car sharing

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Electric charging station of the world's largest car sharing provider Zipcar in San Francisco
The additional symbol 1024-21 introduced in Germany in 2020: "Carsharing vehicles free"

The German legislator understands by car sharing [ ˈkaː (ɺ) ˌʃeəɺɪŋ ] ( English car “car”, to share “to share”; in German for example: “auto parts” or “community car”) the organized shared use of one or more automobiles on the basis of a Framework agreement . Unlike conventional car rental companies, car sharing allows you to rent vehicles for a short time, even by the minute. The use of the vehicles is billed via a time or kilometer tariff or mixed forms of such tariffs that include energy costs. Car sharing among neighbors and friends falls under the term private car sharing .

term

MOBI - eCAR Sharing - Dresden

The English term carsharing (today mostly written in one word, alternatively also Car-Sharing or (as a logo / word mark ) CarSharing ) is used in most languages ​​and countries for the purposes of this article. One exception was the UK, where with car sharing originally (in two words) carpool meant and for auto parts, the concept car club was used. Other known exceptions are autodelen (Dutch), autopartage (French), auto condivisa (Italian) and bilpool (Norwegian, Swedish).

As early as 1975 the term appeared in an article headline in the London Times : "Car-sharing among plans to ease London traffic". The city administration GLC turned against the automobile club RAC with the not yet fully developed idea of ​​introducing "methods of shared automobile use" , which demanded more and wider roads to prevent traffic collapse. The experiment began in Ipswich in 1977, but was more of a carpooling service than a service to have cars used by multiple drivers.

organization

The vehicles of a car sharing organization are either distributed in permanently rented parking spaces across a city or a larger town or are parked on public streets. The fixed rental stations are often located at traffic junctions of public transport such as railway stations, tram junction, terminals of bus routes where they are easily accessible by users. The vehicles reserved in advance are mostly used to reach more remote destinations from these nodes. There are different forms of organization, some of which are based on the rental car system :

  • The vehicle must be returned to its original location before the booked time has expired.
  • The user must decide beforehand at which location of the car sharing provider the vehicle should be delivered.
  • The vehicle, known as a free floating car , can be parked on any free parking space within a clearly defined usage area.

Car sharing is a means of "combined mobility ". It cannot and does not want to replace public transport that serves as a feeder to the parking lots. For commuters who cannot cover the entire commute other than by car, it is usually not a sensible alternative; Carpooling and carpooling are more suitable for this . The concept is intended more for irregular journeys or transports.

An increasingly popular use case for car sharing is the use of a car sharing vehicle at the airport. The free-floating providers such. B. DriveNow and car2go add an extra airport fee to their service. There are special parking spaces for car sharing vehicles at the airport itself. This makes car sharing a further mobility option at the airport, in addition to public transport and taxis.

Members of the car sharing organizations usually enter into a long-term, sometimes paid membership in the organization. The organization and not the individual participants are the owners of the cars and - in contrast to neighborhood car parts - are responsible for the maintenance and repair of the vehicles.

A concept that lies in between was offered by Citeecar: Here customers could apply as so-called "hosts". They had to show a parking space and took over the sponsorship of a vehicle, whereby they took care of cleanliness and maintenance. This activity was remunerated with a driving credit. However, the concept was not accepted by the market, according to Citeecar, it had to file for bankruptcy on December 3, 2015.

Procedure for using a car

The size of car sharing organizations varies greatly. Accordingly, the various systems for reservation used, from simple boxes with key and manual posting to highly complex computer-based solutions with GPS - tracking . Today, automatic booking via the Internet or telephone computer around the clock is common in larger organizations.

The vehicles of larger organizations are now equipped with on-board computers that are automatically synchronized with the headquarters. The on-board computers release the vehicle to authorized persons for the booked period of time. Such systems are not only more efficient than manual bookings in larger organizations, but also necessary to prevent misuse.

In the non-station-bound models, the car reports its location to the control center. Customers can search for a vehicle online and usually reserve a maximum of 15 minutes.

In the case of station-based systems, the participants are responsible for returning the vehicles on time to the right place and in a clean condition. Particularly in the case of late return, high fines are sometimes required because the subsequent participants rely on finding their booked vehicle at the location. Many organizations operate call centers where breakdowns or emergencies have to be reported. They organize replacement vehicles if necessary.

Billing is also triggered by the on-board computer. Usually fees are charged for the number of kilometers driven and for the duration of use. The costs for fuel, consumables, cleaning, insurance, etc. are usually integrated into the prices. Usually, reduced daily, weekly and monthly flat rates are also offered.

There are differences in access to the booking option. While many providers offer a one-time registration with driver's license and ID and collect payments by direct debit, it is z. B. With drivy (brokerage of private cars) it is only possible to pay by credit card when booking online.

costs

Car sharing is cheaper than operating your own vehicle of the same type as long as the annual kilometers driven and usage times are below the profitability threshold. This varies with the individual providers and depending on the tariff, usually between 10,000 and 20,000 kilometers per year. The Stiftung Warentest came up with a model calculation with 5,000 annual kilometers at the cost of 138 euros per month, with their own car, however, 206 euros per month.

Fixed costs such as acquisition costs, parking space or garage rental, vehicle tax and insurance premiums are eliminated. If not used, only a small fee or no fee at all (e.g. registration fee, monthly fee) is payable depending on the provider. Most providers integrate a breakdown service, which makes additional membership in traffic clubs superfluous. The costs for car sharing itself are usually made up of the so-called fixed costs (e.g. deposit, registration fees, monthly fees) and travel costs. The travel costs in turn consist of the classic car sharing providers of the costs for the time booked or used and the kilometers driven; With some free-floating providers, only the travel time is charged, parking times are cheaper. The prerequisite for membership in the Federal Carsharing Association (bcs) is that the kilometers driven are calculated - this is the only way for the Federal Association to guarantee the ecological requirement of not having to cover unnecessary journeys by car.

Depending on the number of users and the level of professionalism, the providers provide a relatively new and modern vehicle fleet (including navigation devices, child seats, air conditioning, etc.). The acquisition and repair costs must be calculated accordingly in the business model.

Difference to conventional car rental

In the early days of car sharing, there were still very big differences to conventional car rental, which usually only offered vehicles on a daily basis. In addition, the customer of a car rental company is still required to this day that the vehicle is delivered with a full tank. The business model of car sharing also differs in that the costs are calculated from travel time and distance traveled, while conventional car rental works with a fixed price and the variable costs for fuel are imposed on the customer. With car sharing, different driving behavior does not affect the costs. On the other hand, with car sharing, the customer has the advantages of better time management, booking via the Internet and transparent billing, which must be taken into account especially when using it for work.

Difference to the individual vehicle

With car sharing, comprehensive mobility can be guaranteed, which understands the car as a complement to public transport, pedestrian and bicycle traffic. This promotes these modes of transport and relieves road traffic overall. Car sharing can bring relief, especially in urban residential areas, where parking spaces are not available for all vehicles.

Many car sharing providers offer different types of vehicles that the customer can select depending on the situation and needs (e.g. small or sports car, station wagon, minibus or van). With some providers, however, the driver only has access to the entire offer from a certain age.

With almost no provider it is possible for the user to "personalize" the car, for example he cannot permanently save any destinations in the navigation system or stations on the radio. As a rule, self-inflicted soiling must be removed at the end of the rental so that the next user can find a clean car. The user often has to bring necessary additional equipment such as child seats himself. For longer distances such as vacation trips or business trips, the costs are usually higher than for other means of transport.

Several studies indicate a better environmental balance. The vehicles used in car sharing are generally much newer than private vehicles and therefore benefit earlier from technological developments. According to the Federal Association of Carsharing, the average CO 2 emissions per kilometer are 16 percent below those of private vehicles. In addition, many car sharing customers would forego their own car, which would reduce land consumption and produce fewer vehicles. A car sharing vehicle would replace four to eight cars on average. In addition, car sharing promotes the use of other modes of transport such as bicycles, trains and buses, since when driving a car sharing car, the proportion of fixed costs in the total costs is significantly lower than with a private car. With regard to the environmental balance, however, it should be noted that the energy and raw material requirements for manufacturing a new private vehicle were not taken into account.

A joint study by the Öko-Institut in Freiburg and the Institute for Social-Ecological Research in Frankfurt (ISOE), which examined the effects of station-independent car sharing from 2013 to 2017 in Stuttgart, Frankfurt and Cologne, came to the differing conclusion that Car sharing has no positive impact on the environment because in practice the number of vehicles does not decrease as a result of car sharing, since in most cases car sharing is only an interim solution for younger users who would initially have to do without their own vehicle for reasons of cost and later if it increased Income would buy their own vehicle.

Data protection problems can arise with car sharing, as movement profiles of the vehicle users can be created. However, this has great advantages for billing in commercial use. The vehicle manufacturer BMW has announced, for example, that the vehicles it intends to use for car sharing are equipped with a module that stores additional vehicle and movement data. Such data was used in the conviction of a car sharing user in May 2016.

The driver does not have to worry about the maintenance of the vehicle and official formalities such as environmental badge , general inspection or examination of the engine management and emission control system . The legal issues are clearly regulated between the owner (car sharing organization) and the drivers (car sharing users).

Organizational models

Car sharing parking lot in Paris

The main differences to other models such as rental cars are the long-term contractual relationship between the customer and the car sharing company and a different cost model. As a rule, costs for insurance, fuel or energy (for electric cars) and accessories (e.g. child seat) are not charged separately. The user does not have to deliver a fully fueled car. Different tariffs are offered according to the needs of the customer. The customer is looked after by telephone or via the Internet. The user must pick up the vehicle in self- service and then return it again.

There are two fundamentally different models for stationing vehicles:

station-based system
The vehicle is in a reserved parking space that cannot be used by others. This is mostly on private property; In some cities, however, public parking spaces are reserved for this purpose and made available to a car sharing provider who can then assign certain cars to the parking spaces. There are different variants within this system
Parking spaces in public spaces
The vehicle does not have a fixed location, but is in a public parking lot where the previous user left it. The operator transmits the locations to the owner or displays them on the Internet. Several providers allow parking in the entire business area, while others limit parking to parking areas.

With almost all station-based providers, the period of use of the vehicle must be specified in advance and can only be extended if the car has not yet been booked by other users.

In addition to the city-wide station-based car sharing offer, the first medium-sized providers in Germany have a mostly smaller fleet of station-independent (free-floating) vehicles available (stadtmobil Hannover, stadtmobil Rhein-Neckar, book-n-drive, StadtTeilAuto Osnabrück, teilAuto "CItyflitzer" Leipzig). This means that customers can benefit from the advantages of both systems with one and the same provider. Longer plannable journeys can be reserved in advance with station-based vehicles; spontaneous journeys are carried out with free-floating vehicles without a reservation and without specifying a return time.

To this day, successful car sharing is limited to more densely populated areas. As a result, the concept is often not particularly interesting for people living in rural areas and can only be established with difficulty there.

Development and current status

The idea of ​​shared use of a vehicle and neighborly car sharing has always been practiced in the private sector. The first documented car sharing organization is the Swiss Self-Drive Cooperative (SEFAGE) in Zurich in 1948.

As early as the 1960s, concepts of car sharing emerged in connection with studies on future computer-aided traffic control.

The first major projects took place in the early 1970s: the ProcoTip system in France only lasted two years. A more ambitious project from Amsterdam was called Witkar , which was based on small electric vehicles and electronic controls for reservation and return, as well as on many locations in the city. The project was abandoned in the mid-1980s.

The 1980s can be described as a turning point. Several smaller car sharing projects were launched in Switzerland and Germany as well as in Norway ( Bilkollektivet ) and in the Netherlands ( CollectCar ). From the 1990s onwards, these and other projects such as CommunAuto and AutoShare in Canada, Car Sharing Portland (later Flexcar ) in Portland (Oregon) and Zipcar near Boston as well as CityCarClub in Great Britain experienced significant growth.

The global market for car sharing amounts to one billion euros. A study by a consulting agency expected growth to ten billion euros by 2016.

A study by the Institute for Marketing & Management at the University of Hohenheim in Stuttgart in cooperation with European research partners examined why numerous providers with different concepts disappeared so quickly from the market . Central findings of the study: Only electrically powered vehicles and car sharing concepts that fit the consumers' realities could really convince. Convenient and flexible options for use and a high level of service are essential.

Germany

In 1988 in Berlin the StattAuto Berlin (since 2006 under the name Greenwheels founded) as the oldest car-sharing organization. In 1990 and 1991 further organizations were established in Aachen , Bremen and Freiburg im Breisgau .

The number of users in Germany has increased, according to the Bundesverband CarSharing e. V. (bcs), which queries the key figures from all known car sharing providers at the beginning of the year, regardless of association membership, increased by 21% to 1,260,000 users in 2015 compared to the previous year. Station-independent car sharing increased by 26% during this period and is currently used by 830,000 people in seven major German cities with more than 500,000 inhabitants. Station-dependent car sharing is available at 4,600 stations in 537 German cities and municipalities and has 430,000 participants there who use 9,100 vehicles together. In 2016, the number of German citizens registered with a car sharing provider increased by 36%. On January 1, 2017, a total of 1.7 million German citizens were registered with the providers.

According to the Bundesverband CarSharing e. V. (bcs) around 150 car sharing organizations at the beginning of 2016. On average, there are 45 authorized drivers for each car sharing vehicle in station-based offers and 126 authorized drivers for one vehicle in station-independent offers.

In Germany, car sharing is operated in two organizational forms in addition to the "commercial offers" listed below:

  • Corporations (in the form of a GmbH or AG ): Many companies are spin-offs from associations or professionally run associations that want to reach larger parts of the population.
  • Smaller clubs and neighborhood groups: These groups only pass on the costs, so they are not profit-oriented and usually operate in a local or district-related environment. They represent the largest number of car sharing organizations, but usually only offer individual vehicles.

In terms of registered customers, the largest car sharing providers in Germany at the beginning of 2016 were DriveNow , car2go, DB Rent with their own customers (the Flinkster platform operated by DB Rent mediates the customers of many other partners with their customers), the stadtmobil group and the cambio group. In relation to the number of vehicles used in car sharing, the sequence is car2go, DriveNow, the stadtmobil group, the cambio group and DB Rent and Mobility Center (a partner on the Flinkster platform).

Commercial offer

Stadtmobil (car sharing) cars in Stuttgart-Möhringen
DB car sharing at Ravensburg train station
cambio (car sharing) car in Bremen
Car2Go in Düsseldorf
DriveNow company car

The largest car sharing associations in Germany with at least 10,000 customers are (as of May 2017) (number of vehicles in January 2017):

  • Flinkster is the station-based car sharing offer of the Deutsche Bahn subsidiary DB Rent GmbH (until 2011 also known as DB Carsharing ). In terms of number of vehicles, the company is the market leader in Germany and the third-largest provider interms of number ofcustomers on the German market: 300,000 registered customers are offered around 4,000 vehicles in 300 cities (including over 100 electric vehicles, see also: BeMobility ). Cars can also be booked in Austria, the Netherlands and Switzerland. Since April 2006 DB Rent has been cooperating with Drive-CarSharing GmbH , which belongs to Europa Service Autovermietung AG. The connection between car rental and car sharing is implemented by 25 partners. City marketing companies have also been part of the partner network since 2007. In addition, DB Rent develops and operates company-specific car sharing solutions, for example for airlines and service fleets.
  • car2go is a dynamic rental car concept ( Free Floating Car ) from the German car manufacturer Daimler and the rental company Europcar. In Germany, car2go is active in seven cities with 3,810 vehicles and has 670,000 registered users. Daimler later bought the shares in Europcar and then merged the mobility division with BMW. The Car2Go brand was abandoned and the vehicles and customers were integrated into the joint venture with BMW called ShareNow .
  • DriveNow was founded in 2011 as a joint venture between BMW and Sixt as a free floating car concept. After the repurchase of the shares from Sixt, the DriveNow brand was given up with the integration into ShareNow . It had more than a million users, including over 720,000 in Germany. DriveNow was initially launched in Munich and Berlin . In Germany, DriveNow is also represented in Düsseldorf , Cologne and Hamburg . The fleet consists of mini and BMW vehicles, and customers at all locations can also access electric vehicles ( BMW i3 ). In total, the company's fleet comprises more than 6,000 cars. The vehicles can be parked anywhere within the business area (Free Floating Car), fuel costs and parking fees are included. DriveNow was the first car sharing provider tointegrate spontaneous ridesharing . Trips could beofferedautomatically at flinc , which also meant that the rental price could be divided. The cooperation between flinc and DriveNow has ended.
  • Stadtmobil in Berlin, Rhine-Ruhr, Hanover and the surrounding area, Rhine-Main, Rhine-Neckar, Stuttgart and the surrounding area, Karlsruhe and the surrounding area and Pforzheim has 2,300 vehicles for around 52,000 customers and combines station-based with dynamic (free-floating) car sharing.
  • cambio CarSharing in Aachen, Berlin, Bielefeld, Bonn, Bremen (also the location of the booking center), Bremerhaven, Eschweiler, Flensburg, Herzogenrath, Hamburg, Jülich, Cologne, Lüneburg, Oldenburg, Saarbrücken, Uelzen, Winsen, Wuppertal has 1,280 vehicles for around 57,000 Customers and additional stations in Belgium.
  • Greenwheels in Berlin, Braunschweig, Dresden, Düsseldorf, Hamburg, Nuremberg , Pinneberg, Potsdam, Regensburg, Rostock and several cities in the Ruhr area has around 10,000 customers and 300 vehicles. At the beginning of 2016, the car sharing company QuiCar was taken over by Volkswagen Leasing GmbH, which had existed since November 2011 and initially extended to the city of Hanover and some of the surrounding communities.
  • teilAuto in Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia has around 30,000 customers and around 850 vehicles (as of September 2017) at 350 stations (as of September 2014). TeilAuto has also been offering a free floating fleet of 100 vehicles since February 2018.

Some car sharing organizations do not belong to an association, but still have a considerable number of customers, for example book-n-drive as the largest provider in the Rhine-Main area with 919 vehicles and 38,550 customers (as of February 2018) in Frankfurt am Main, Wiesbaden, Mainz, Darmstadt, Oberursel (Taunus), Offenbach am Main and Rüsselsheim or Stattauto Munich with around 450 vehicles and 12,500 participants in the greater Munich area (as of July 2014) or Stadtmobil Südbaden with over 9,000 participants in Freiburg and 30 other cities and municipalities in Central and South Baden (as of July 2016).

Car sharing electric cars in downtown Cologne

Additional offers:

  • Drive-Carsharing GmbH was the first car sharing company to also include light electric vehicles in its fleet. These are currently offered in Düsseldorf and Cologne , with Stadtwerke Düsseldorf AG and RheinEnergie AG participating in this project as partners.
  • In Berlin, the classic American car rental company Hertz introduced its “on demand” (ad hoc) car sharing model, Hertz on Demand, which it founded in 2008 . Here, the customer does not book via the company headquarters, as is usual with car rental companies, but via the associated Internet portal, and he is not tied to the company's fixed rental offices. The pricing scheme is also completely different. In May 2013, the car sharing service was renamed Hertz 24/7.
  • Multicity , a free-floating car sharing offer from the French car manufacturer Citroën , was also limited to the Berlin region . Multicity was the first purely electric car sharing project in Germany and had 350 vehicles with 25,000 registered customers. Customers could also use Flinkster vehicles via their Multicity account without additional registration. The service ended on October 29, 2017.
  • The only Germany-wide location for the international car sharing company Zipcar is in Frankfurt am Main . In Austria, the company is represented in Bregenz , Feldkirch , Graz , Innsbruck , Linz , Salzburg , St. Pölten , Wels and Vienna .

distribution

The spread of car sharing varies greatly in Germany. According to a study by PricewaterhouseCoopers published in May 2017 , in which the prevalence of car sharing, complexity of use, availability of rental bikes, etc. were examined in the 25 largest cities, car sharing is most widespread in Munich before Stuttgart , while the cities in the Ruhr area receive low points, in particular because of the poor number of fixed stations and unavailable free floating offers. Overall, the PwC experts complained that the big cities were still making it too difficult for their citizens to do without their own car.

Austria

history

In 1992, the first car sharing initiatives based on the German and Swiss models were founded. There was auto parts Austria (ATO) (Austrian car sharing) . At the beginning of 1995, the Research Association for Mobility (FGM) , Graz, received the order to research auto parts and its potential in Austria. In 1996 AutoTeilen Austria gave a guarantee that the car-free model settlement in Vienna would be supplied with car sharing. This prevented the construction of 225 garage spaces and the saved costs were invested in social and environmental systems. In 1999 the apartment block with 5 car sharing cars from Denzeldrive GmbH went into operation. Denzels Carsharing (Denzeldrive GmbH) took over auto parts in 1997.

From 1997 to 2011 Denzel was initially the sole provider of car sharing in Austria. Denzel Mobility CarSharing GmbH was founded in 2008 as a joint venture between Wolfgang Denzel Auto AG and Mobility CarSharing Switzerland and is the leading car sharing provider in Austria. In August 2012, after the takeover by Zipcar, the company name was changed to Zipcar Austria GmbH. The company offered around 200 vehicles in nine price categories at over 100 locations in Vienna, Innsbruck , Salzburg , Graz and other cities at hourly and kilometer-based tariffs. Cooperation with public transport providers such as ÖBB , Wiener Linien and public transport operators in the federal states completed the mobility concept. In July 2017, Zipcar announced that it would be withdrawing from the Austrian market.

Commercial offer

In August 2016, 1,200 vehicles from commercial car sharing providers were driving in Vienna .

  • car2go entered the Vienna market in 2011. In April 2017 wa expanded its fleet in Austria by 350 Mercedes-Benz A-Class vehicles (including 50 CLA and 50 GLA). The existing Smart fleet was completely renewed and halved to 350.
  • DriveNow started its offer in Vienna in September 2014 and, according to its own information, had 65,000 customers in August 2016, with every fifth trip in Vienna being made with an electric car . In 2017, the car sharing service increased its fleet to over 700 vehicles. In November 2017, the number of customers in Vienna was around 88,000.
  • ÖBB Rail & Drive is the name of the car sharing offer from the Austrian Federal Railways subsidiary Rail Equipment GmbH & Co KG, which has existed in Austria since 2017. The provider is represented in 22 cities within Austria with 260 vehicles. The offer is a station-based car sharing service with a focus on renting vehicles at ÖBB train stations. Vehicles of various brands such as VW, BMW, Renault and Citroen are used.

The study "Carsharing", financed by the Federal Ministries for Science and Transport as well as the Environment and the State of Styria, was published in September 2016.

Switzerland

In 1987, two car sharing cooperatives were established in Switzerland, the AutoTeilet cooperative (ATG) in Stans and ShareCom in Zurich. Initially, these companies were supported by voluntary work. Another provider was CopAuto in Geneva , which was only able to last for a short time from 1993 to 1995 and was taken over by ATG.

In 1997 ATG and ShareCom merged to form Mobility CarSharing , which subsequently drove forward technical development. She entered into various collaborations with Swiss transport associations and companies and licensed her self-developed reservation system to Austria and Spain. Mobility CarSharing, by far the largest car sharing organization in Switzerland, had 120,000 customers at the end of 2014 and had 2,700 cars at 1,400 parking spaces.

From 2014 to 2019, the Mobility subsidiary Catch a Car was a provider of station-independent car sharing in the cities of Basel and Geneva. In 2019, Catch a Car was integrated into the mobility system.

On March 16, 2020 it was announced that Sharoo will be fully integrated into the AMAG Group . Sharoo AG announced its exit from the Swiss market on May 31, 2020 in a letter to all users in April 2020. The AMAG group dissolved the company and replaced it with Ubeeqo.

Europe

In 1991, the leading car sharing providers from Denmark, Germany, Italy, Norway and Switzerland decided to cooperate under the name European Car Sharing (ECS) . In this way, they also enabled their members to use cross-border car sharing as part of combined transport. The ECS was dissolved again in 2007.

In France, the Citiz cooperative was founded in 2002 (then under the name France-Autopartage ). It brings together 15 providers in more than 80 French cities. There are several car sharing organizations in Paris, such as Communauto (formerly Mobizen) , Avisondemand (formerly Okigo, from AVIS & VINCI ) , Ubeeqo (formerly Carbox, taken over by Europcar in 2015 ) and Zipcar .

Move About (formerly Th! Nk About) was founded in 2007 by Jan-Olaf Willums in Norway and exclusively offers car sharing solutions with electric cars. The company's motto is Zero Hassle - Zero Emission. Willums was a member of the board of the Norwegian electric car manufacturer Think Global AS , which produces the first European-wide registered electric car (M1 homologation), the Th! Nk City. Move About is now represented in several European countries and is manufacturer-independent. Move About offers institutional and private customers "Mobility on Demand", often referred to as CarSharing in the private sector.

Zipcar , a startup that has since been taken over by the Avis Group , is active in six European countries in addition to its home markets of the USA and Canada: Germany, France, Great Britain, Austria, Spain and Turkey.

United States

The Short-Term Auto Rental (STAR) pilot project with 55 vehicles was launched in San Francisco in 1983 . The project was ended after just 18 months. The effect on traffic development was seen as too small because, among other things, only 17% of users had sold their own vehicle. However, 43% have already postponed buying a vehicle.

In 1998 Car Sharing Portland was founded in Portland (Oregon) , which was merged into Flexcar , based in Seattle (Washington) in 2000 . Zipcar was also founded in Cambridge (Massachusetts) by Cameron Russell in 2000, following the example of the German and Swiss systems.

In 2007 Zipcar and Flexcar merged. Due to the low population density in the USA, the company focuses on metropolitan areas and university locations. With over 9,000 vehicles and 700,000 members, Zipcar became the largest car sharing provider in the world.

In 2008, the following companies took part in an investigation in the USA and Canada: AutoShare, City Carshare, CityWheels, Community Car Share of Bellingham, CommunAuto, Community Car, Co-operative Auto Network, IGo, PhillyCarShare, VrtuCar and Zipcar. Of the 9,635 participants, 6,895 came from the USA.

In 2010 Car2go started with 200 vehicles in Austin and expanded its range to nine cities in the USA. In 2014, the number of customers worldwide exceeded one million. On December 18, 2019, Share-Now-Autos, the merger of the car sharing providers car2go and DriveNow, announced that at the end of February 2020 operations in both the USA and Canada will be discontinued, as the business will be due to a low customer demand could not be operated economically.

General Motors announced in May 2019 that it would discontinue its car sharing service Maven , which was launched in 2016, in eight cities, which means a reduction of the offer by more than half.

China

In China, Kandi Technologies Group Inc., in cooperation with its subsidiary Zhejiang Kandi Vehicles Co., Ltd. and the car manufacturer Geely started a car sharing project, at the end of which 100,000 car sharing cars are to be made available to Chinese carsharers. A start was made in Hangzhou ; The project is gradually spreading to other areas such as the major cities of Shanghai and Chengdu and the Jiangsu and Hainan regions .

Development prospects

Since the 1990s, car sharing has shown high growth rates among private users. In addition, some companies have switched their business vehicles to car sharing, also known as corporate car sharing , which aims to reduce costs per vehicle kilometer . The long-term rise in gasoline prices will provide further impetus. Innovative concepts are aimed at renting out private vehicles. So no new vehicles are purchased.

Through the promotion, the public impact and the associated environmental relief, car sharing could become a test field for electric mobility . However, customers have so far not been prepared to bear the increased acquisition and operating costs for electric vehicles.

In the future, car sharing could also be integrated into the use of local public transport in conjunction with the so-called citizen ticket .

As part of the “SynArea” research project, a car sharing system optimized for rural and suburban regions was designed. Compared to the existing urban systems, it is characterized by new types of vehicles, which can be coupled to carriages for easier redistribution and can also be used in a slow mode without a license. A redesign of public transport coordinated with the loan system is also intended to contribute to the financing.

Should autonomous cars be developed and approved for series production, this could offset some of the disadvantages of car sharing. A vehicle could autonomously pick up the customer at the desired location and independently search for a parking space at the destination. In addition, the providers could use the vehicles more efficiently, as they could drive independently to areas with high demand as required. A study from 2013 assumes that this perspective has the potential to make more than 90 percent of the vehicle population superfluous.

In May 2014, Google announced that 100 test vehicles would be built. The aim is to dispense with the steering wheel, brake and accelerator pedal. The vehicles are electric cars. The vehicles are not supposed to change into private ownership, but rather serve as driverless taxis or transport capsules. In a video, Google shows how private individuals test the prototype. Google thus combines the new principles of electric cars, autonomous driving and car sharing (see also autonomous land vehicle ).

See also

Portal: Transport and Traffic / Topic List Road Traffic  - Overview of Wikipedia content on the topic of Transport and Traffic / Topic List Road Traffic

literature

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  • Brenner, Michael: The preferential treatment of car sharing - a measure under road law or road traffic law? In: Road Traffic Law (SVR) 2017, 361–365.
  • Wüstenberg, Dirk: Car sharing law of the federal and state levels. In: Gewerbearchiv (GewArch) 2019, 409-414.
  • Kluth, Winfried: Federal Carsharing Act and its implementation at the municipal level. In: State and municipal administration - administrative law journal for the states of Berlin, Brandenburg, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia (LKV) 2018, 112–116.

Web links

Commons : Carsharing  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files
Wiktionary: Carsharing  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b § 2 No. 1 of the Carsharing Act .
  2. ^ The Times. August 20, 1975, p. 4.
  3. ↑ Car sharing at the airport from car sharing experts .
  4. ↑ citeecar.com ( Memento from May 18, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Host at Citeecar.
  5. ↑ Stiftung Warentest: Car sharing - for whom car sharing is worthwhile February 14, 2012.
  6. ↑ FAQ of the Federal Association of Carsharing .
  7. ↑ Study on Car2Go: Why car sharing doesn't help the environment , report by Wirtschaftswoche magazine from September 7, 2018, accessed on September 26, 2018.
  8. ↑ BMW does not store any location data, but gives a motion profile to the court, report on Netzpolitik.org with quotes from an official statement by BMW from July 21, 2016.
  9. ↑ Accident with a car sharing car: BMW delivers court movement profile of a customer. Report on Spiegel-Online from July 21, 2016 .
  10. ↑ welt.de: Car-sharing providers are struggling in the Ruhr area , November 17, 2013.
  11. ↑ Markus Fasse, Silke Kersting: The new pleasure in the rental car . In: Handelsblatt . July 9, 2013, p. 20 .
  12. ↑ University of Hohenheim: "I like it - but I don't use it": Study shows why so many car sharing offers fail. February 7, 2020 The full research article "I like it, but I don't use it: Impact of carsharing business models on usage intentions in the sharing economy" has been published in the journal Business Strategy and the Environment .
  13. ↑ a b c Balance sheet press release bcs from February 29, 2016 .
  14. ↑ CarSharing annual balance sheet 2016. Bundesverband CarSharing, February 27, 2017, accessed on February 27, 2017 .
  15. ↑ a b Largest car sharing provider in Germany by number of customers . In: Statista , May 2017.
  16. ↑ a b Largest car sharing provider in Germany by number of vehicles . In: Statista , January 2017.
  17. ↑ flinkster.de (PDF)
  18. ↑ One million customers for DriveNow. In: NewFleet. Retrieved January 5, 2018 .
  19. ↑ a b Factsheet DriveNow. (PDF) In: DriveNow. Retrieved January 5, 2018 .
  20. ↑ Autozeitung: Carsharing im Trend , March 21, 2011.
  21. ↑ Homepage DriveNow DriveNow
  22. ↑ This is how car sharing works with DriveNow. In: AutoBild. Retrieved January 16, 2018 .
  23. ↑ Car sharing provider expands fleet to 200 BMWi3. In: Automobilwoche. Retrieved January 5, 2018 .
  24. ↑ DriveNow + flinc = mobility 2.0 , DriveNow Blog
    How flinc works in DriveNow vehicles  (     page can no longer be accessed , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , flinc.org@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / flinc.org  
  25. ↑ Spontaneous rides in Munich, Berlin & Düsseldorf: Car-sharing provider “DriveNow” cooperates with “flinc” , iFun, iphone-ticker.de on March 23, 2012
    Intelligent ride-sharing center: flinc expands its network , netzwertig.com from March 23 2012.
  26. ↑ Press release from November 5, 2012
  27. ↑ Car sharing business - Volkswagen is also getting involved. on: faz.net , November 2, 2011.
  28. ↑ Volkswagen Quicar - New Concept for Car Sharing , January 15, 2016.
  29. ↑ Press release from September 11, 2017, teilauto.net
  30. ^ Carsharing in Saxony ( Memento from July 2, 2014 in the Internet Archive ).
  31. ↑ Ursula Bauer, Anna Fokerman, Georg Frech: Advanced Topics in Sustainability - Innovation and Marketing: Stattauto Munich . ( Memento from October 25, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 386 kB) Seminar paper, July 12, 2012; Retrieved September 22, 2012.
  32. ↑ Ralf Arenz: Electric Charging Station: Recharge your batteries in the city of Cologne. (No longer available online.) January 29, 2010, archived from the original ; accessed on April 12, 2019 . In: Kölnische Rundschau . January 29, 2010.
  33. ↑ Julia Puzalowski: Pole position in electric cars. ( Memento of November 23, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) In: RP Online . November 20, 2009.
  34. ↑ Hertz On Demand becomes Hertz 24/7. 2nd June 2013.
  35. ↑ PSA will give its car sharing in Berlin on October 4th, 2017.
  36. ↑ Tobias Kaiser: Nowhere is car sharing more fun than in this city . In: The world . May 28, 2017.
  37. ↑ a b Peter Novy  ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) - Presence on LinkedIn , accessed May 31, 2018. - Project Peter Novy, Wolfgang Bauer, April 1996 - September 1999.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / at.linkedin.com
  38. ↑ CarSharing.at ( Memento from September 27, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  39. ↑ a b Aus for car sharing provider Zipcar in Austria . In: The Standard . 4th July 2017.
  40. ↑ a b DriveNow makes every fifth trip in Vienna with an electric car . In: The press . 29th August 2016.
  41. ↑ Over 700 vehicles - DriveNow becomes the largest carsharer in Vienna. In: Regionews.at. Retrieved January 16, 2018 .
  42. ^ ÖBB Rail & Drive. In: Carsharing-Wien.com. Retrieved July 13, 2019 .
  43. ↑ Car sharing in the context of financial, transport policy and environmental policy decision-making bases in the field of transport sustainedwirtschaften.at, accessed May 31, 2018. Reports from energy and environmental research 1/1997. - Publication of the Research Society Mobility , Graz, September 1996. Authors: Birgit Kumer, Gabriele Novy, Karoline Vogl, René Graf, Peter Novy (note at the time managing director of AutoTeilen Austria and honorary member of the board of the Austrian Transport Club ), Gerald Pfeiffer, Karl Reiter, Karl Steininger, Ralph Zettl. 218 pp.
  44. ↑ mobility.ch (PDF; 236 kB). As of December 31, 2014.
  45. ↑ Sharoo car sharing platform will be fully integrated into the AMAG Group. (PDF; 148 KB) In: sharoo.com. March 16, 2020, accessed March 16, 2020 .
  46. ↑ Citiz: un projet citoyen .
  47. ↑ Zipcar cities worldwide
  48. ^ A b Elliot W. Martin, Susan A. Shaheen: Greenhouse Gas Emission Impacts of Carsharing in North America. IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS, VOL. 12, NO. 4, DECEMBER 2011.
  49. ↑ USA Today Smart car-sharing service car2go expands in Austin (May 21, 2010) .
  50. ↑ europe.autonews.com .
  51. ↑ Carsharing from Daimler and BMW: Share Now stopped in North America Report on the internet platform of the television news channel n-tv from December 19, 2019, accessed on December 19, 2019.
  52. ↑ GM's Maven car-sharing service leaving 8 cities but not Detroit Report from The Detroit News on May 20, 2019, accessed on December 21, 2019
  53. ↑ Kandi Technologies reports the Kandi Brand JL7001BEV four-passenger pure electric sedan vehicle to be delivered for public EV sharing system in Hangzhou kandivehicle.com Internet portal, November 12, 2013 (English).
  54. ^ Nino Marchetti: 100,000 electric cars target of chinese car sharing project. EarthTechling Internet portal, November 20, 2013 (English).
  55. ↑ Kandi signed a cooperative framework agreement with Zhejiang Guoxin Vehicle Leasing Company to promote self-driving pure electric vehicles rental for public transportation in Hangzhou project. kandivehicle.com Internet portal, August 14, 2012 (English).
  56. ↑ Steffen Barthel: Electromobility in car sharing. Akademikerverlag, Saarbrücken 2012, ISBN 978-3-639-38850-3 .
  57. ↑ Steffen Barthel: Electric cars in car sharing. In: International Transport. Vol. 64, No. 1, 2012, pp. 38-40.
  58. ↑ Christian Hoffmann u. a .: Evaluation of integrated mobility services with electric vehicles from a user perspective . ( Memento of October 25, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF) Innovation Center for Mobility and Social Change, Berlin 2012.
  59. ↑ Deutschlandradio, January 15, 2013, traffic scientist wants “Citizen Ticket” for everyone .
  60. ↑ Final research project SynArea ( Memento of 20 November 2015, Internet Archive ).
  61. ↑ Autonomous cars make private cars superfluous . In: Technology Review . August 27, 2013.
  62. ↑ Message on heise.de
  63. ↑ Google presents its robot electric car
  64. ↑ spiegel.de: Electromobile presented: The Google ball