10 Designers.

In today’s episode we discuss:
- How Robin invented the ride-sharing market almost a decade before Uber
- What does the future of urban transportation look like
- The important difference between ridesharing and car-sharing, and what that means for climate change
- Why Europe is so far ahead of the US when it comes to livable cities
- The reason decentralization is so valuable and why it doesn’t always work
- How to fix our cities for healthier, happier people
- What will driverless vehicles mean for the future of car ownership
- Why electrics bikes and scooters change everything when it comes to transforming cities
- What Robin thinks about Lyft and Uber’s business models
- Why Robin is intrigued and worried about blockchain and Bitcoin