Now You Can Be An Uber Driver Even If You Don't Own A Car

This little startup has some big ideas.

It's called Breeze (it used to be called Zephyr), and it wants to make a name for itself in the ride-sharing world: It's renting out its 25 brand-new Toyota Priuses to people who want to be Uber and Lyft drivers.

But here's the kicker: It doesn't even buy the cars it rents outright. It rents them from an unnamed partner in the car industry, CEO Jeff Pang tells San Francisco Chronicle.

"Our partnership gives us unlimited access to cars for the near future," he says.

Here's how it works: Drivers pay the company $20 a day plus 25 cents a mile; they buy their own gas and are required to get personal insurance that's tied to the rentals.

Drivers are assigned to a specific car, with generally two people sharing one car. So one driver has the car Mondays and Wednesdays, and another driver has the same car Tuesdays and Thursdays.

The five-person company hopes to spread to 20 cities by the end of the year. "We think this strategy is repeatable in many markets," Pang told the San Francisco Business Times.