- Eloop and Peaq Network have tokenized 100 Teslas, allowing users to own a fraction of the ride-sharing fleet and share in its revenue.
- The project aims to connect the digital and real worlds, democratizing revenue generation from high-value assets, and pushing forward Web3’s mass adoption.
Vienna-based car-sharing firm, Eloop, in collaboration with Peaq Network — a Web3 ecosystem for the economy of things — has taken a major stride in blockchain innovation. On June 27, it was announced that 100 Teslas from Eloop’s fleet of over 200 vehicles had been tokenized via Peaq. The blockchain integration enables users to own and profit from a fraction of the car-sharing fleet’s revenue.
Eloop co-founder, Nico Prugger, and Peaq’s co-founder, Leonard Dorloechter, provided insights into this project aimed at decentralized ride-sharing, mass adoption of Web3, and the future of blockchain-based high-value assets.
Prugger outlined the scheme: when a user purchases a token, they gain fractional ownership of the entire carsharing fleet, relative to their investment. Rental of these cars then generates direct revenue, instantly dispersed back to the token-holding community, driving what Prugger dubs as “car sharing 2.0”.
Prugger further emphasized,
“We wanted to get as close as possible to real ownership, but make it as easy as possible for everyone to invest in the car without any responsibility. We do all the legal work regarding the cars.”
In a similar vein, Siemens Mobility, a subsidiary of the industrial manufacturing behemoth Siemens, had suggested blockchain’s potential in car-sharing back in 2019.
Dorloechter underscored the need to integrate blockchain into tangible assets to aid the mainstream grasp and adoption of the technology. He posited,
“For Web3 to go mainstream, we need a connection between the digital and real worlds, which enable people to co-own assets that generate revenue based on actual services and goods.”
The Peaq blockchain network, constructed on Polkadot, hosts the transaction and data storage layer for the Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network (DePIN) of the tokenized Teslas. The choice for Polkadot was driven by its “interoperability” aspect and its alignment with IoT use cases, according to Dorloechter.
Both pioneers agree that car-sharing is merely the start, with significant interest in decentralized electric vehicle charging, decentralized ride-hailing services, and a decentralized camera network.
As Dorloechter eloquently put it,
“It’s not a Big Tech company in the middle with all the data and monetizing it. It’s individuals and individual cars — people owning and controlling the data and being able to share it.”
Prugger also praised the EU’s stance on emerging technologies, expressing that the clarity provided by the MiCA regulations is enabling them to ponder “scaling the idea” across Europe.
With the rise of AI and automation, tokenization of autonomous vehicles, such as Teslas, could
“enable the democratization of the age of automation”,
according to Dorloechter, by preventing wealth concentration in a few big companies.
The journey towards the tokenization of high-value items on the blockchain is set to empower communities to fund, build, and earn from infrastructure, thereby translating the promise of Web3 into reality.
