Carstay株式会社

Carstay株式会社 operates a Japanese "vanlife" platform combining three lines of business: peer-to-peer rental and car-sharing of campervans (キャンピングカー), space-sharing of parking lots, roadside stations and other sites as overnight vehicle-stay spots (車中泊スポット), and vehicle manufacturing and renovation. The consumer service is offered through a website and mobile app where users search by category, departure point and dates, browse listings by region, vehicle type (van conversions, cab conversions, kei-campers, motorhomes, outdoor cars), manufacturer and coachbuilder, and book with credit-card payment; listings are supplied by individual and commercial vehicle owners ("holders") and site owners ("hosts"), with top-rated owners flagged as "Super Holders." The company also publishes VANLIFE JAPAN, a media property covering vanlife and overnight vehicle stays.

On the manufacturing side, Carstay opened Mobi Lab. in Yokohama in October 2022 as a camper production base and shared DIY garage for converting, repairing and renovating vehicles. In May 2023 it launched the SAny. brand covering new and used vehicle sourcing, "full custom" conversion of customer-supplied vans and "full renovation" of older campers, and in August 2023 announced moonn., an EV camper brand whose T-01 model opened for pre-orders. In February 2024 it began selling SAny.VAN, its own 8-number-registered camper built to order at Mobi Lab., priced from about ¥1,958,000 for conversion of a customer-supplied van, about ¥2,808,000 for a used Hiace base and about ¥4,454,000 for a new Hiace base, with delivery in as little as one month for customer-supplied vehicles.

Founding story

Founded in June 2018 by Koki Miyashita (宮下晃樹), who has said the company grew out of his desire to act as a bridge between local regions and the world. The company launched space-sharing for overnight vehicle stays in January 2019 and campervan car-sharing in 2020-2021, framing both as Japan-first services.

Business model

Carstay runs a marketplace that intermediates between vehicle owners and space owners on the supply side and travellers on the demand side, deducting a service fee from the price set by the holder/host and remitting the balance. Alongside the marketplace it sells and converts vehicles directly through its Mobi Lab. production base and SAny. brand, and monetises a shared DIY garage for owners building their own campers.

Commission (service usage fee including consumption tax) withheld from the listing price paid by guests for vehicles, parking/overnight spots and tourism experiences, plus revenue from camper manufacture, custom conversion and renovation work, and vehicle sales under the SAny. brand.

Traction

Around 500 registered campervans and roughly 340-360 overnight-stay spots nationwide as of 2023-2025 disclosures; cumulative users of the sharing services exceeded 10,000 by 2023, and Mobi Lab. drew over 300 visitors in its first year. Reservations for both the car-sharing and space-sharing services hit record highs in 2023, and summer-holiday campervan bookings were reported at roughly 2.2x the prior year in 2026. In 2026 the company reported registering 90 additional campervans from 11 rental companies. Stated targets include 150,000 members and 100,000 YouTube subscribers by end-2026, with earlier plans for ¥700 million revenue in FY ending May 2025 and ¥3.0 billion in FY ending May 2027.

Latest developments

In March 2025 the company announced additional pre-Series A funding of about ¥110 million from Shikigaku, CPA Excellent Partners and individual investors, bringing cumulative funding including bank debt to about ¥480 million, earmarked for engineering and sales hiring and expansion of Mobi Lab. production. A further pre-Series A third-party allotment of about ¥50 million from Startup Factory No.1 LLP followed in October 2025, taking cumulative funding to about ¥530 million and adding Osamu Suzuki as a shareholder to support SNS and video marketing. Recent activity includes exhibiting an EV camper and disaster-use vehicle-stay kits at the Japan Mobility Show 2025, operating overnight-stay spots at Suzuka Circuit, supplying campervans as "van shelters" for disaster-affected areas with CarLife Japan in 2026, and registering 90 additional campervans from 11 rental firms in June 2026.