Carsharing.US

Carsharing Competition Returns to Washington DC

2012-02-04T18:25:00.000-08:00

National capitals seem to have a way of attracting carsharing companies: London, Berlin, Paris, Madrid and Amsterdam all have several competing carshare operators. With the demise of Flexcar in late 2007, Zipcar has had Washington DC mostly to itself.

Now both Hertz On Demand and car2go have announced a full-scale operations. Hertz On Demand publicly launching the city and car2go intending to launch later this year. This will be an interesting year in DC!

Zipcar — is the big kahuna of casharing, with 850+ vehicles in the DC metro area, including Arlington, Virginia across the river (arguably the city with the most transportation options and most progressive transportation policies in the US (except for taxing carsharing) and several cities in Maryland. Zipcar was the big loser in a DC DOT parking space bidding fracas last year, but the hegemony was bound to end. And Zipcar is no stranger to parking bidding wars, having driven up carsharing parking costs in several other cities when they entered the market.

With the return of competition to Washington, Zipcar has competition in all four of what it calls its "established markets" — Boston, New York, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. These cities were all launched between 2000-2005. (That these markets are their "established" markets always seemed a bit arbitrary to me, since they now operate several markets established by Flexcar of the same vintage, and which were launched with similar level of investment - Seattle (2000) and Portland (1998).

DC's thoughtful online new source TBD Online thinks Hertz and car2go may be "better deals" than Zipcar, primarily because of no annual fees, but Zipcar has shown it will match and beat the deals of competitors in other markets, so I fully expect them to effectively counter with equally attractive new member packages, especially when the weather gets better and the spring marketing swings into action. And pricing for Hertz and Zip are essentially the same and car2go's pricing really isn't comparable.

Hertz On Demand has had a couple of cars in the area for several years and has quietly started to build out their fleet with 10 cars in a couple of neighborhoods when I was in DC in January for TRB. Hertz says they're planning to get to 100 vehicles in phase I, but didn't give any idea how long that might be. The recently launched batter electric rental cars at Union Station will be converted to Hertz Car Rental to On Demand service.

Hertz has indicated they would NOT be offering one-way service, at least not initially, as they do in New York City. But, my guess is they will do start offering one-way to the airports sooner rather than later. Although offering one-way to airports is great for marketing and a wonderful service for customers, it's probably closer to self-drive taxi than anything else. In the meantime, their vehicles have the clunky but useful Never Lost navigation system and their insurance has a $250 deductible rather than $750 for Zipcar.

Car2Go has been long-rumored to be eyeing Washington and now it's real. The "floating parking" service area spans the entire District of Columbia, but excludes several areas - including the National Mall - presumably in hopes of avoiding huge vehicle relocation issues that Capitol BikeShare continues to struggle with. The Smart vehicles will be gas, not electric. I expect that car2go will be very well received in DC, already a very multi-modal town.

I'm still waiting to see what sort of impact car2go's unique one-way service only with Smart cars has on traditional "round-trip" carsharing services. My suspicion that the small 2-seat vehicle defines a different type of trip than that of "round trip" carsharing with its bigger 4-5 passenger vehicles, is now somewhat confirmed in other car2go cities. Fortunately, an early study from Europe is showing that vehicle ownership rates for car2go members is lower after joining, though not as much as traditional round-trip carsharing services.

Some Other Perspectives on Competition

Is competition bad or good for carsharing? It sort of depends on who you're asking. It's probably good for the companies, since multiple players in the market likely provides some legitimacy to this new mobility option in the minds of some prospective customers. But as far as the allocation of public resources, such as on-street parking spaces, it may be a mixed bag since most customers are only members of one service, at least of the round-trip type (I fully expect many Zipcar and Hertz On Demand members will also have car2go membership.)

For what it's worth: during the competition deliberations when Zipcar was acquiring Streetcar in London at least one city (Islington) reported to the Competition Commission, that it preferred to keep its partnership with only a single carsharing operator since they felt it would be better for residents since they could be assured of using every carsharing in the area, and was certainly easier for them administratively.

Meanwhile, down in Raleigh, North Carolina, there are complaints that competition is hurting the growth of carsharing. Actually, I doubt it's the competition as much as the lack of commitment by the carsharing companies. WeCar has never put much juice into marketing WeCar that I've seen and the Zipcar operation there is on two college campuses and, in general, they seem to keep these operations close to campus and not use them as springboards to developing city-wide operations.

France is the capital of P2P carsharing

2012-02-02T15:46:00.000-08:00

I must admit, reading this article "Car sharing: from mobility service to service of mobility" (in rough English translation here) in Le Blog de la Consommation Collaborative, I was more than a little surprised to learn that there are 8 P2P carsharing and car rental (important distinction, but still...) companies in France! Where have I been? What do the French know that we don't?

Surprisingly, 3 (!) of these P2P companies are non-profits really emphasizing the collaborative consumption approach to carsharing:

Zilok — P2P car rental with in-car technology; as well as other household goods between.
e-Loue.com — provides contact for carsharing insurance; no in car technology (key swap).
DeWay — also puts emphasis on the community aspects.
Livop — installs a "Livop Box" free in member cars; for both short and long-term rental.
Cityzencar — highlights the P2P community aspect; provides in-car technology
Buzzcar — headed by the Robin Chase (co-founder of Zipcar); also with iPhone app to find and reserve but still with key swap.
Une Voiture a louer (A Car for Rent) — P2P car rental facilitated with an iPhone app; uses key exchange.
Voiturelib — recentlydeveloped an iPhone app.

My sense has been that for years, French carsharing has seemed to languish somewhat — a number of services in regional cities of France, but all relatively small, in spite of the involvement by some major players (e.g. Veolia). That was then...

But now entrepreneurs in France has certainly demonstrated their stuff with eight P2Ps, not to mention the Autolib statement — doing something on a scale not even attempted by Zipcar in New York City — and with battery EVs not less.

If you're interested in a sense of the French collaborative consumption perspective on P2P, as well as the formation of Voiturelib (a student project), here's an interesting interview with the founders of DeWays discussing their motivations, the issue of insurance (in France, at least) G-translated.

Finally, if you've wondered why European car manufacturers are creating carsharing subsidiaries, this chart (also from the blog article) give a hint of one reason - car sales in the EU and in France are way down. In such a situation it makes sense to look around for new markets in the mobility sector. (France must have had one heck of an auto scrap incentive in 2008 to boost auto sales the way they did).

Amsterdam's 3rd EV Carsharing Project

2012-01-29T02:20:00.000-08:00

For the launch of car2go in Amsterdam last November, Radio Netherland Worldwide produced this nice 3 minute history of EV carsharing there. It's in English.

It has some nice pictures of Witkar ("White Carts"), an earlier attempt at an EV carsharing service from the 1970s, a short comment from its founder Luud Schimmelpinnik; pictures of an even earlier EV from 1914 (!) and a comment from a skeptic of the whole idea. Enjoy.

What's ahead in carsharing for 2012?

2012-01-25T07:59:00.000-08:00

I think 2012 is going to be a landmark year for carsharing in a number of areas. And judging from some early developments, it appears some companies are already acting on their new year's resolutions. But crystal ball gazing is not an exact science and I don't have any insider information, so what follows are some "likely guesses" for the upcoming year.

P2P Gets Traction — For the past year RelayRides, Getaround and Wheelz have been getting their systems and technology tuned up in North America and I expect to see them really start rolling during upcoming year. Getaround has already staked out Portland as it's next city and RelayRides has indicated expansion in the Boston area is one their radar. But it's worth remembering that the potential of P2P CS has barely been scratched in California, much less 7 or 8 other major cities.

Zipcar's Year to Prove Themselves — Meanwhile, on the "classic" carsharing front, Zipcar has been fairly quiet about what it's going to do now that it's gotten its finances in better shape and more or less completed the integration of Streetcar into their brand. That is, until last week when they announced the completion of the Avancar (Barcelona) deal and the hiring of a European General Manager, with German credentials — suggesting possible target for their next move in "great game".

"One-way" Carsharing On a Roll — The two players in the one-way/on-demand carsharing, Daimler's car2go and BMW's Drive Now, look like they will continue to keep rolling into new cities. On this side of the Atlantic, will car2go finally crack the nut on the long-rumored Washington, DC operation (a perfect place for it) or is the city's dysfunctional parking policy going to continue to constrain carsharing? No matter what happens in DC, there are other cities in the US and Canada ideal for one-way/on-demand. I expect we'll also get a glimpse of the relocation and recharging requirements from their San Diego all-Electric Drive operation. And on the European (and hopefully North American) front we can finally expect to see the start of some serious 3rd party research on the effects of car2go on urban mobility patterns of users.

Continued Double Digit Expansion of Carsharing Worldwide — Even in automobility-centric North America, the trends continue to indicate an increased interest in alternatives to car ownership for city dwellers, which carsharing companies are ready for. And who knows, in addition to just-launched Miami, I expect we'll see major operations in a couple of new cities during 2012? Membership in the one-way/on-demand companies alone will be substantial part of it. Carsharing has really taken off in Japan in he past fews with the participation of some major players in the space. And China is taking its first steps in carsharing, as well. South America, hello?

I'd mention two other trends that I think will help push carsharing along: the launch of bikesharing services in many major cities (it's becoming a "must have" for cities and getting people out of their cars and onto bikes for short urban trips ought to open the eyes of many toward a car-lite lifestyle. And improved ridesharing systems, including dynamic ridesharing, may finally demonstrate its potential to fill empty seats on the commute trips - further getting people out of their (own) cars.

Here's to 2012!

Carsharing Year in Review - 2011

2011-12-30T12:48:00.000-08:00

2011 has been a landmark year for carsharing in the US and worldwide. Here's my annual review of developments in carsharing for 2011.

Before getting into specific developments, I'd like to make two general observations:

Are we seeing a demographic tipping point? — This was the year when the mainstream marketers admitted that many in Gen Y ("the Millennials") weren't thinking about cars the same way their parents were - they'd rather have their iPhone than a car. Car registrations and VMT are down; significantly fewer teenagers waiting before getting their driver's licenses; and especially an explosion of bicycle use in cities (even those without bike-friendly reputations).

I've always thought this 2009 headline in the Globe and Mail (Toronto) newspaper captured this shift in thinking about cars very nicely - "Object of desire or necessary evil?"

Parking is fundamental - Parking is a fundamental but often under appreciated aspect of car use. It wasn't until Donald Shoup layed the cards on the table in his landmark "The High Cost of Free Parking" that most of us realized just how fundamental parking really is. And carsharing operators also know how fundamental parking is to the success of their business. That's why designated parking on public streets has been such a holy grail - convenient access and great marketing exposure. And, as you'll see in several items below, some carsharing companies are slicing the parking issue in new ways - car2go and Zebramobil, as well as RelayRides in San Francisco are opting for floating parking (among other things).

And while on the topic of parking, I can't ignore the really goofy decisions that led to a bidding war for dedicated on-street parking spaces for carsharing companies in Washington DC during 2011. DC has had a troubled history with carsharing parking, almost from the start in 2001 on-street parking seemed to generate more negative publicity than I've heard in any other city. I'm sure the companies don't mind paying for such a valuable resource but for something that supposed be good for the city, the "bidding war" seems like a terrible to try to backfill the DDOT budget. And if press reports are any indication, Zipcar probably didn't handle things as smoothly as they might have.

Now on to the big news of 2011:

Zipcar IPO — it finally happened! After several years of speculation, Zipcar's new life as a publicly-traded company started in April. And it got off to rousing start jumping from the $16 asking price to over $30 for a few days and then back to the mid teens, where it's been most of the time since then. Since then investors have been debating the underlying fundamentals of Zipcar, and trying to understand carsharing, in general.

I think the significance of the IPO is, first and foremost to legitimize carsharing as a valid business model that investors can and should take seriously - a sort of "coming of age" for carsharing and new mobility. So far profitability seems to be just out of reach for Zipcar, but they seem to be close enough and seem to have a big enough scope that investors continue to be cautiously optimistic. The market has spoken — certainly for North America but to some extent worldwide, as well.

Auto Manufacturers Enter the Carsharing Space — Daimler's car2go service started rolling out new cities at an amazing pace in 2011 — with gasoline-powered Smart cars in Hamburg, Germany, Lyon, France and Vienna, Austria in Europe and Vancouver, BC in North America and all Electric Drive Smart service in San Diego, Calif. and a day later in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Meanwhile BMW launched it's look-alike one-way service in Munich and Berlin, Germany, albeit with larger (but still small) vehicles - 1-series and Minis.

On this side of the Atlantic, GM announced a partnership with RelayRides to integrate the OnStar vehicle telematics system with the peer-to-peer carsharing service - providing a potentially powerful marketing channel and at least partially solving RelayRides technology dilemma.

New Operational Models — As far as re-thinking the internal operations of traditional carsharing, peer-to-peer has been getting most of the attention. Changing the cost of fleet from a fixed to a variable expense that is paid only when an actual rental occurs, changes the finances of the operator significantly. It also changes the internal management responsibilities significantly, redefining the fleet managers' job to a marketing job to sign-up and manage vehicle-owning members. So far signing up car owners does not appear to be a major hurdle.

There are some other interesting experiments that got underway in 2011, as well. In Munich, Germany, Zebramobil has implemented a round-trip service without fixed parking locations. Vehicles must be left within a several block distance of various zones. As with car2go, members find a vehicles in each zone via the internet. In Nice, France, a high profile well-funded all EV carsharing service, Auto Bleue, got underway.

Autolib — In less than a year from contract signing the Bollore Group began the roll out of the service in Novemeber and December. Opreationally, Auotlib vehicles must be returned to an available Autolib charging bay, unlike car2go's electric fleets in Amsterdam and San Diego, which can be parked anywhere (legal) within the floating parking zone. Rates are almost identical between Auotlib and car2go.

Autolib is in a category by itself given the major commitment from the City of Paris government and significant private investment (reportedly € 50 million) by Bollore Group itself. As with the Velib public bicycle system, the world is watching at this distinctively French undertaking. London has already expressed Autolib envy. But it remains to be seen whether Autolib will serve as a model for the development of EV auto mobility services in other cities.

New service models — While peer-to-peer slices the operational issue of fleet in a new and potentially very profitable way, as far as users are concerned it's still the traditional reservation-based, round trip carsharing service model. In 2011 on-demand, open-end, one-way carsharing really burst on the scene - in both Europe and North America.

I think it's under-appreciated just how completely new on demand, open-end, one-way carsharing services like car2go, Drive Now and Autolib, really are. On-demand overcomes a significant consumer complaint about traditional carsharing - requiring a reservation and especially having to specify the end time of the trip. A few services in Europe have successfully implemented "open-ended" trips but the challenges of maintaining good utilization with this great amount of flexibility for the user is daunting for any company, and especially a smaller companies.

The implications of these on-demand services on other modes urban transportation are really unknown at this point and I eagerly any shreds of information from modal split research. I expect they will show that a significant number of trips are by "card-carrying" car owners who use the service simply because parking is so easy with these services. But some of these trips may be taken from transit, as well. In the long run, I think it will be another transportation option that leads people away from car ownership.

Smaller carshares doing just fine, thank you — With all the attention being paid to the "big guys" 2011 saw the entry and expansion of a number of smaller carsharing operators, as well. New operators include Time Car focusing on university campuses in Oklhama and Texas, PATS Carshare in San Jose. And joining the P2P universe Wheelz in In Australia new entrant Green Carshare took over CharterDrive and the UK continues to see the launch of new car clubs serving much smaller cities and towns than anywhere in the US and many parts of Europe. The industry is now at a place where just keeping track of the companies is a major commitment.

Although college campuses seemed to be where most of the expansion in North American carsharing was taking place, most surprising to me was the move by NYC-based Mint Carsharing moved into Zipcar's home turf in Boston/Cambridge, Mass. taking over a recent start up as their toehold in the marketplace. I expect there's plenty of room for growth in the Boston market and entering a market where an existing operator has already started the education process simplifies things somewhat.

And long-time carsharing companies, Autoshare, CommunAuto, Modo, I-Go, HourCar, LAX Carshare and City Carshare continue to thrive. They are joined by host of smaller community-based groups doing great work serving their local areas.

2012 promised to be even more interesting, which I'll sketch out in another post. If you want to see last year's review, it's here. Best wishes for the new year

Don't Be A Gashole

2011-12-27T20:49:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to E-Go Carshare in Boulder for the best carsharing marketing pitch of 2011. Very nice presentation and photo, as well. From a series of bus shelters ads with another clever slogan, as well.

Ho ho ho! Happy holidays everyone.

Gen Y says Why?

2011-12-22T14:02:00.000-08:00

Zipcar's second annual transportation survey again highlights that the 18 to 34 year old demographic has different ideas about transportation than their elders. If one needed persuading, it's more good news that the future personal transportation isn't going to be an extension of the 1950s through 1990s.

It seems likely to me that the perspective of the Millenial (AKA Gen Y) on travel would be even more extreme if more had access to better transportation alternatives, such as better bike lanes, better bus and rail service, and more sidewalks.

Although Zipcar describes the results of the survey in terms of their target demographic, it's worth noting that a significant number of people in ALL age categories are interested in reducing their driving.

What would people do with the money they save from driving owning less? Not surprisingly, people say they would save the money or pay off debt. Convenience and the environment came in 3rd and 4th place as motivations.

Zipcar's offers this suggestion to government agencies:

"Policy makers should also take notice and accept that our youngest generation will not think about transportation the way we have for the last hundred years, nor will future generations," [said Zipcar CEO Scott] Griffith. "Our most forward-looking policy makers are thinking about housing, land use, highways, bridges and gas taxes like it's 2015 rather than 1971. It is my hope that these thought leaders will inspire a broader dialogue on mobility policy instead of sticking with an outdated transportation policy that directs limited funds almost exclusively toward highways."

But don't worry the car isn't going away any time soon, even though it certainly won't be your father's Oldsmobile (which went away in 2004). 2011 witnessed the launch of freeway capable battery electric cars (Nissan Leaf and Mitsubishi iMiev) and the idiosyncratic Smart car has been joined on this side of the Atlantic by competitor microcars, the Fiat 500 (strong sales) and just before the end of the year, the Scion (Toyota) IQ (gas powered), somewhat legitimizing the market segment.

You can see Zipcar's 12 slide deck on the survey here and read the press release here.

Car2go Chief Says Buyers are Users

2011-12-20T13:18:00.001-08:00

Many people have asked me why a car manufacturer would offer an alternative to car ownership? My response has always been, look who's doing it: Daimler, a high end company, has little to lose offering Smart cars in their unique one-way rental service — it helps the production of Smart cars and doesn't cannibalize sales of their other Mercedes models. (Arguably, BMW is in a somewhat similar position.)

And, I would argue, that other European manufacturers, such as VW, which have entered the carsharing space are realizing they're approaching the limit to how many new cars can be sold to European customers so they'd better start thinking about other car-related ventures.

The German newspaper Die Zeit recently published an interview with Robert Henrich, worldwide head of Daimler's Car2go program that provides some helpful insight about Daimler's thinking. Below are some loosely translated highlights of that interview:

Die Zeit: What does Daimler hope for car2go?

Henrich: A new and profitable business model. Carsharing is not just a hype, but a social trend . People want to be mobile, perhaps even more than before, but do not necessarily own the vehicle. We are at the forefront of this trend and want to become market leaders.

Henrich says that Car2go is expected to be profitable by 2014. In the interview he confirms my thesis, that car2go does not compete with their core business. The value of car2go, he says, is that with car2go, "we talk to new customer groups, especially young urbanites" and since "(car) buyers are also (car2go) users" Daimler hopes this will help them extend their brand into the younger generation, some of whom will eventually buy Mercedes autos.

Die Zeit: What will mobility look like in ten years?

Henrich: I am convinced that car-sharing, especially in the cities will play a much wider area than today. Everything will revolve around the question of how the various modes of transport can be networked - this is the future.

I must admit I don't completely buy the whole networked future of automobiles idea, mostly because I'm still skeptical that enough pieces of the "pay by the mile" puzzle will ever be in place - at least in the US. At least not until some sort of comprehensive information privacy pact can be developed. But since all the "car guys" are talking about it, something is likely to happen.

And what about US auto manufacturers following their European counterparts into providing other mobility services? My guess is that's a few years away. Considering that they all recently went through major restructuring allowing them to be profitable at lower sales volumes than before, I expect they will stay closer to their core business for a while. To date, the Ford deal with Zipcar can be viewed primarily as getting exposure to a younger demographic for Ford vehicles. The GM/OnStar deal with RelayRides is more interesting and could turn into something big, but we won't know until we see RelayRides version 2.0. Shelby Clark puts a positive spin on the GM/OnStar deal in The Auto Industry Embraces Its Own Disruption on a Harvard Business School blog site.

My Favorite Zipcar Ad

2011-12-03T17:00:00.000-08:00

Don't ask me why, but this ad really amuses me — humorous and makes the point.

However, Zipcar wasn't so lucky with another ad showing how hard it was to carry a bunch of stuff on a bicycle. The cycling blogosphere erupted in a minor meltdown for a few days about how "anti-cycling" the ad was. You can read about and see all 6 ads here.

Electrifying Carsharing

2011-12-02T16:59:00.000-08:00

(Note to readers: this article has been significantly updated since the original posting.)

With the arrival of highway-capable battery electric vehicles (EVs), a number of carsharing companies are adding them to their fleets. And it's happening all over the world. Here are some of operations and concepts that caught my attention.

In the North America many of the operations are adding Nissan Leafs, since it was the first vehicle in wide availability but Mitsubishi iMievs are becoming available.

Hertz On Demand — New York City has been busy adding Nissan Leafs and other vehicles to their New York City operation. Although not widely publicized they offer one-way trips between many of their parking locations. Although they don't offer city-wide carsharing in other cities, they do offer EVs in San Francisco and Washington DC, as well as London. Hertz has set out a goal of 1,000 EVs systemwide by the end of 2012.
CommunAuto — Montreal & Quebec City; has had a long interest in EVs, starting with a proposed Branché project in 2003; possibly the first carsharing service to add battery EVs in North America; will add 50 Nissan Leafs in 2012.
car2go — San Diego; opened for business on November 18 with Smart ED (electric drive) in one-way service over a large area of downtown (including the airport) and adjacent neighborhoods.
Getaround — And then there's Getaround P2P carsharing using the Tesla Roadster as their signature vehicle for marketing; now they have 3 privately-owned Teslas enrolled - at $50 per hour ("gas and insurance included"). They've also undertaken to recruit EV owners through a marketing campaign with PlugShare.com
City Carshare — Announced plans to power half it's fleet with renewable energy; they will do this using Renewable Energy Credits (REC) from 3 Degrees.
I-Go — Chicago, with great fanfare (deservedly) announced not one but plans to add 11 solar powered charging stations for Mitsubishi iMievs they will adding to their fleet in 2012. Each station, from 350 Green. will cover 4 parking spaces and house 2 I-Go EVs and have room for charging two other EVs. Congratulations IGO!

(Arguably, the first EV carsharing was the Electrovaya Altcar service at the Baltimore Science Center starting in 2009, but it is defunct now.)

France — EVs from major manufacturers have been available in France continuously since the 1980s and France started the first EV carshare in 1999.

Auto Bleue — Nice; the first EV carsharing in France; round-trip service model; a very well funded partnership with Veolia Transport, EDF (the French electric utility) and Transdev; launched in the spring of 2011 with 15 stations 61 vehicles; eventual goal is 70 stations and over 200 vehicles; telematics by Vulog. "Nice" logos, too, as they say in Nice,)
Autolib — Paris; Group Bolloré started it's one-way EV carsharing last week month with the official launch of 250 "Blue Car" vehicles less than a year after signing the contract with the City of Paris. Pricing is the same as somewhat similar car2go service with Smart EDs in Amsterdam (see below) - 0.29 € per minute. (I will have a more complete report about Autolib soon.)
Yelomobile — La Rochelle; rebranded successor to Liselec, the oldest EV carshare (started 1999) operated by the city; with an upgrade from Veolia Transport which integrates the brand (and the member card) with city's Yelo buses and public parking operations.
Cité Vu— Antibes (southern France); operated by telematics supplier VuLog allows round trip and one way service between 6 locations.
Carbox — Toulouse; Carbox is a unique business to business carsharing service, primarily in Paris, but also provides fleet carsharing to Airbus in Toulouse, recently announced they would be adding 15 Citroen C-Zeros (Mitsubishi iMievs) to the 150 vehicles they currently provide the aircraft manufacturer.

Spain seems to be suddenly very active in EV carsharing, with several demonstration projects:

CochEle — Sevilla; This is by far the largest operation 6 stations and 16 Peugeot iON (Mitsubishi iMievs) vehicles; rates are 4.95 € per hour or 19.95 € day + 0.29 € per kilometer (I'm a little mystified why they charge so much for "fuel"?) Cochele has announced a partnership with NH Hotels (major hotel chain in Spain) showing the MIT folding City Cars now being built in Spain (no details)
E:sharing — Sagunto (just north of Valencia, on the Mediterranean); using Th!nk vehicles; currently with 2 stations
SareCar - Ataun (northern Spain; tiny village of only 1,500 people); demonstration project with 2 Th!nk vehicles.

Elsewhere in Europe —

Move About — offers carsharing with Th!nk EVs in corporate fleet sharing service as well as public carsharing in Oslo, Norway (80 vehicles), Copenhagen, Denmark (launched this month); and Goteborg (Gothenberg) Sweden 5 vehicles in a science park. Here's a nice video (in English) showing the service.
GreenWheels — started adding their first Peugeot Ion to their fleet in Amsterdam in July with plans to add 25 EVs total, 7 more in that city, as well as additional vehicles in Utrecht and Rotterdam.
car2go — Amsterdam; expects to have all 300 Smart Electric Drive models deployed by the end of the year; rates are slightly lower than car2go in other cities (0.29 € per minute; 12.90 € per hour and 39 € per day)

Japan was one of the earliest countries to offer EV carsharing, but took some time out until the current generation of EVs. Several Japanese auto makers have announced EV carsharing —Nissan (partnering with Mitsububishi in Kyoto) and Toyota (at housing developments in Tokoyo and Nagoya using IQ EV vehicles). These build on innovative demonstration projects in the 1990s at the manufacturer's corporate campuses -- a project on the Toyota campus using their earlier generation "Crayon" vehicle; and the Honda ICVS project (which currently sponsors the Intellishare program at UC Riverside and once had Honda EVs; as well as the DIRACC one-way carsharing program in Singapore; currently testing in EVs in various commuter projects.

Several independent development concepts have also been announced. One called the "Green Cross-over Project" would locate EVs at convenience stores and equip them with vehicle-to-grid (V2G) capabilities. Another would use home delivery storage lockers, which already have security features, to make carsharing vehicle keys available to members.

China, which has been very active in developing all sorts of electric mobility - e-bikes, a variety of cars, now a EV carsharing service has launched:

EVNet — Hangzhou; arguably the first carsharing in China (and joins the largest public system in the world); has 15 vehicles at 4 rental locations near university and office park, both gas and Chery EV (surprisingly their signature Smart car is gasoline Smart not the Chinese knock-off electric Smart). Thanks to Lewis Chen of Invers for this tip and to the Team Red (my consulting firm) man in Shanghai, Dominik Villaret, for update that rates are between $3 - $5 per hour They have good support from the city government. Watch this short video.

The future of EV carsharing?

Given the high cost of battery-electric vehicles themselves, plus the cost of charging stations, carsharing and EVs seem like a logical relationship. I have recommended to cities I've worked with, that if they are obtaining EVs and charging stations for their city fleet they consider partnering with a local carshare to make these vehicles available to the general public, while still having access to them for city employee use. Such application also better utilizes the charging stations. Since carsharing offers a variety of vehicle types, members can select whether an EV is the right type of vehicle for the type of trip they're planning to make — replacing more trips with vehicles that are the cleanest operating. The carsharing company should be able to keep an EV in use much more than most private individuals could.

The installation of solar charging stations overcomes one of the major drawbacks to current battery EVs - instead of recharging from electricity generated from coal-fired power plants, these EVs would be truly renewable transportation.

In the long run some transportation experts believe there will be fleets of shared very light shared EVs, even smaller than Smart cars, in major cities. These might look like the Renault Twizzy or other light vehicle designs not yet thought of.

Meanwhile in the present, one of the important operational questions all carsharing operators are asking themselves is how often members won't accurately judge the range of their trip and find themselves stranded a long way from home; and what will they do about it. As of now, there aren't any AAA trucks with quick chargers cruising the streets. Car2go has got an even more complex situation to manage. They don't require that vehicles be returned to a charging station so really have to depend that members will look at the fuel level reported on the web or app to decide which vehicle to take.

Where is Zipcar on the on the question of EVs? They have been cautious (or perhaps "strategic", depending on your point of view). Only 2 years ago Scott Griffith was quoted that Zipcar would "not be going electric anytime soon". Earlier this year they did announce a partnership with Toyota to place a number of Prius Plug In Hybrids in several Zipcar cities, so they've arguably gone at least partially electric! For them to implement battery EVs would require a not insignificant upgrade to their system to be able to manage vehicle battery state of charge so that members would get a vehicle with sufficient range to meet their needs.

As EV technology improves (particularly range and recharge times) and vehicle costs come down (or subsidies increase) my guess is Zipcar will be increasingly interested.

CommunAuto, one of the most skillful companies in building partnerships, explains their approach pretty well in these slides from their Nissan Leaf partnership launch event.

If you know of other interesting or exemplary EV carsharing services or concepts. Please let me know and I'll add them to this post or create new ones. Thanks.

Carsharing Sessions at TRB 2012

2011-12-02T13:36:00.000-08:00

Carsharing sessions have been announced at the annual Transportation Research Board meeting, to be held, as always, in Washington DC, Jan. 22 - 26. TRB covers all aspects of transportation - trains, plans and automobiles (or at least bridges and highways). Carsharing sessions will be on 2 days.

Since the registration fee is substantial, if you're interested in attending it makes sense to become a member of TRB and get a discount. You'll get the full conference papers on a CD and be able join one of the committee/subcommittees to keep up with developments in the field. Carsharing and bikesharing comes under the Emerging and Innovative Public Transport and Technologies (AP020). The annual committee meeting will be held on one of the days, as well.Details and registration for TRB are here.

The main carsharing sessions are on Tuesday and Wednesday, January 24-25. It is likely that not all papers listed will actually be presented at the conference, depending on travel and availability of the authors.

Session: Congestion Pricing, Parking Pricing and Managed Lanes

Monday, January 23, 2012; 10:45 am - 12:30 pm at Hilton (event 297)

  Dynamically Priced Carsharing (P12-5316) - H13
     Winters, Philip L. - University of South Florida
     Concas, Sisinnio - University of South Florida
     Bond, Julie M. - University of South Florida

Session: Opportunities and Barriers for Shared-Vehicle Systems:
Tuesday, January 24, 2012; 2:00 - 3:45 pm at Hilton (event 598)

  One-Way Carsharing: Solving the Relocation Problem (12-0072) - J01
     Di Febbraro, Angela - University of Genoa, Italy
     Sacco, Nicola - University of Genoa, Italy
     Saeednia, Mahnam - University of Genoa, Italy
  Awareness and Potential Choices of Carsharing: Comparative Analysis of Data from Four Japanese Cities (12-0351) - J03
     Kato, Hironori - University of Tokyo, Japan
     Inagi, Akihiro - University of Tokyo, Japan
     Igo, Takahiro - University of Tokyo
  Choosing Carpooling or Carsharing as a Mode: Swiss Stated-Choice Experiments (12-4205) - J05
     Ciari, Francesco - Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich
     Axhausen, Kay W. - Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich
  Which Factors Affect Willingness to Join Vehicle-Sharing Systems? Evidence from young Greek drivers (12-1076) - K01
     Efthymiou, Dimitrios - National Technical University of Athens, Greece
     Antoniou, Constantinos - National Technical University of Athens, Greece
     Waddell, Paul - University of California, Berkeley
  Carsharing Management Between Research and Innovation: The Rome Case (12-1591) - K02
     Musso, Antonio - University of Rome, Italy
     Corazza, Maria Vittoria - University of Rome, Italy
     Tozzi, Michele - University of Rome, Italy

Session: Innovations in Activity and Travel Behavior

Wednesday, January 25, 2012; 8:30 - 10 am at Hilton (event 711)

Synopsis of Users’ Behavior of a Carsharing Program: Case Study in Toronto, Canada (12-0964) - C07
     Costain, Cindy - University of Toronto, Canada
     Ardron, Carolyn - University of Toronto, Canada
     Nurul Habib, Khandker M. - University of Toronto, Canada

(This session includes many other behavioral and travel mode choice topics that are likely to be of interest to carsharing companies as well. - Dave)

Session: Carsharing: Behavioral Finding and Public Policy Implications
Wednesday, January 25, 2012; 2:30 - 4:00 pm at Hilton (event 761)

Are Taxes on Carsharing Too High? Review of Public Benefits and Tax Burden of Expanding Transportation Sector  (12-3484)
     Schwieterman, Joseph P. - DePaul University
     Bieszczat, Alice - DePaul University
Carsharing in Shanghai, China: Analysis of Behavioral Response to a Local Survey and Potential Competition (12-4233)
     Wang, Mingquan - University of California, Berkeley
     Martin, Elliot - University of California, Berkeley
     Shaheen, Susan A. - University of California, Berkeley
Impacts of Carsharing in a University Setting: Changes in Vehicle Ownership, Parking Demand, and Mobility in Ithaca, NY  (12-4053)
     Stasko, Timon - Cornell University
     Gao, H. Oliver - Cornell University
     Buck, Andrew - Cornell University
  Stakeholder Analysis of Urban Carsharing Market in Tokyo, Japan (12-0352)
     Kato, Hironori - University of Tokyo, Japan
     Suzuki, Satoshi - University of Tokyo, Japan
     Kayama, Shinsuke - University of Tokyo
     Kawanobe, Takeshi - University of Tokyo
     Kusumoto, Jun - University of Tokyo
  Cumulative Impacts of Carsharing and Unbundled Parking on Vehicle Ownership and Mode Choice (12-1490)
     Napolitan, Francesca - Nelson\Nygaard Consulting Associates
     ter Schure, Jessica - Nelson\Nygaard Consulting Associates
     Hutchinson, Rick - City CarShare

For complete details and the abstract of these sessions, go to the TRB interactive program and search for carsharing. Click on the blue numbers to read abstracts.

Enterprise To Offer WeCar at Military Bases

2011-11-19T11:18:00.000-08:00

Carsharing companies have been targeting college and university campuses for many years, and now WeCar by Enterprise has opened up another market - military bases.

The deal is with Army Air Force Exchange Service (PXs in common terms) will initially offer car sharing at Fort Carson Army Base in Colorado, Fort Bragg Army Base in North Carolina and Kaneohe Bay Marine Base, Hawaii with 2 or 3 vehicle locations on each base.

Rates are $10 per hour including gasoline and state minimum liability insurance with a $500 deductible. Daily rates are $65 per day ($70 on weekends) with 200 miles included. Chevy Malibu and Ford Escapes are the vehicles being offered in the initial launch. The service will be available to those 18 years and older that meet the driving history requirements.

Future expansion is planned for Hawaii's Hickam Air Force Base, Schofield Barracks Army Base and Joint Base Lewis-McChord Army Base in Washington state.

“Our goal is to provide an alternative to ease the transportation burden on military bases, where convenient transportation may be needed for duty-related activities and other errands,” said Ryan Johnson, assistant vice president for WeCar and Rideshare for Enterprise.

The carsharing option could be attractive to servicemen and women on a short duty assignment to a particular base or as an occasional second car for families living on-base.

Enterprise, which has been careful in how it approaches carsharing, seems to be trying to position carsharing in such a way that it compliments, rather than competes, with its core car rental business. As I have written before, I believe that carsharing companies only offering "state minimum" liability coverage are doing a disservice to their customers and set a bad precedent for carsharing as an alternative to vehicle ownership.

Still, it's an interesting move by Enterprise and we will watch it with interest.

Greenwheels Rolling Into New Countries

2011-11-18T09:55:00.000-08:00

How did I miss it? This summer Greenwheels (officially Collect Car BV) of Rotterdam announced plans to expand to London in 2011 and into Paris, Barcelona and Stockholm in 2012.

Apparently it's been under the radar screen for most people. But this is a huge step for Greenwheels, which has operates in about 100 cities in The Netherlands and 25 cities in Germany. It's an indication that there's likely to be some major carsharing expansion and competition in a number of markets in Europe.

Greenwheels interest in setting up shop in London first came out during the Zipcar-Streetcar merger inquiry by the UK Competition Commission. But nothing more was heard until this summer. The rollout was originally announced for the end of October and is slightly behind schedule. The company has announced they would have 34 locations in the London boroughs of Lambeth and Wandsworth, in the heart of Zipcar and City Car Club territory. As of the posting of this blog, it would appear that setting up the process for hiring managers for the 3 other cities is taking longer than anticipated.

Greewheels, started in 1994, takes a particular approach to the offering it makes in The Netherlands and Germany - small, functional vehicles — no Mini Coopers, so far. Plus they require a substantial, but refundable, deposit (not uncommon in Europe but not charged by Zipcar). So it will be interesting to see how this approach works in a more competitive markets like London (3 other carshares including Zip) and Paris (against 6! other companies). And, in Barcelona Zipcar has an option to buy Avancar and so we will watch developments there with great interest, as well.

Congratulations on this big step Greenwheels.

BMW Takes Aim Corporate Fleetsharing

2011-11-17T09:47:00.000-08:00

BMW is not resting after launching DriveNow one-way carsharing service in Berlin and Hamburg. This week they announced they would launch a corporate carsharing program to improve utilization of large company fleets. The program will be offered starting in 2012 by BMW's fleet leasing arm Alphabet.

The new program will be called AlphaCity and BMW's head of mobility services Christian Steiner told Dow Jones that the project is an indication of "a new trend in customer behavior and vehicle ownership".

BMW estimates that this will be worth the additional 15% lease rate through "better utilization and flexible use by multiple customers".

Operationally, cars will booked like any carsharing vehicle: via the web or smartphone and accessed via RFID card

Press reports indicate BMW is testing the concept with 60-70 vehicles in Germany, France and UK. The company alludes to the possibility of the service in the US and China sometime in the future.

BMW has made major investments in fleet leasing, acquiring the Dutch company ING Car Lease and the merged operations currently have 460,000 vehicles in 18 countries.

This is another indication that some auto manufacturers are getting serious about finding new sources of revenue outside of traditional car sales. I guess once you've got carsharing technology, why not put it to work?

Carshare Central Ledger

2011-11-14T17:14:00.000-08:00

If your Google Alerts, my blog posts and Tweets, as well as Eric Britton's excellent posts over at World Streets (and on Facebook), don't satisfy your hunger for carsharing news, this new web site Carshare Central Ledger looks like a great way to get your daily fix of carsharing and related news. Not sure who Lipo is but he/she has set up a nice search function to populate the web site. But you do have bear with a little overlap with ridesharing/carpooling due to the confusion because of the UK usage of "carsharing" referring to what we colonists refer to as "carpooling". Nice job. Thanks Lipo.

Carsharing Update for October

2011-10-20T13:52:00.000-07:00

I've been traveling the past month (a bicycle trip in Croatia) and there's lots to report while I was gone. One certainly gets the impression that the carsharing industry is moving into high gear these past few months. There's lots to report:

RelayRides and General Motors partnership — RelayRides continues with yet another very significant high-level partnership with GM's OnStar division. This enable the OnStar telematics installed in all new GM vehicle to serve as the "on board computer" enabling them to sign up with RelayRides and immediately start renting their vehicle, nothing to install. Vehicle owners would still have to subscribe for other OnStar services — emergency help, turn by turn navigation instructions, automatic crash response, stolen vehicle location.

This is the first announcement of what I expect to be other telematics partnerships as cars increasingly become wired.*

Autolib starts its shakedown in Paris — The all-electric, station-based service that's been the source of some controversy in Paris, launched at the beginning of October with 66 vehicles at 33 stations, each with 4 to 6 parking spaces. The next major ramp up is scheduled for December with 250 of the projected 3,000 stations set to open.

Annual Autolib memberships will cost 144 €, and rates will be 5 € for every half-hour of driving — about the cost of 2 Metro tickets, as one new report observed. Daily and weekly subscriptions will also be available for 10 and 15 € respectively with higher rates 7€ per 30 min. rates.

New members can join using the futuristic waiting rooms (?) and will be able present and passport and credit card and activate their membership. It's not know yet whether visitors from the US, without the European standard issue chip card, will face the same hurdle as those trying to use Velib.

Industrial giant, EV manufacturer, Bolloré, seems to be overcoming early skepticism that their BlueCar vehicle would be ready on time. They are also major investor in the project.

There are already reports that London is interested in developing their own EV carsharing service as well.

If you just can't get enough here's a short video showing the vehicles, stations etc.

London's Streetcar begins conversion to Zipcar — The Tweets are starting to fly, preparing Streetcar (and Zipcar) members for the upcoming integration. Rates have been published and FAQs have been written. The challenge for Zipcar will be to keep their customers happy service as Streetcar's "home town" identity goes away. And the usual Zipcar bells and whistles will apply — smart phone apps, phone/text reservations and reminders, etc.

Lowering the rates slightly, at least on weekdays, is a good first step. For example a VW Polo's drop from £5.25 to £5.00 per hour and daily rates drop from £52.50 to £49. VW Golf and BMW 1 series also dropped by £0.25 per hour. Included miles increase from 20 miles per calendar day to 40 miles. Excss miles increased slightly from 23p to 25p. Only the BMW3 series and van/transporter rates increased a tiny amount from £8.95 to £9.00 per hour. Annual membership fee of £59.50 stays the same, as do the cost of various insurance options. Weekend rates are £1 - £2 per hour over weekday rates. A summary of Zipcar's London rates is here: http://www.zipcar.com/streetcar/welcome/faqs?for=rates-streetcar

A VW Up!

VW Quicar adds car rental — They haven't even launched in Hannover, Germany and VW is making a last-minute addition to the service. In addition to the 200 Golf BlueMotions in the original announcement, VW will be adding an option for members to rent 70 other vehicles for 10 hours minimum. Vehicles include the new VW Up! (a sub-sub compact) for ten hours starts at €30 (about $41 when this was written); a Beetle at €40 (about $54) and the Golf cabriolet or Passat for €50 (about $68). Pricing for the core Quicar carsharing usage is €6 (about $8.25) for the first 30 minutes and €0.20 (about $0.27) for each additional minute.

Like Peugeot Mu project, this looks to me like a car manufacturer is getting into the car rental business.

Closer to home, it's worth noting that the pace of RFPs from US cities to attract carsharing services to their communities continues. As this is written, Austin, Knoxville and Eugene have RFPs on the street. Why Austin, you might ask? They have car2go, what more do they want? If you find out the answer, please post the answer in a comment below. Thanks.

Suggestion to cities evaluating the proposals - don't get hung up on the membership fees, concentrate on the package the provider offers for attracting new members - time-limited discounts off the normal application cost (to get people to join), free usage for the first trip (to get people to actually use the service). And don't worry about the second year membership fee. If members aren't willing to pay $50 - $75 a year for access to the vehicles, they probably aren't using them anyway — in which case, the city isn't getting much benefit from a symbolic member!

Finally, the car2go juggernaut continues with the announcement of plans to offer the "mobility on demand" service in Lyon, France. Daimler expects the free-parking zone to be about 44 square kilometers. The car2go operation in Lyon will be another joint-venture with Europcar, similar to the car2go service in Hamburg, Germany.

I'll be watching to see if their Smart cars face the same rebalancing challenge that the public bicycle system in Lyon, Velo' V, faces — residents regularly "clean out" certain stations on top of a hill, taking the bikes downtown and then ride the bus home in the evening rather than pedal back home. Maybe the gas power to get them back up the hill will avoid this problem.

That's it for this month.

- Dave

------------------------
* I couldn't help but smile at a great opening line in a recent NY Times article on after-market gizmos for cars: "Cars, one of the great mobile devices to begin with, are about to get connected to the Internet like never before. It will change not just how we drive, but the economics of the car business."

Nice video from the other car2go

2011-10-14T06:19:00.000-07:00

In this case, it's from the original car2go is Tel Aviv, Israel.

Doing an original video, especially on a (relative) shoe-string, is always a challenge. This is a nice use of a different form of animation than is mostly commonly seen. The images alone do a very nice job of explaining what carsharing is - and, if I spoke Hebrew, probably the words do too. I'd certainly nominate this video my Best Carsharing Video of 2011. Nice job.

A close runner for the best CS video up in my mind is this one from the other car2go - Daimler's. This one is more atmospheric but has some nice touches. And the "I love this town" theme (in English no less) is a brilliant move. I've been very impressed with car2go's success at becoming part of the various communities they've gone into - a tough act for most multinational corporations!

If you've got nominations for the Best Carsharing Video of the year, let me know. Just post a comment below. Thanks.

Momo Carsharing Videos in 12 Languages

2011-09-26T15:09:00.000-07:00

At the recent meeting of the Momo Carsharing Project in Brussels, a new video introducing how carsharing works. The video has a voice track and subtitles in 12 languages, to help promoters get the word out about carsharing.

Momo Car-Sharing is the European Commission's support for carsharing. It stands for "More Options for energy efficient Mobility through Car-Sharing". It has been under the leadership of Michael Glotz-Richter, the environmental minister for the City of Bremen, Germany.

The languages of the videos are English, Chinese, Czech, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Irish, Italiano, Spanish, and Turkish (links to individual videos on the page above).

In the past Momo has produced a number of humorous short videos promoting carsharing — two James Bond spoofs, three 30 second public service announcements and this 4 min. intro to carsharing with Chinese and English subtitles. The full list of Momo Carsharing videos is here.

Unfortunately, many of these videos, including the newest ones, highlight the atypical key manager system only used by Cambio Carsharing affiliates, where keys are not kept in the vehicle as is typical of most companies. And, not surprisingly, there's no mention of the new "mobility on demand" systems like car2go, Drive Now and Autolib. Still, the videos should be useful as non-brand-specific introductions for city government and transit agency officials.

And, even though it's over, you might be interested in the Momo carsharing conference agenda here.

Carsharing Association Annual Conference - Oct. 2-4 in Montreal

2011-09-15T15:09:00.000-07:00

The international Car Sharing Association (CSA) is holding their annual conference next month in Montreal, starting Sunday, Oct. 2. Monday, Oct. 3 will feature a number of public sessions and Tuesday, will be closed meetings for Carsharing Association members only.

The Carsharing Association is open to all carshares and supports and it continues to be a very useful get-together for independent carshare operatorss. Originally, a North American group, it now has members in Australia, South America and Europe. The full schedule and registration information is here.

On Monday, Oct. 2 What is the future of urban personal mobility? with speakers:

Tim Papandreou – Deputy Director of Transportation Planning for the Sustainable Streets Division of San Francisco’s Municipal Transit Agency
Martin Trepanier and Catherine Morency - Polytechnique de Montréal.

Parallel sessions will be offered on Sunday and Monday. Sessions will be presented by carsharing operators.

Operational Issues: Best practices in operation, customer service and fleet management
How to improve quality based on customers and how to face problems with HR.
Electric Vehicle Integration - Exchange on how to integrate EVs into a carsharing fleet.
Peer to Peer: Advancement among CSA members - How and should P2P carsharing be integrated within the carsharing organisations of the CSA.
Meeting with Autolib, Lyon, France
Carsharing in Low-Income Neighbourhoods - How to develop the scope of carsharing in low-income neighbourhoods or in cities lacking of a public transit system.
How to Gain Support From Cities and Transit Companies - Discussion on the best solutions to partner with transit.

Rebranding in the Air

2011-08-22T02:00:00.000-07:00

Several major carshares have rolled out new logos and names recently. It's interesting to see the direction different companies have taken.

Modo, formerly Cooperative Auto Network, Vancouver, BC, Canada — The most complete design makeover, possibly in anticipation of the arrival of car2go. What does Modo mean? They say it’s a reference to modality, multi-modal, modern. Very clean - I like it.

Hertz On Demand, formerly Connect by Hertz — Perhaps the most drastic make-over, taking the word carsharing out and tagging the service "Rent Spontaneously"; finally capitalizing on the signature yellow of the Hertz brand. One can understand the strategic motivation to tie the service closer to the core brand and wouldn't be surprised if other rental companies follow suit. Will blurring the distinction between car rental and car sharing make it more difficult to cities to partner for carsharing services?

U Haul Carshare, formerly U Carshare — Now the name says exactly where its roots are. (Perhaps they got tired of hearing everyone refer to it incorrectly, so may decided to change the name to what people where calling it already. Who knows?) They've moved beyond PT Cruisers and, thankfully, also moved beyond plastering a billboard's worth of advertising on the sides of their vehicles. They've quietly expanded to 22 college campuses and one city (Salt Lake).

CommunAuto, Montreal — North America's oldest and probably the most profitable carshare has adopted a more streamlined logo. All that and having the cheapest rates on the continent! (Not sure if the 2 color design was intentionally making a pun - about being the
"un-auto"?)

Did I miss something? Let me know by making a comment, below.

The Ground Shifts in the Carsharing Landscape

2011-08-13T12:40:00.000-07:00

Last week Philly Carshare took the unprecedented step of selling itself to car rental giant Enterprise - ending a significant chapter in the early history of carsharing in North America. Exactly what it portends for the future is hard to say right now.

Philly Carshare was reportedly under the gun to pay $2.7 million in car rental taxes it had not charged members for during the past several years. It was reportedly having trouble paying creditors, as well. Reports say that Enterprise is expected to retain the Philly Carshare name and employees. The press annoucnement also says it will operate the service independently of their car rental operations and makes no mention of the company's own WeCar carsharing brand. Here's the official press release (PDF).

Founded by Clayton Lane, Tanya Seaman and several others in 2002, Philly Carshare (PCS) was started on a shoe string - $23,000 legend has it, and grew carefully and strategically, getting cars to break even sometimes in less than a month. At one point they had over 400 vehicles and 50,000 members (claiming 20% of residents in the center city in 2009) but had scaled-back to 250 vehicles and about 13,000 members. They even opened a branch in Wilmington, Delaware in 2007.

I always found Philly Carshare highly innovative:

Unorthodox pricing system — like other non-profit carshares in North America, PCS had separate charges for both an hours and miles; but unlike the others, they kept the distance charge low - 11¢/mile at one point, rather than 40¢ per mile City Carshare and others were charging; this retained an incentive for members to think twice about long distance trips, but provided a better balance in revenues, so that members were not penalized for taking short distance long duration trips, as an hourly-only rate structure does (Currently the PCS hours + miles plan starting at $4.45/hour + 25¢ per mile with $15/mo. membership fee; as well as an hourly-only rate plan starting at $7.50/hour (includes 185 miles per reservation)
City fleet program — in 2004 they gained national prominence putting together a partnership to allow employees of the City of Philadelphia to drive PCS vehicles; reducing the city's fleet by 330 vehicles
Early insurance program to allow 19 year old to use carsharing
Keys to the City program — an early high-profile partnership between merchants and the company - offering members exclusive discounts.
Impact evaluations — PCS documented the benefits of carsharing to the city and to their members in several very well structured evaluations that should be a model which other cities should expect from their carsharing partners, such as this one.

PCS was also an on-going challenge to Flexcar, which started competing with PCS in April 2007. After the Flex-Zip merger later than year, Zipcar took off the gloves in 2008 and won the city contract, perhaps the start of their problems. Things got messy at Philly Carshare in a boardroom battle that ousted the founders, the following year.

Meanwhile, Philly Carshare has continued to innovate - announcing the 1,000th rider in its Philly PatientRide program, in conjunction with 4 area hospitals and the American Cancer Society, which provides volunteer drivers. It also announced plans to add 16 electric vehicles to it's fleet in the summer of 2012.

The Reaction

The reaction of independent carshares (everyone but Zipcar and Hertz) have expressed public concern - the loudest voices coming Canada and Australia in this press release.

The largest carsharing organisations in Canada: Autoshare in Toronto, Communauto in Quebec and Modo The Car Co-op in Vancouver, hope that the acquisition of PhillyCarShare by Enterprise Holdings will not change its environmental and social objectives - which they have held for nearly 10 years - into a car rental program. “Carsharing and car rentals do not serve the same purpose, needs, community objectives or the same transit goals”, Tanya Paz, Business Development Director, Modo.

Even Car Sharing Association member Nic Lowe of GoGet Carshare from Melbourne, Australia wrote the Philadelphia Inquirer complaining that they "smelled a rat" in the deal, since the deal (which he estimated at something less than $2.7 million) seriously undervalued the company, which he said might be worth $5 to $7 million based on Zipcar's recent IPO numbers.

What does it mean?

First of all, it's certainly sad to see such formerly great organization get itself into such a mess. At least since the ouster of the PCS old guard, which is a story unto itself, the Board of Directors has been struggling to get the organization back on its feet but a $2.7 million tax bill would be a challenge for any non-profit. So my hats off to the PCS Board for getting what appears to be a pretty decent deal for all parties - including, I hope, their members.

My take is Enterprise also deserves some serious respect for taking on a $2.7 million debt and not just letting Philly Carshare go down the tubes and then setting up shop. It's an interesting move for Enterprise, which doesn't seem to have been to aggressive in trying to develop the city-wide carsharing market beyond the WeCar service in their home-town of St. Louis.

Enterprise has always been a problematic carsharing operator — as the king of neighborhood car RENTAL, potentially they have the most to lose from neighborhood car SHARING, unless they get the relationship between the two right. And Enterprise has consistently been arguing in public that carsharing is just like car rental, such as during the rental car tax spat in Chicago a couple of years ago. (I'm a firm believer in the concept that taxes should be applied to what don't like and not to tax what you want more of.)

And you gotta wonder where Zipcar was in all this - they could have had the market to themselves by acquiring Philly. Presumably the PCS Board talked to them all and did the best they could.

Now the challenge is for Enterprise to engineer as smooth a transition as they can to bring along as many of the current PCS members to the new day of carsharing — Philly WeCarshare?

And, for the rest of the carsharing industry it's a good reminder of the importance of laying the political groundwork to get exempted car rental taxes. Meanwhile we will watch developments in Philadelphia with great interest.

Interesting way to display the features of a car

2011-08-08T16:23:00.000-07:00

Presenting the features of your product to customers isn't always easy, especially in something as complex as an automobile. That's why I liked the way Mercedes-Benz chose to do it on this display vehicle in terminal B of the Kansas City Airport (and probably others) which I saw when I passed through there in early July.

In this case the features are literally spelled out right there on the product. Just about every square foot of the vehicle had something written on it - anti-lock brakes, LED running lights, pedestrian detection, you name it! A sort of written equivalent of the visible car (such as this 1939 plexiglass Pontiac). Actually, probably better than a visible car - since the marketing department can craft the message to the audience.

I will leave it up you, faithful readers, to suggest how this might be applied to carsharing vehicles.

How many vehicles does carsharing replace?

2011-07-25T14:55:00.000-07:00

Ask any carsharing company and they'll quote a number - 6, 9, 13, even as high as 20 vehicles replaced for every carsharing vehicle on the road.

In a nationwide survey of over 6,200 carsharing members, Eliot Martin and Dr. Susan Shaheen came up with the most authoritative number to date: between 9-13 vehicles shed for every carsharing vehicle in the fleet. Of those, 4-6 vehicles were directly shed by households as a result of joining carsharing and the remainder were avoided/not purchased as a result of membership.

The detailed analysis was conducted on a household level, since there may be several members in a household, and excluded the the behavior of inactive members, those no longer actively using the program, about 10% of the sample. The survey included most of the non-profit carsharing companies in the US, as well as Zipcar members.

The major finding was that household ownership of a vehicle dropped from 0.47 to 0.24 vehicles per household (at a 90% confidence level). Most of the shift, about 80%, was from one-car household going car-free.

Further, 25% of the respondents said they would might buy a vehicle if carsharing were not available.

The fuel economy of vehicles that were shed was about 23 mpg, being replaced by the average of 33 mpg for carsharing vehicles. About 60% of the vehicles shed were between 5 and 15 years old, with 15% being between 1 -5 years old.

The study did not include those using carsharing on college campuses or in business situations since they are a minor part of the total and because their joining and usage motivations are likely to be somewhat different than those members joining in a neighborhood.

This is a good reminder that the benefits of carsharing will vary depending on the location and type of service - downtown residents will respond differently than those in less dense neighborhoods

And, I would add that new types of carsharing, such as peer to peer carsharing or even mobility on demand services, such as car2go, will probably not have the same impact as "classic" carsharing.

A very readable version of this report was printed in the Spring 2011 University of California Access magazine, available here (PDF) or the much more detailed TRB report here (PDF).

Car2Go All Charged Up about San Diego

2011-07-13T15:44:00.000-07:00

Today car2go North America made a double announce-ment - its next city in North America will San Diego - and, through a strong partnership with the City of San Diego and various other agencies, it be fleet of all electric fleet Smart for Twos - starting with 300 vehicles. (This follows the announcement in April of all-electric car2go fleet in Amsterdam.)

Although the exact operating area (free-floating parking zone for vehicle returns) hasn't been decided, with that many vehicles it seems likely that the operating area will pretty large. Vehicles do not have to be returned to a charging station, but can be returned anywhere within the operating area. Users will be able to see the approximate state of charge for each vehicle on their iPhone or computer.

Rates have not been set, but CEO Nicholas Cole said it was likely they will be similar to Vancouver, BC - 35¢ per minute or $12.99 per hour - basically, the hourly rate kicks in after 38 minutes of use.

They plan to launch sometime in the fall with a free registration blitz followed by the start of operations several weeks later, similar to the Vancouver launch. Because gasoline vehicles were brought for the press event from the Austin fleet, San Diego unexpectedly showed up on the car2go iPhone app.

The announcement signifies the return of carsharing to San Diego, following a lull after the now forgotten heyday of carsharing in San Diego, when Flexcar had 85 vehicles here. Presently, Zipcar has two vehicles at University of San Diego campus and several more out of town at UCSD.

Reservations

As in Austin and Vancouver, two types of reservations are possible - a 30 minute "hold" to give the user time to get to the vehicle after identifying it on a computer or app. Or a vehicle can be "reserved" up to 24 hours in advance. But the meaning of reserve is different than traditional carsharing programs, where a specific vehicle at a specific location is blocked for use. Because of car2go's free-floating parking, what you actually reserve is the "closest vehicle to the address you specify". 15 minutes before the start of your trip, you get a text message (SMS) telling you the location of the closest vehicle. With so many vehicles, it would appear that the need to make a reservation isn't really that necessary. (Chief Technology Officer for car2go Helmut Ritzer told me that they've actually ended the 24 hour reservation option in Ulm.)

Partnership

The other major partner in this project is Ecotality, which plans to install as many as 1,500 of their Blink charging stations in the San Diego area. Jonathan Read, CEO of Ecotality, echoed the sentiments of other speakers at the press conference saying he hoped this announcement would make San Diego "the ground zero of the electric vehicle movement" (presumably he meant that in a good way!)
San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders indicated that City Council was expected to pass changes to the municipal code that would allow car2go to park on street and provide dedicated on-street parking for vehicle recharging.

CleanTech San Diego, San Diego Gas and Electric and SANDAG, the regional planning agency were also instrumental in bringing car2go to San Diego.

Smart ED

The Smart EDs (for "electric drive") will have the same touch screen and internal telematics as the regular gasoline-powered car2go Smarts. The vehicles will have an estimated range of about 80 miles and they're hoping that vehicles will be able to go for 2 to 3 days worth of trips between recharging. Car2go reports that using fast chargers, the Smart ED battery pack can be brought up from 20% to 80% state of charge in about 3 1/2 hours.

I took one of the electric Smart's for a test drive through the hilly part of downtown San Diego and found the acceleration certainly adequate but without as much of the low-speed torque that is so surprising in the Nissan Leaf. (Presumably a little less acceleration means a little longer range?) As with other Smarts it feels far more secure and stable than its diminutive size would suggest.

During the press conference speakers revealed some other nuggets about the car2go service:

40,000 members in North America in Europe - pretty impressive for 3+ cities (Vancouver has only been operating for a couple of months)
Average trips in Austin have been about 30+ minutes and under 5 miles
Customers are not limited to younger demographic but have a wide range of ages
Future car2go cities might be a combination of gasoline and electric vehicles or a city could start gasoline and become electric when the recharging infrastructure was available.

Daimler also displayed two fuel cell prototype cars at the press conference - reminding everyone that fuel cell cars are pure electric, too.

VW Jumping Into Carsharing

2011-05-13T13:32:00.000-07:00

Another car manu-
facturer is starting a carsharing service, this time it's a full-line company, Volks-
wagen, not a luxury brand, like Daimler or BMW.

The service will be called "Quicar" - presumably a sort of pun on Quick Car and "quicker" - and is slated to launch in the fall of 2011 in Hannover, Germany. The slogan for the service is "Share a Volkswagen" so they are tying the service close to their brand.

The initial press release says the service will feature 200 VW "Blue Motion" Golf vehicles, initially at 50 parking locations around the city. In the future other VW vehicles, such as their small van - the "Caddy" (not sold in the US) and presumably the just announced new-new Beetle (an old "new Beetle" is shown in the publicity photograph above) could be added.

The announcement says that in the "medium term", Quicar may expand to as many as 100 parking locations in Hannover. Hannover is a city of 520,000 people in north central Germany. It is a major trade center and has four universities, as well.

The press release indicates that member sign ups will be handled at "shops across the city".

Quicar faces competition from 19 year old Stadtmobil Hannover, currently with 140 vehicles serving 3,500 members in the area, as well as a few cars at the train station from DB Carsharing, operated by the German railroad system.

Quicar telematics are being designed by VW from scratch and will include a touchscreen providing carsharing access and navigation. And of course, they'll be offering an "app" for smart phone users. The initial press release indicates that customer will be able to use an SD memory card to store individual destinations/routes, as well as music.

The VW Blue Motion Golf is very fuel efficient diesel rated 3.8 liters per 100 kilometers - or about 60 mpg - with very low GHG impact. It achieves this using the auto-stop feature at stop signs and regenerative braking.

There's little detail in the initial press release about VW future expansion plans to other cities. It makes sense that car manufacturers in Europe are ready to experiment with carsharing before those in the US - most importantly, public transport infrastructure is much better developed there, enabling a greater percentage of people there to live without a car. And presumably the same trend seen in the US and UK of a greater number of the younger generation postponing car ownership and using smart phones, bicycles and public transport applies to Germany, as well.

Team Red GmbH, with which I'm affiliated, had the pleasure to assist VW in the development of this service.

Car Free Diet Skeptics

2011-05-05T14:47:00.000-07:00

If you haven't seen what the City of Arlington, Virginia has been doing the past 2 years with their clever Car Free Diet Skeptics promotion, then take a look. It does everything right - addresses the issues of car ownership and use, uses social media, has high production values and provides some laughs along the way. I think it's a brilliant move to include the word "skeptics" in the title.

The concept is simple: through a public voting process two skeptics are selected who are willing to go without their cars for 30 days. They post updates of their experiences during the 30 days of the challenge and the "winner" gets free transportation for a year. Carsharing is certainly part of the mix, but bicycles, transit and walking play the major roles.

Right now they're in the middle of this year's challenge. You can get a sense of the entire process by watching season 1, including the individual participants posts and a very nicely produced summary video here.

Nice job City of Arlington.

Another Player Enters the One Way Market

2011-05-03T13:20:00.000-07:00

Under the leadership of founder and CEO Benoit Robert, CommunAuto is one of the best run independent carshare operators in North America. Now, they've announced their intention to provide one-way "mobility on demand" service in Montreal.

The one-way on-demand service will be separate from CommunAuto's traditional "round-trip" service and operate under a separate brand. The intention is to offer floating parking in a large zone of central Montreal. The press release says in a few weeks they will offer a "road map" for implementing "mobility on demand" service. Presumably, they've been meeting with partners leading up to this press announcement. "This service should, ideally, be able to finance itself," Robert said in a press release. "We would rather the state invests taxpayers money in the development of public transport than diverting its resources into the subsidization of the automobile," according to Robert.

A report on Cyberpresse.ca, indicated the new service might consist of 400 vehicles at a rate similar car2go (about 35¢ per minute, $13 per hour or $66 plus tax per day). The report indicated that they were hoping to be able to use the Montreal transit system's Opus fare card for member identification. Robert would not confirm the name of the new service in his interview with reporter Karim Benessaieh, but perhaps humorously suggested that it might be "Auto-xi", a reference to the name of the on-demand public bicycle service in Montreal - Bixi (and similar to the names of the bicycle and car services in Paris - Velib and Autolib).

Concerns

Understandably, other carshares, especially the independents, are concerned about competition from a well-funded service, such as car2go. CommunAuto seems to be staking out the one-way territory in their service area, perhaps to keep Daimler's car2go out of their back yard. "A one-way carsharing service alone is not an attractive alternative to car ownership," says Robert. "It cannot, therefore, ensure that people will use public transport or any other competing modes of transportation, such as taxis, bikes and walking rather than privately owned cars." In the Cyberpresse interview Robert reminds us that "private automobiles" are the main competitor to carsharing.

CommunAuto says that they will monitor the implementation process and "ensure that the introduction of this service will be done with a view to promote sustainable mobility and in collaboration with our partners, the cities, the public transportation companies and all the other stakeholders in the transportation industry", according to the press release. They've already begun a "pre-selection" of possible vehicles for the one-way service, including electric vehicles.

I agree that it is important for cities to pay attention to the different "flavors" of carsharing. The widely-accepted social and environmental benefits of reduced car ownership and reductions in annual vehicle miles (and kilometers) traveled in single-occupancy vehicles is likely to be different for one-way services. This is no different than differences in impact for traditional "round-trip" carsharing operating in different cities and even different parts of the same city. That said, until there are 3rd party peer-reviewed evaluations of the impact of "mobility on demand" services, I think cities should be cautiously-supportive of one-way and include a requirement to participate in these evaluations as a condition of their support. (CommunAuto is the subject of one of the best carshare evaluations I've seen - here).

Don't misunderstand me: from my previous work in the one-way area I certainly expect there to be benefits in reductions in auto ownership and shifting of trips to (and from) other modes. (Recall that Robert Cervero's analysis of City Carshare members also found a small shift of transit trips to carshare in San Francisco, although the net change was a beneficial.) But how much change is the question? I also expect that one-way services will attract a somewhat different member demographic than traditional "round-trip" carsharing does, which may open the door of "access-not-ownership" to a new group. Let's see what the evaluations show?

CommunAuto currently has 23,000 members using 1,200 vehicles at 360 stations in Montréal, Québec City, Gatineau and Sherbrooke. They have a long tradition of taking an original approach to providing carsharing. They were the first carshare in North America (as AutoComm), starting in 1994 and later converted from a non-profit to a for-profit business model; they offer unusual pricing and membership plans to address the needs of their members (including their latest L'autonomie); they own their fleet rather than leasing, with virtually all a single model (currently Toyota Yaris), holding on to vehicles for much longer rather than the standard 3 year period of other carshares; they developed unique process for providing members access to discounted rental car; first integrated service with other carshares - VrtuCar (Ottawa) and CarShare Halifax (Nova Scotia); partnerships with Via Rail, public transport and Bixi bike sharing. Most recently, they've announced large-scale integration of Nissan Leaf EVs into their fleet and announced intention to offer a limited peer-to-peer rental scheme in conjunction with a Provincial auto insurance company. they provide a nice history of their service (in French) here.

CommunAuto demonstrates its leadership again and has raised the stakes in carsharing. It will be interesting to see how their service develops and whether other independent carshares in bigger cities - in North America and Europe - will take similar moves.

CAR2GO Is On a Roll

2011-04-30T09:18:00.000-07:00

I was fortunate to be able to attend the press conference announcing the launch of car2go in Vancouver this June. As you would expect, it was an impressive and well-staged event. Mayor Gregor Robertson was most enthusiastic and car2go CEO Nicholas Cole was able to work in some "Go Canucks" to take advantage of the hockey fever sweeping Canada right now.

(It didn't hurt that Vancouver's "liquid sunshine" let up for the morning, and don't ask me why, but just seeing a Smart car makes me smile. So having several of them sitting around in their special white with blue car2go trim is a good sign.)

The plans car2go has for Vancouver are impressive - starting out with 225 Smarts (the new special car2go model), floating parking + designated on-street stations in certain areas; a large floating parking zone (18 sq. miles or 47 sq. km) and rates same as Austin - 35¢ per minute; $13 per hour or $66 per day and 45¢ per kilometer for trips over 200 per day.

Vancouver follows on the earlier announcement of car2go in Hamburg and recent announcement of a fleet of electric car2go Smarts coming to Amsterdam. And it appears that several more cities will be announced this year, as well.

Car2go joins Modo Car Coop (the very impressively rebranded Cooperative Auto Network) and Zipcar (offering premium service) in the traditional "round-trip" carsharing by the hour. Meanwhile, on the launch day the Twitter-sphere had a flurry of Tweet and counter-Tweet about car2go. The Modo loyalists were sticking up for the home-town company but, perhaps not surprisingly, the coolness factor of one-way seemed to dominate the conversation. Zipcar was silent the whole time.

I've noted before that Daimler has used the phrase "personal public transportation" to describe car2go. Given the unique aspects of the Smart car, it's an apt phrase. Certainly there will be many people who will maintain memberships in both services - especially given car2go's willingness to give them away at first - using Modo for longer trips and when more people or stuff needs to be carried. 35¢ a minute adds up and $13 per hour if you're traveling outside of the zone makes it somewhat of a lifestyle statement. (If you're traveling within the floating parking zone I think there's little reason not to end your trip when shopping or going to a meeting - if you're downtown and "your" vehicle is taken, there are almost certainly going to be others available nearby (you do have an iPhone, don't you?) and if you're in the outskirts of the zone, then the likelihood that someone will take the vehicle is very low - except if you've parked near a rail station.)

So perhaps we'll have an interesting test of the competition of "mobility on demand" model versus the classic carsharing as an "alternative to car ownership" service. (I don't think the demise of Austin Carsharing last year says as much about possible competition between the two services as it does about the viability of Austin Carshare.)

But the real test will be how Zipcar responds to this additional pressure. They've been struggling to get traction ever since coming to Vancouver — the price differential compared to Modo for similar vehicles is significant. Modo's rates are highly affordable $3 per hour + 40¢ for the first kilometers (declining to 15¢ per km for longer distances) or $33 per day. Zipcar is $11/hour gas included or $75/day. But I wouldn't underestimate Zip, especially after their recently completed IPO.

For me, the big unanswered question right now is about the transportation impacts of any "mobility on demand" service. I certainly expect that a small percentage of walking, cycling and public transport trips will be shifted to the Smart cars. But this is probably analogous to the increased VMT from non-car owning members after they join carsharing. And I'm told that an evaluation by the University in Ulm is forthcoming.

It's worth noting that Car2go has set up a nice retail shop in Gastown and I expect they will do good business in walk-in memberships and customer relations. (I've been very impressed by the activity I consistently see in the Zipcar store in downtown Portland.) Something else that car2go has done right (at least I'm aware of it in Austin) is becoming part of the community - no small feat for corporate carsharing - they seem to be at or associated with many events in Austin - an event-ful town! So, we'll see if they can replicate that engagement in VanCity.

Finally, this trip provided my first look at new Smart with the new (proprietary) telematics system with a very handy ignition key and card holder right in the unit (see picture) and integral navigation system (bravo Daimler telematics people). Plus the vehicles have a solar roof - cool, eh? (But what is a solar roof on gasoline car all about, anyway? See comment below for the answer. - DB)

As always, getting into a Smart is an exercise in cognitive dissonance - it appears so tiny on the outside and yet feels so unexpectedly roomy on the inside. The best thing about this new Smart is that Daimler seems to have finally overcome the jerky, uncertain autoshifting that I have found so disconcerting in the previous Smarts.

Car2go seems to be off to a good start in Vancouver.

Getting Enmeshed in The Mesh

2011-04-23T14:23:00.000-07:00

I may be the only blogger out there who hasn't written something about the glories and potential and profits to be made from "collaborative consumption" - i.e capitalism meets sharing. But here goes...

A while back I received a review copy of Lisa Gansky's The Mesh: Why the Future of Business is Sharing. At the time I wasn't sure what to make of it. I have to admit I'm a bit of skeptic (some might say "fuddy duddy" or worse) when it comes to books describing how to make millions from the latest trends. And the breathless style of this book did nothing to allay my concerns.

So, several months went by and the book sat around. After having read the umpteenth blog post about Rachel Botsman, I picked up Gansky's book again and started reading. Once I got past the first few chapters that read like Gansky had just discovered the secret power of the universe, I found the book had lots of useful ideas and is well worth taking a look at.

Basically "the mesh" refers to how networked we are and how to take advantage of web and mobile networks to run businesses to share stuff (physical goods) or provide news and recommendations through social networks (electronic word-of-mouth). Gansky says the sweet spot for mesh-able goods are those that are "high cost and frequently used" (but I would add, not too frequently used, or people will want to own them).

So obviously carsharing fits right in to this description of "mesh" transportation, and Zipcar is duly noted early on in the book. But it also applies to the various attempts to use the web and mobile phone tools to take "causual carpooling" beyond it's non-automated roots in "slugging". The Mesh web site has an interesting list of mesh transportation services.

So, as I say, the book makes some good points that you may find useful. It's a prime candidate for reading using one of the early pre-internet mesh services — the public library. In the meantime, you can get a sense of the book's style which I had such a hard time getting past in this free Mesh Manifesto pdf. Enjoy.

Avis tip toes into something that looks a LOT like carsharing

2011-04-23T13:42:00.000-07:00

An article in the current issue of Auto Rental News magazine provides a preview of the latest effort of the car rental industry to respond to changing situation.

The comments were made by Larry De Shon, executive vice president of operations at Avis Budget Group, at the 2011 annaul Car Rental Show . He described a pilot project Avis will be testing in Seattle - Virtual Car - basically automated car rental

The Virtual Car program will equip a fleet of 2,000 Avis Budget cars in Seattle with an on-board computer and GPS that interacts with the company's Wizard reservations system.

Chris Brown, editor of Auto Rental News says the system could be used to expand an RAC's local market presence, "Regardless of length of rental-hourly, weekly, whatever-this could be a game changer." He quotes DeShon, "Now the local market store is anywhere you can park five cars."

GoGet Offers Next Generation Carsharing Today

2011-04-21T22:25:00.000-07:00

While I was finishing up my previous post about new service models, I got a tantalizing call from Nic Lowe of GoGet Carsharing, serving Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, and soon Brisbane, Australia. What he had to tell me surprised and amazed me - they're doing a test of exactly the services I had been writing about:

On demand (no reservation needed)
Open ended (return it when you're done)
Pay by the minute (pay for what you use, not what you reserve)

They call it GoFree and it's very nicely thought out. It's designed to answer to concern that every carshare member has had at one time or another - avoiding penalties for late return. GoGet thinks it will be particularly appealing to business users but I think it will get plenty of use on evenings and weekends, as well. Members can still reserve a regular GoGet vehicles in advance.

How are they implementing it? Right now only selected members are being invited to test the system. Certain vehicles at several pods are designated as GoFree vehicles. To use a vehicle the member swipes their card over the reader but instead of opening the door it sends the member an SMS (text) message to verify they want to start a trip. Responding to the message unlocks the door. At the end of the trip, the member uses their card to re-lock the doors and sends a text message to GoGet with the word FIN to end the trip.

The trip is billed at a rate of about 8.5¢ per minute + GoGet's standard $0.35 kilometer rate, similar to GoFrequent hourly rate (Australian and US dollars are approximately the same). Members still have fill up the gas tank if it gets lower 1/4 during their trip and they do have to return the vehicle to same station.

It's a refreshing reminder to see this kind of innovation, not from a giant multinational corporation, but an independent. One of the reasons GoGet can test such a concept out is they've developed their own in-vehicle computer and scheduling software, which they market for fleet management purposes under the name Fleetcutter. GoGet was started in 2002 by Nic Lowe and Bruce Jeffreys and since then they've been keeping their eye on the ball and have expanded to over 500 vehicles.

I think providing on-demand and open-ended trips makes the convenience of carsharing about as close to car ownership as I can imagine. The lack of one-way option (either between stations or floating parking) doesn't seem like a huge disadvantage to me. Like a lot of things in business (and life) implementing "mobility on demand" looks pretty simple, but getting all the details to fit together so that it works for the customer is hard work.

Best of luck, GoGet. I think you're on to something big!

Next Generation Carsharing

2011-04-15T17:42:00.000-07:00

Given the recent innovations in carsharing service models, it's probably time made to think about the many variations a carsharing trip offering. To date the standard model for carsharing is this: Round trip, pay for the time you reserve and either pay for the actual distance driven (mostly used the North American non-profit and European) or pay for hours reserved with a generous helping of miles included per hour or day (Zipcar, Autoshare and other for-profits)

But there are many more variations that are possible, given enough money and technology, and these, I believe will constitute the next generation of casharing. Here's my short list of options:

Round trip or one-way trips
Fixed ("station") parking or floating parking
Reservation-based vs. on-demand (may apply to both trip start and trip end times; but see next item); arguably an "instant reservation" is the same as "on-demand"
Specified return time vs. open-ended trip (no fixed return time)

Each has significant operational implications and some of these also have implications for the way the trip is charged: pay for actual time the car is in use vs. pay for reservation time.

Mobility on Demand

Ever since the first demonstration of one-way/on-demand carsharing in Berlin in 2000 I've been trying to come up with a descriptive term for the different service model exemplified by the Daimler's car2go program, and now BMW's Drive-Now. What I've ended up with is Dan Sturges' term "mobility on demand". In my definition of MOD I focus primarily on the on-demand, open-ended aspect of the trips. I'm not sure how important the one-way part of it really is

Finally, it's worth noting that defining what is a round trip or one-way trip isn't as easy as it looks. Here's an example. Say I take a car2go to a meeting, and release the vehicle while I'm in the meeting (taking my chances that either it won't be taken by someone else or there will be another Smart close by); two hours later at the end of the meeting I pick up the same (or other) car and drive back to my originating point. However, since car2go has floating parking (at least in Austin) I probably wouldn't be parking in exactly the same place, further complicating how a round trip is measured. Unless the system were specially programmed that would probably look like 2 one-way trips. Of course this is nothing that a team of MBA's or grad students couldn't solve!

I have said before the mobility implications of Mobility On Demand services is staggering - not only the flexibility that such a service offers, but the implications for public transportation, parking, car ownership, etc. And as I have also said before, I hope the providers of these new services will conduct (or provide the data to allow) detailed studies of the impacts of these services.

The Super Highway for New Mobility

2011-04-13T14:51:00.000-07:00

The Economist recently sponsored an excellent panel discussion about future mobility that I think you'll find well worth your 45 min. to watch. And they weren't talking about plug in hybrids or ethanol fuel, either!

As the moderator, Vijay Vaitheeswaran, Global Correspondent for The Economist said, the US will be adding 100 million people and our infrastructure is already close to capacity for an increasing amount of time, so something is going to have to give.

The panelists seem to be in agreement that the future we'll see smaller, lighter vehicles, new ownerships models (i.e. a lot more carsharing and ridesharing), plug a lot more reliance on communications supporting and, inn some cases in lieu of transportation. The discussion about autonomous vehicles made a better case for them than I would have imagined. One speaker made an interesting case for why 32 small vehicles might be better than a bus. Sue Zielinski of the University of Michigan SMART program reminded everyone that where we're headed and what we need is a transportation system with many options.

The discussion is a good reminder that we're just coming to the end of our major (over)investment in the Interstate Highway system and that it will take a long time to build up new systems that are as comprehensive as it has been. One speaker reminded us that in order for new systems to be embraced they have to be better than the what we already have. (Hopefully, that doesn't mean our existing systems have to crumble and decay significantly before other alternatives start looking good!)

The participants are all heavy hitters in transportation.

Larry Burns, Director, Sustainable Mobility, The Earth Institute, Columbia University (formerly GM)

Bob Gilligan, Vice President, GE Energy, Transmission & Distribution

Jack Hidary, Founder, Jack Hidary Foundation

Petra Todorovich, Director, America 2050

Susan Zielinski, Managing Director, SMART, University of Michigan

By the way, the panelists refer to a "bubble car" video that wasn't included in the web segment. Dan Sturges tells me it's referring to the GM-Segway EN-V concept vehicle and the video is likely this one posted on YouTube. (Dan cautions that the video is a little misleading since vehicle is not designed to travel at the speeds that the simulation shows. I guess you just can't get the "lure of the open road" mentality out of those old Detroit metal heads.)

And if you just can't get enough of this stuff, there's another interesting interview in The Economist video series with architect, designer and creator of the Curituba BRT system, Jaime Lerner here.

Guest Post: Some thoughts about BMW Drive Now

2011-04-12T15:24:00.000-07:00

I'm pleased to know Jose Paris, an innovative car designer (the itMoves EV) and very thoughtful about the car industry and new mobility options. He recently posted this musing about BMW's new Drive-Now "mobility on demand" program to open soon in Munich, Germany.

He writes:

"Ivan, one of my coworkers here in London, has a funny way to describe his admiration for his former employer BMW; he just paces back and forth muttering they cover and master every single angle of the business, e.v.e.r.y single one, all while shaking his head in disbelief.

"Proving Ivan right, BMW announced last week that they were starting a premium car-sharing program in Germany.

"The news comes right on the heels of their February announcement of the i sub-brand, a division that wants to be to environmental vehicles what the M brand represents to performance, as well as the launch of i-ventures, their venture capital arm.

"Why would a conventional car company move into such a fundamental threat to their core business as car-sharing? While the launch of the i sub-brand is understandable from a product point of view, creating a venture firm and a car-sharing organization might seem, at first glance, odd. I see three possible explanations: (Continue reading on Jose's blog.)

Here's a 5 min. "talking heads" video of the Drive Now roll-out press conference.

Carsharing and Rental Car Taxes

2011-04-12T13:29:00.000-07:00

A (hopefully) low-profile bill is passing through the New Jersey legislature that would exempt carsharing from the $5 per trip rental car tax, according to the Associated Press.

The measure is sponsored by Ruben Ramos Jr., D-Hoboken, and will certainly help that city's Corner Cars program (operated by Connect by Hertz), as well as Zipcar members in the Garden State.

The idea of taxing carsharing like a rental car transaction doesn't go away because:

Many people still don't "get" carsharing and continue to see it as some sort of "hourly car rental"
Governments are hurting for revenues and this look like an easy and fair (if you don't understand what carsharing is) way to increase revenues

To most of us exempting carsharing from rental car taxes is a no brainer. In most places, rental car taxes are dedicated to tourism and convention promotion, but carsharing is primarily a mobility option for local residents. So, on the most fundamental level, why would you tax something you want more of? Yet, it's an issue that doesn't seem to go away and one that is probably going to have to be resolved on a state by state and possibly even, city by city basis.

New Jersey isn't the first place to struggle with this issue: Flexcar in Washington State also faced the issue a couple of years ago. The state decided that some longer trips made in carsharing vehicles looked an awful lot like car rental trips and not like than the classic 4-5 hour around town carsharing trip. Yes, some trips taken by carsharing may be as long as a car rental trip but, to me, if you just had to tax something, I'd base the distinction on whether the trip was they taken by people from out of the area or not (which Washington officials said was too difficult!)

Word to the wise: if your carshare isn't exempt from rental car taxes, why not? It won't happen overnight but doesn't take that much time or effort. Start by finding an advocate in the appropriate level of government (that the tax is levied at) to introduce legislation. You'll have all sorts of supporters and few detractors. Just be ready for one of the car rental giants to show up at the hearings claiming that car rental is "just like carsharing" (as they have done in Chicago) and should be entitled to the same benefit. NOT! (until they show that they deliver the same benefits to society).

If you're wonky on the subject, the Tax Foundation posted this informed discussion about rental car taxation. Thanks to RelayRides for Tweeting the link to this article the other day.

The difference between car sharing and car rental

2011-04-02T14:09:00.000-07:00

In light of several new innovations in shared vehicle services, I think it is useful to review what the essential elements of carsharing are. And why I consider some services, often referred to as carsharing, are actually car rental.

The simplest description of carsharing that I can come up with is this:

Unit pricing that includes fuel and insurance
Unattended access to the vehicle at trip start and end

Yes, there are other characteristics of current carsharing services - membership, parking, etc. but they aren't what make carsharing distinctive. This means that Whipcar, and now Buzzcar, don't meet a key aspect of my definition - unattended access - since both require some sort key exchange. And for what it's worth, at the present time two current P2P start ups in the US - Getaround and Relayrides appear to have 2 classes of vehicles in the fleet - those with technology and those without. Of course, this "unattended access" could be easily provided with a simple mechanical lockbox mounted on a wall or post near the vehicle, as a number of carsharing companies have quite successfully employed over the years.

Another innovation that's gotten some press recently is the Peugeot Mu program. While offering a wide range of vehicle types, it, also, does not meet my definition of true carsharing since (correct me if I'm wrong someone) members have to collect the vehicle keys in person.

Why is this important?

Don't get me wrong, I think car rental serves a useful function and p2p car rental, such as Whipcar, even more so (since it uses existing vehicles more efficiently and provides a gateway into shared vehicles for die-hard "can't pry my hands off the steering wheel" car owners).

The reason I think it's important to make the distinction between carsharing and car rental is because there is a large body of research that demonstrates substantial benefits to individuals, to cities and to the environment when people join and use carsharing - fewer cars, lower VMT, etc. I would suspect that car rental might be able to demonstrate some of these benefits, although probably to a much smaller degree, but so far these companies have not commissioned any independent studies to validate their impact. Until the benefits of other service models are quantified, I believe it is important that cities not extend privileges, such as marketing partnership, parking benefits, etc. that have been earned by carsharing.

Zipcar IPO set for April 14

2011-04-01T12:40:00.000-07:00

In filing yet more papers with the US Securities and Exchange Commission recently, Zipcar took the final step in its long process to sell equity shares to the public. April 14 is the day when the marketplace will first say what Zipcar is worth.

Since this is a carsharing industry blog, you may well be wondering why I have been so silent on such a major milestone in the carsharing world. The reason is I'm a Zipcar stockholder. (I got my tiny amount of shares as a co-founder of Flexcar and with the so-called "merger" of Flexcar and Zipcar, they became Zipcar shares.) Under SEC rules, during the IPO process current shareholders must observe a "quiet period", so I have kept my comments to myself. Like other industry observers, I've been fascinated by the operational detail revealed in Zipcar's SEC filings.

The whole IPO process has been a long and involved, with detours to buy Streetcar in London and invest in Avancar in Barcelona, but hopefully the IPO will have a good outcome. Although competitors might wish differently, a successful Zipcar IPO will be another sign that the world is ready for alternatives to cars and car ownership.

Easy US Commute Mode Web Site

2011-03-27T12:44:00.000-07:00

Ever wonder where the highest percentage of carpooling commuters is in the US? (Hint, it's not in California or New Jersey.) Now a new web site easily and quickly gives the answer.

As regular readers are aware I'm fascinated by the amount of useful transportation data available on the web. In the past I've mention the excellent and customizable Housing + Transportation nationwide maps put out by the Center for Neighborhood Technology in Chicago.

Now FindTheBest.com has put up a web site that slices through a thin section of US Census data, making it very easy to compare commute modes for US cities.

Find the Best Mode of Transportation to Work

(Click on the Find the Best title to open the web page in a separate window.)

Using data from the 2008 American Community Survey, commute mode search provides worker population, percentages for drive alone, public transportation, walking carpool, taxi/motorcycle/other. Sadly, bicycle commuting is lumped in with "other". The site also allows users to easily filter the data in a variety of ways - not only by state, but also general city size (small, medium large) or, if you want, more precisely by specific worker population ranges.

Answer to the carpooling question: Woodburn, Oregon had the highest percentage of carpooling in the US! Who would have guessed?

Currently, FindtheBest.com has data in over 800 items in a variety of categories, both data and products. The data source for each rating is provided. Take a look. (Thanks to WalkScore for tipping me off to this.)

Making A Mint in Boston

2011-03-23T16:08:00.000-07:00

Boston-Cambridge is getting pretty crowded with carsharing companies. With the arrival of Mint Cars on Demand, there are now 6 carsharing companies in the area. This may be a record number for any single city - beating Berlin or Shanghai's totals.

Mint opens its Bean-town operation with 10 locations, each starting with 2 vehicles in the "classic" and "economy" rate classes. They are in the prime North End and Cambridge area and all are off-street locations. The signature Smart cars from Manhattan operation do not appear to have made it to the Boston fleet. Mint reportedly has about 100 vehicles in New York City.

Mint shook up the New Yoirk carsharing market a while back with an audacious marketing campaign of $2 per hour weekday rates to attract new members. Currently they feature 3 classes of vehicles ranging from $4.00 to $11.70 per hour and daily rates of $55 to $119 depending on vehicle, plan and day of the week. All rates include 180 miles.

One of the ways Mint keeps rates low is that they do not automatically include full insurance coverage, but only state minimum coverage (similar to Connect By Hertz). Mint offers additional Collision Damage Waiver coverage, either on a per trip or annual basis, for people who are not already included on a personal auto insurance policy.

Mint was founded in Oct. 2008 by Richard Ull, owner and operator of a number of NYC parking facilities. In 2009 he was quoted in Auto Rental News as saying "“If I wasn’t in a car parking business, I wouldn’t own a car sharing business right now.”

I have to admit, I never would have guessed Mint to be the next contender at the Boston carsharing joust! But it's is a logical choice because parking is difficult, public transportation is good and the customer demographics are favorable for carsharing. And besides, Zipcar has been developing a pool of potential customers for over 10 years so that Mint and other carshares can draw from. It seems likely that many customers may be members of several carsharing companies in order to have goood access to the closest vehicles to their home or work.

Best of luck to all contenders.

BMW enters the one-way carsharing market

2011-03-21T15:20:00.000-07:00

Those premium German car companies must know something we don't!

BMW announced it was getting into the one-way carsharing business in Munich, with a fleet of 300 BMW 1-series and Minis, starting in April; followed by 500 vehicles in Berlin. They're calling it "Premium Carsharing".

Parking will be a combination of floating, on street parking and garages within the large "Mittler Ring" area of Munich.

Drive-Now application fee will €29 (about $40 US). The charge for using vehicles is €0.29 per minute, which includes sales tax (the same rate that Daimler is charging in Hamburg). The Mini Cooper will have a maximum hourly charge of €14.90. Drive-Now offers a special rate allowing a customer can interrupt a trip but keep the DriveNow vehicle "on hold" at a cost of €0.10 per minute. This addresses one of the common concerns customers worry about with one-way service.

The service, Drive-Now, will be 50-50 owned by BMW and Sixt Car Rental, with BMW providing the cars and technology and Sixt handlihng the operations. BMW has created a new division for the service - BMWi - the i for innovation to indicate they're more than just an auto manufacturer. BMW and Sixt say they aiming to provide service in many countries with a goal of 1 million members by 2020.

Of course, there's a app (!) to locate the closest vehicles.

This has got to have the existing carsharing companies in these cities worried (some more than others):

München - StattAuto München, DB Carsharing and Drive Carsharing; and
Berlin - Cambio, Hertz Connect, Stadtmobil, DB Carsharing, Sixti Car Club (competing with their own brand) and Greenwheels

Presumably Daimler car2go executives are unhappy that the field is getting more crowded - especially with more versatile 4 door vehicles at competitive rates.

And what impact will this have on Zipcar's world strategy?

But perhaps it will be a repeat of the situation a decade ago when first generation carsharing companies worried about competition but found there was plenty of room for several companies in major cities - perhaps the existence of competition legitimizes the concept in consumers' minds? But since application fees are so low, customers could certainly afford to join multiple services.

The launch of a second one-way carsharing service should put cities on notice that they need to "think outside of the box" to develop parking policies that not only accommodate these new mobility services, such as one-way carsharing and bikesharing but also promote them! In the long run, I expect these services are going to be more like a public utility than anything else. Although this will have beneficial effects for residents, if a city generates any significant revenues from vehicle registration fees, they will likely see this source decline, just as we're seeing lower gas tax revenues.

Car2Go and Taxis

2011-03-21T14:20:00.000-07:00

(Note: this article has been signficantly updated since the original posting. - Dave)

Logically, you'd think that car2go's one way service would be a threat to taxi companies. And at least in one European country you might be right. According to a recent article in Die Welt am Sonntag, taxi drivers in Germany aren't feeling too threatened by car2go.

According to the Feb. 1, 2011 article by Steffen Fründt, the taxi business in Germany is cashing in. 50,000 taxis driven by 22,500 operators (many are one-person companies) and did more than 3.5 billion Euro business in 2010. (They do this driving about 2.6 hours of the 9.5 hours average shift, the article says.) And taxi operators in Germany have done a good job using regulations to keep others, such as van services, from poaching their core business. As in other countries, taking people to airports and transporting seniors seems to be a major part of their business.

In the article Thomas Gratz of the Taxi- und Mietwagenverbands BZP (Taxi and Rental Car Association) is quoted saying he doesn't think car2go poses much of a threat. Given that the majority of car2go users are between 18 - 35 years old, the article explains:

"The highest trump in the sector was the demographics, "says Thomas Gratz of the taxi association. "There are more old people, and are more likely than the young to rely on a taxi." Seniors become loyal clientele for taxis, which can be driven to shopping, hairdressing, opera or dialysis. "In rural areas, ambulance runs make for some entrepreneurs from 70 to 80 percent of the business," says Gratz. The biggest competitor to the taxi industry was the DRC.

Gratz was quote saying that the biggest threat to taxis are van services, which are currently restricted, getting a foothold in Germany. No doubt he's right but it seems to me likely car2go will have an effect.

Meanwhile in Spain

Thanks to local intel, I've been made aware that taxi drivers in the city of Valencia are feeling a lot more threatened by the possibility of car2go coming to that Mediterranean coastal city. Following initial conversation with car2go last November, the President of Valencia Taxi Federation and came out strongly opposed, according to the El Mundo newspaper in Valencia.

"We do not want this project to go forward because it proposes a service that goes directly into competition of the taxi industry, "said Juan Antonio Guardeño, the head of the federation. He explained that taxis have experienced a 40% drop in business as a result of economic crisis, which has reportedly affected Spain much worse than Germany.

Reader response to the taxi drivers' complaint on the El Mundo web site seems mostly in favor of having a car2go option. Said one writer: "It seems ridiculous for the taxi drivers, or whoever, to protest improved citizen services. I am sure there will be many users of this service as soon as it is started. I'm sick of the blood sucking taxi drivers who let other car and van delay them in order to scrape a few pennies more my pocket - as if they don't already have enough."

My 2¢

It would appear the taxi drivers in Valencia need to do a little PR, at least with one customer! And as a commenter in Valencia he taxi observed, the taxi companies did not oppose a one-way bike sharing system, which, arguably, will affect their business, at least slightly.

Any new innovation that "gets traction" (to use a car metaphor) results in winners and losers. My guess is that, overall, taxis will lose less than they think from one-way carsharing in their cities. But, I can certainly understand that it's in their interest to do what they can to minimize these losses. And it is ultimately the duty of city governments to do balance competing interests to do what's best, overall, for their city.

Overall, car manufacturers will be the big losers - but they're already watching the decline in sales in their home markets and thinking about options — such as one-way carsharing.

P2P Carsharing Law Moving Ahead in Oregon

2011-03-13T18:24:00.000-07:00

I've been helping coordinate proposed changes to Oregon law to specify insurance requirements for P2P carsharing, which we're calling "personal vehicle carsharing" here. The proposal is modeled on California AB 1871 and specifies:

Defines personal vehicle carsharing
Specifies that the Personal Vehicle carsharing company must provide insurance that is at least 3x the state minimum requirements
Limits the amount of money a vehicle owner can earn from renting their vehicle out to their maximum of their actual expenses
Prohibits personal auto insurers from canceling the policy because the owner is participating in a legitimate Personal Vehicle Carsharing program.

I'm pleased to report that HB 3149 has passed the Oregon House Committee on Transportation and Economic Development. On going details of the progress of this legislation can be found at a separate blog I set up P2P Carsharing Oregon.

This effort is the result of networking by Alan Durning of Sightline Institute in Seattle, and Chris Hagerbaumer of the Oregon Environmental Council, who connected me up with others in the state that were interested in the same changes.

Stay tuned

Car2go opens for business in Hamburg

2011-03-02T16:26:00.000-08:00

Hamburg became Car2go's second city in Germany, which opened for business last week. Unlike other operations, the service is operated by EuropCar, which will have a majority 75-percent stake in this shared project. Reports suggest that this relationship may be extended to other cities in the future.

The Hamburg car2go launch is set to start with 300 vehicles. Prices for car2go usage in Hamburg will be 0.29 € per minute or at least 14.90 € per hour. Here's a link to the map showing the large area that one way trips can end in.

Daimler has high hopes for car2go. Last year Daimler Chief Financial Officer Bodo Uebber told the Financial Times Germany, that "it might have revenue potential comparable to our vehicle manufacturing" (rough translation). Some analysts have calculated that car2go has a worldwide market potential of more than 100 million € is possible. The FT article indicated that Daimler was still considering whether to take the service to Paris using their Smart ED electric drive vehicles.

Daimler has some unique advantages in considering alternative mobility concepts, such as car2go and their dynamic ridesharing "app" car2gether, since they don't have any "entry level" brands or models, they can pursue the carsharing and car-alternative sector without fear of cannibalizing their up-market cars.

Previously, Daimler reminded us that in the first year of Ulm project, almost 18,000 customers had signed up, taking more than 235,000 trips. On average, the trips were used 30 to 60 minutes long and about 15 km. Daimler claims that in Ulm one in three driver's license holders between 18 and 35 years old is a car2go customer.

Meanwhile, there's still no confirmation about the second North American car2go city.

Carsharing News from Europe

2011-03-02T15:27:00.000-08:00

In Germany, Autoflotte Online passes on the good news about carsharing from the German carsharing association, Bundesverband Carsharing (BCS):

Mirroring the trend in the US, carsharing membership in Germany grew by of 20.3% from the previous year to 190,000. High growth was reported in the larger cities while membership in smaller carsharing companies (less than 20 vehicles) grew about 15% in 2010.

As of the end of 2010 there were 128 (!) carsharing companies in Germany operating about 5,000 vehicles, an increase of 400 vehicles for the year, or about 8.7% These vehicles were at 2,400 stations - an increase of 9.1% locations (remember, Germany still does not officially allow on-street parking of carsharing vehicles). The BCS continues to press for a change in German federal law to make on-street parking possible outside of the few pilot projects.

Other big carsharing news from Germany - car2go's expansion to Hamburg - will be covered in a separate post.

EVs in Carsharing

The interest in electric vehicle extends to Europe, as well. In November Cambio carsharing, in partnership with Greenpeace, introduced several Mitsubishi iMiev vehicles in the Hamburg fleet. Cambio is charging 2.80 € per hour + 17 cents per kilometer. They are requiring members wanting to drive the EVs to attend a special driving school.

And Drive Carsharing added some 3 wheel electric vehicles in a project with German telematics provider Wollnikom according to AutoFlotte Online.

And in Brussels, Belgium, Zen Car launched as an all electric carsharing fleet. Initially, 29 cars will be at 15 locations. Rates are set at 7 € per hour with no distance charge (smart move!) Zen Car is funded by Société Régionale d'Investissement de Bruxelles.

Carsharing "Embryonic but Promising" in France

Meanwhile in France, market research company Groupe Xerfi calls Autopartage "embryonic but promising". Their report says that French carsharing companies grossed €12.5 million from about 25,000 members and predicted that membership could reach 140,000 members by 2015 with revenues at least 6 times greater. According to France Autopartage, currently, there are 17 carsharing companies in France, with 5 of them in Paris.

Xerfi says the growth of carsharing in France has been "modest", behind some other countries, but point point to the Paris Autolib program (and general government leadership in the area), as well as interest from major companies like Veolia Transportation, Vinci parking and Hertz Connect (now with an estimated 3,000 subscribers in Paris after two years of operation). Still, they caution that carsharing is struggling to find a viable economic model (sounds like some other carsharing companies I know). You can read the full Xerfi report for a mere 1,500 € (and if you do, tell me more...)

The latest numbers — 7,776 carsharing vehicles in North America

2011-03-02T12:17:00.000-08:00

This just in from Adam Cohen at the UC Berkeley Innovative Mobility Center. As of January 2011:

In the US: 27 carsharing programs claimed 518,520 members sharing 7,776 vehicles.

In Canada: 17 carsharing organizations claimed 85,439 members sharing 2,342 vehicles.

During the past year there's been almost no growth in the US carsharing fleet - according to the IMC industry survey, there were 7588 in January 2010 but the the reported membership grew from 388,089 - an increase of 33%. This means that one of the key metrics driving vehicle use - the member to vehicle ratio - grew from 51:1 to 66:1. Although IMC doesn't report individual carshare performance, Zipcar is the dominant influence on these numbers.

In Canada during the past year there was slight growth in fleet numbers - up 199 vehicles. Membership grew by 37% up from 61,944 in Jan. 2010 and member to vehicle ratios increased from 29:1 to 36:1 - no doubt improving the financial position of Canadian operators.

Looking back a little earlier, there been a 33% in US carsharing vehicles since July 2008, and a 40% increase of the carsharing fleet in Canada.

I'll be posting some numbers from Germany shortly.

Map of World Carsharing

2011-02-21T16:06:00.000-08:00

People have asked why I've stopped updating my map of North American carshares. Basically, it's because there's so much going on that it's hard to keep up.

I'm happy to report that someone has taken up the challenge. Today I came across this wonderful map produced by Kwatwor in France showing all the "autopartage" companies in the world and noting whether they have electric vehicles in their fleet or not (icons with a little green electric plug). You can zoom in to each area for more detail. Below the map is a listing by country and name. They also have maps of bicycle sharing and other transportation services, as well.

As you can see, there's a lot of carsharing going on in the world.

I've put a link to the map on the right. Thanks, Kwatwor.

AAA Driving Costs for 2010

2011-02-16T11:37:00.000-08:00

AAA has released the 2010 edition of Your Driving Costs and not surprisingly, it isn't getting any cheaper to own a car.

Even for a small sedan, direct operating cost are over 14¢ per mile and when depreciation, insurance and other costs of ownership are included, the cost per mile is over 56¢ per mile when factored over 10,000 per year. Larger vehicles cost over 90¢ per mile when driving 10,000 miles per year. (Gasoline was calculated at $2.63/gal.)

As I have suggested before, I don't think that most prospective carsharing customers are really comparing the cost of a new car (which AAA assumes) but, still, these numbers are a useful reminder that mobility comes with a price tag. And they certainly ought to motivate vehicle owners to consider recouping some of their costs by listing their vehicle with a P2P carsharing service — RelayRides, GetAround, Spride or CommunAuto (in Montreal).

Robin Chase, who has a keen interest in this topic recently posted some interesting data showing how different the cost of car ownership was in different cities. Her data source was actual reported costs from people all over the country as stored on the Mint.com budget tracking web site. Thanks, Robin.

Carsharing Association Launched

2011-01-26T15:48:00.000-08:00

Following several years of ad hoc meetings, independent carsharing organizations in North America launched a formal organization to promote their interests - the Carsharing Association. Presently, they are a variety of non-profit, for profit companies, most in the US and Canada.

Independent carshare bascially means - not Zipcar, Connect or U Carshare. Along the way, they have added an international flavor with carshares in Australia (GoGet) and Brazil (Zazcar). Car2Go and none of the start up peer-to-peer carsharing companies in California are members, although at least two of them have met with the group.

The Car Sharing Association has a well-developed "Code of Ethics" which builds on the earlier Code the group developed several years ago. The code describes standards of customer service, operations, environmental standards, etc. One goal of the group is that government agencies wanting to define carsharing eligible for partnership services, such as on-street parking, will use membership in the Association as their criteria.

An important test of the group will be watching how the organization deals with competition situations. Previously, there was no discussion about competition in earlier versions of the Code, and there seemed to be an unwritten expectation that since the companies were all community-based they would not move into each others' territory. Now, the Code has specific language about how competitors should treat each other.

At this early stage no carshares in Europe are members of the Carsharing Association presumably not finding any great need to belong to another organization when there are organizations that have more immediate benefit close at hand - CarPlus in the UK, the Bundesverband Carsharing Deutschland, Autopartage France and the Italian gruppo.

Formalizing the Car Sharing Association is a useful next step for independent carshares to take and the code of ethics a good way to insure that the benefits of carsharing to individuals, cities and the environment are not lost in the rush to make a profit along the way. Hopefully, the group will come to see the value of an organization with "the big guys" in it, as well, since there is much needed in the regulatory area of every country in order to level the playing field of car ownership and carsharing. Good luck.

Carsharing and Shared Vehicle Sessions at TRB 2011

2011-01-14T08:51:00.000-08:00

The 90th annual Transportation Research Board Meeting will be happening January 23-27, 2011 in Washington DC. It's the great annual meeting of academic researchers and industry practitioners. There are several sessions that include presentations about various aspects of carsharing, as well as public bicycle system and multi-modal connectivity. Sessions general include several presentations summarizing research followed by questions and answer. Complete information about attending TRB can be found here.

While the conference isn't cheap, it is good and you will be able to to attend many other interesting sessions as well as interact with the leading people in transportation. (Sorry, it is really isn't possible to "crash" sessions without registering.) TRB members get a discount on the conference and can participate in defining the discussion about the research agenda in various areas.

Carsharing sessions are sponsored by the the AP020 subcommittee on Emerging and Innovative Public Transport and Technologies, chaired by Dr. Susan Shaheen of UC Berkeley.

Below is a summary of the carsharing and shared vehicle sessions at the 2011 TRB:

The Big Picture: Total Transportation Connectivity--Integrating Transportation Technologies to Create Seamless Mobility Solutions for Livable Communities
Hilton,
Jan 23 2011 1:30PM- 4:30PM; i
ncludes:

Total Connectivity Ideas (P11-0493)
     Sturges, Dan - IntraGo and

Raney, Steve - Cities21.org
Interconnecting Public Transport and Shared Transport (P11-0500)
     O'Sullivan, Sean - Avego Limited
Cybercars for Sustainable Mobility – A European Collaborative Approach (P11-0496)
     Parent, Michel - French National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control
Architecturally Linking All the Pieces (P11-0497)
     McDonald, Shannon Sanders - American Institute of Architects
Public-Private Innovation: Implementing Seamless Mobility Linking Modes, Services, Technologies,
Design, Policy, and New Business Models (P11-0498)
     Zielinkski, Susan - University of Michigan
Panel Discussion (P11-0499)
     Young, Stanley E. - University of Maryland, College Park,

Liu, Rongfang - New Jersey Institute of Technology,

Cervero, Robert - University of California, Berkeley,

Fabian, Lawrence J. - Trans.21, S

haheen, Susan A. - University of California, Berkeley, and

Andreasson, Ingmar J. - Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden

Promising Future for Senior Transportation Through Shared Private Capacity: Sharing Cars, Sharing Rides, and Everything in Between
Marriott,

Jan 24 2011 10:15AM- 12:00PM;

Includes:

Carsharing and Older Adults (P11-0218)
     Shaheen, Susan A. - University of California, Berkeley
Older Adults and Walking: The Benefits and the Promise (P11-0219)
     Ragland, David R. - University of California, Berkeley
Peer-to-Peer Carsharing: Market Analysis and Potential Growth (11-3463)
     Hampshire, Robert Cornelius - Carnegie Mellon University
Volunteer Senior Transportation: The Vanguard of Community Transportation (P11-0221)
     Freund, Katherine - ITNAmerica

Shared-Use Vehicle Systems from Across the Globe: Carsharing and Bikesharing

Hilton, Jan 25 2011 8:00AM- 9:45AM; includes:

Understanding the Factors Affecting Vehicle Usage and Availability in Carsharing Networks: Case Study of Communauto Carsharing System from Montreal, Canada (11-0840)

de Lorimier, Alexandre - Quartier International de Montréal, Canada, El-Geneidy, Ahmed M. - McGill University, Canada

Broadening the Market for Carshare? Results of a Pilot Project in the Netherlands (11-0615)

Martens, Karel and Pasman, Sander - Radboud University Nijmegen, Netherlands, Sierzchula, William - Delft University of Technology, Netherlands

Estimation of Carsharing Demand Using Activity-Based Microsimulation Approach: Model and Preliminary Results (11-2077)

Ciari, Francesco, Schuessler, Nadine and Axhausen, Kay W. - Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich

Hangzhou Public Bicycle: Understanding Early Adoption and Behavioral Response to Bikesharing in Hangzhou, China (11-3041)

Shaheen, Susan A., Zhang, Hua, Martin, Elliot and Guzman, Stacey - University of California, Berkeley

Meeting of the Subcommittee on Emerging and Innovative Public Transport and Technologies,
AP020

Hilton, L'Enfant room, Ja
n. 25, 1:30 to 5:30pm

Public Transport Innovations
Hilton,

Jan 24 2011 2:30PM- 5:00PM;

includes:

Typology of Carsharing Members (11-1236) - D08
Morency, Catherine,

Trepanier, Martin, and

Agard, Bruno - Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal, Canada

There are a number of other topics being presented at this session.

Millennials Driving Less and Enjoying It More

2011-01-05T19:54:00.000-08:00

I've mentioned before that the "younger generation" seems to be developing a different relationship to driving and car ownership than when I was growing up.

Who better to find out more than Zipcar, which last fall commissioned a survey of 18-34 year olds (one of their sweet spots) and released a short Powerpoint on the results.

The survey of 1025 adults, including 287 Millenials found that:

54% reported they "sometimes choose to spend time with friends online instead of driving"
45% "consciously made an effort to reduce how much I drive"
67% said "If there were more options in my area, such as public transportation, carsharing or convenient carpooling, I would drive less than I do now"
80% "somewhat" or "strongly agreed" that the high cost of car ownership is making it difficult to own a car

The survey reminded us that Millenials have been hit hard by the recession (although they didn't distinguish how hard hip, urban professionals were affected) and that as a group they were already in debt from school.

The survey was picked up by a couple a couple of writers, the best being by free-lancer Jim Montavalli, who wrote a very nice column Why Facebook is better than driving and recycled it several places. Montavalli was skeptical that this is actually good for Zipcar and, even after talking to Zipcar CEO Scott Griffith seems to not understand that the less you drive (your own car) the more attractive borrowing a carsharing vehicle becomes.

Of course, Millenials, also called Gen Y, are a hot topic in the automotive and probably just about every other industry. MillienialMarketing.com had a good overview of the research - "What's Not in a Millenial's shopping cart - a car". BrandChannel writer Sheila Shayan interviewed Ford Motor Company's Sheryl Connelly, manager global trends and futuring,

"I don't think the car symbolizes freedom to Gen Y to the extent it did baby boomers, or to a lesser extent, Gen X-ers. [Digital technology] allows teens to transcend time and place so they can feel connected to their friends virtually… we also understand the context in which they use cars has changed. ... It has nothing to do with performance or getting you from point A to point B. It's just a change in what people expect to be delivered."

Of course, for the time being, this is perhaps primarily a delay in purchase, not an overall reduction. But I certainly expect the overall number of cars in the US will continue to decline.

Big Carsharing Stories of 2010 and reading the tea leaves of 2011

2010-12-28T08:37:00.000-08:00

Kevin McLaughlin of Autoshare, and a very astute observer of the industry, has posted his top 10 carsharing stories of 2010 on carsharing.net. So, with the year end rapidly approaching I wanted to organize my thoughts about carsharing during the year gone by and my reading of the tea leaves for 2011.

Zipcar

Without a doubt the big news of the year was Zipcar taking the first step in its Initial Public Offering (IPO), filing its intent with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Scattered throughout the hundreds of pages of the initial filing, and now several quarterly filings since, is a revealing look behind the curtain of corporate carsharing - the financial situation and all sorts of numbers to ponder - vehicles, members, various markets, and profitability.

The other big Zipcar news was the proposed merger with their biggest competitor in the United Kingdom Streetcar. Followed by the surprise delay while the UK Competition Commission sought testimony and reviewed the evidence. Responses, filed by a variety of parties, also pull the curtain back a little bit on UK carsharing - Greenwheel's intention to enter the London market, as well as the benefits and drawbacks to local governments of competition in the carsharing (car club) marketplace, among other things. In the end the commission has blessed the Zipcar-Streetcar merger. Hopefully, Zipcar will continue the successful aspects of Streetcar's operation at least in the UK.

And, finally, Zipcar gave observers a year-end surprise again announcing a $21 million round of investment by two US venture capital firms. With additional funding it appears they will consumate their investment in Avancar in Barcelona before the end of the year. And, like the merger with Streetcar, this round of financing appears to set up a hoped-for stock price of the initial offering.

So what's in the cards for Zipcar for 2011? My guess is that the IPO will finally happen, and if the recent addition of 10 vehicles in Hollywood, Calif. (bringing the LA total to 75) as well as adding more vehicles in most other markets (now over 7,000 vehicles) means that Zipcar is ready to get back in the urban carsharing business after several years of belt tightening and concentrating on sweetheart deals on college campuses (now on over 200 campuses). Zipcar will certainly continue to be a contender in most North American markets and, its excellent branding and marketing and ability to avoid getting distracted by side deals and ideas should serve it well.

Peer to Peer Carsharing

The other big development for 2010 is the launch of a pilot in Cambridge, Mass. by start up RelayRides. Although many in the industry have talked about it, RelayRides CEO and founder Shelby Clark persevered to obtain the first P2P carsharing insurance in North America. And, after almost launching in Baltimore, RelayRides realized that the best place to demonstrate the feasibility of P2P CS was in an area of successful traditional fleet-based carsharing and decided to launch in backyard of Zipcar - Cambridge, Mass. The pilot test quickly put to rest any doubts that car owners would want earn a little money from their vehicles, and, of course, had no trouble showing that carsharing members were happy to pay $2 per hour less than the competition.

By year's end RelayRides had announced it's first full-scale city launch on the other side of the continent and in San Francisco, the backyard of other P2P carsharing start ups Spride and GetAround. And Shelby and crew also finally made the internet connection that has eluded other carshares with a major investment by Google Ventures.

Meanwhile Spride (in partnership with City Carshare) and GetAround both launched their own pilot projects in anticipation of the passage of AB1871, which defined "personal vehicle" carsharing for legal purposes. The bill makes some important distinctions - when is private vehcile in "carsharing" service, required levels of insurance and specifies that the vehicle owner cannot make more money from sharing than they have in actual expenses. As yet to be defined is the local, state and federal tax implications for vehicle owners - particularly, if local governments will require vehicle owner's have to get a business license for P2P carsharing?

For 2011 I think we can look forward to seeing a serious evolution in carsharing in-vehicle technology motivated by the P2P market, and, when that happens, the start of a major expansion of carsharing into much larger areas of cities (and even new cities) that previously could not viably be served by carsharing. Also on the horizon is P2P car rental, basically a web site/service providing link up between owners and renters but providing only the traditional minimum level of insurance that distinguishes car rental from (most) carsharing services. Right now JollyWheels is the best example of P2P car rental, operating in six US cities. In the UK, Whipcar is the prime example. (An unsuccessful effort in LA closed down during 2010.)

Car2Go

Meanwhile, down in Austin, Texas, Daimler's innovative demonstration of on-demand, open-ended, one-way carsharing passed the 10,000 member milestone in Austin in November, following the opening up of the project to general public in the spring. Car2Go claimed 80,000 trips and appears to be doing sufficiently well with their "personal public transportation" model that they expanded the "geofence" area in Austin where trips could be ended. The no-cost deal with City of Austin provides free use of car2go for city employees in return for free parking in any legal parking space.

Daimler announced the next city to get the car2go service would be Hamburg, Germany, operated in partnership with EuropeCar, a possible model for the future expansions. And rumors persist that Vancouver, BC is also on Daimler's radar. The German manufacturer also showed a special car2go version of their iconic Smart car at the Paris autoshow that will include a solar panel on the roof, improved integration of carsharing technology with the navigation system.

Connect By Hertz

Meanwhile, Connect by Hertz quietly expanded opening up several more world capitals - Berlin, Madrid, joining Paris and London. And, taking advantage of an opportunity, jumped down under to acquire 5-year old Flexicar, the smallest of Australia's 3 carsharing companies - with 90 vehicles in Melbourne and Sydeny.

But the bulk of the expansion was responding to RFPs from various college and universities, in many cases competing with Zipcar and Enterprise WeCar for the honors. Earlier requirements for "guaranteed revenue" contracts were largely abandoned, not only because of competition but also because of greater confidence in what it takes to keep college/university cars busy. Connect is now on more than 40 campuses in the US and Canada.

Battery electric vehicles were very much in the news in 2010 and Connect By Hertz appears to used it's "connections" with partent company Hertz to put them into service in New York City starting Dec. 15. EVs in Washington, DC and San Francisco to follow next year, suggesting an expansion in these markets. Plug In hybrids are already part of the fleets of several carshares HourCar in Minneapolis, Autoshare, Toronto and City Carshare, San Francisco and Zipcar. (Arguably, this was only the latest round of EVs in carsharing fleets - earlier efforts involved Th!nk EVs by City Carshare in San Francisco and Flexcar in Long Beach, through their association with the Bike Station there.)

In a little noticed move, taking advantage of their Eileo in-vehicle technology, Connect quietly unveiled one-way service in their New York market. It's a specialized one way service that sure to attract to new members - one way trips to all 3 New York City airports! Right now cars can only be picked up from a single location in Manhattan (the Hertz rental location at 126 W. 55th). At $10 per hour to drive to/from the airport, this seems likely to be a huge win for Hertz. But late flights and traffic jams could really spoil the party.

Other Developments in 2010

In Paris, the ground-breaking city-wide Autolib project moved another step closer to reality with the award of the contract to dark-horse proposal by French start up electric vehicle manufacture, Bolloré. The company was chosen by the Autolib partnership over several other proposals by consortia of major French companies. When operational Autolib will allow one-way (or round) trips by 3,000 battery electric vehicles between 1,200 recharging stations in Paris and surrounding communities. The implications of this service could be the tipping point that will finally bring on a "mobility on demand" lifestyle.

In Janauary, consulting firm Frost and Sullivan got industry juices flowing with visions of the possibility of millions of carsharing members - 4.4. million in Europe and US - a long way from the current 388,000 members sharing 7,600 vehicles at the beginning of 2010. Assuming a growth 50% growth rate to derive the 4.4 million-member number that seemed rather far fetched to me at the time. But the possible explosion of P2P carsharing now makes that seem more possible. Still it will take some major shifts in government policy to “mainstream” carsharing, and those might be happening.

Finally, an event in 2010 that may have major implications for carsharing, and all transportation policy, is the decision by the Obama administration that the Environmental Protection Agency to move forward with regulating GHG by rule rather than waiting for a grand consensus. But so much is still contingent on digging out of the economic recession, particularly in face of Republican plans to drive the country into bankruptcy so that rich people can have tax cuts.

Happy new year.

First Impression: Nissan Leaf - Good for Carsharing

2010-11-06T15:09:00.000-07:00

I took a short test drive in a Nissan Leaf yesterday at SolarWorld offices near Portland and will share some impressions. To give you a sense of it here's a short video on our test drive. We got up to 40 mph. on this street. (That's my wife driving and the Nissan handler talking.) As you can hear, it's very quiet.

Nissan has done a very nice job on the exterior - it's a lot fresher looking than a Versa, and, for better or worse, not as distinctive as the Prius (perhaps to appeal to the Civic Hybrid mentality?) Car designer and friend Jose Paris in his itMoves blog had a stronger reaction to the Leaf than I do. (His blog is well-worth following for his thoughtful and progressive comments on lot's of things automotive.)

I was very impressed with how comfortable and familiar it seemed inside. It has a similar interior feel to a Prius (which I own). Although the Leaf is a lot smaller than our Prius it doesn't feel cramped (including the back seat (at least with 1 or 2 people in back). I thought the performance was amazing - very peppy acceleration (the Nissan handler in the car with us said it would do 0-60 in 10 sec.) With a quoted 90 mph top speed certainly seems like it would be a comfortable car for freeway driving. However, the published 100 mile range would be at more moderate speeds! There's a good amount of room behind the 60-40 split rear seats, which fold down.

Nissan does a good job of addressing the "range anxiety" question - using the nav system map to display circles from your current location showing you available range based on your current battery charge, as well as the map displaying the location of EV charging stations. (They also claim they'll have roadside assistance providers to give you a boost or a tow if you run out of juice.)

Overall, Nissan has done a great job of putting enough technology on display to appeal to Prius owner and techy types) - a very similar dashboard layout, a navigation system, and even a backup camera. If has full heater and air conditioning, radio (including optional XM button) etc.

The whole test drive experience was an up-scale production - including a mandatory warm up pitch to wow you with the technology, sell you on electric drive and compare the cost of fuel — electricity in our area is 10¢/kWh and Nissan claimed it would still be cheaper to operate than gas at $1.10/gal. (Presumably this will change somewhat when the equivalent of gas taxes are applied to the electricity for recharge; which will presumably will be facilitated since utilities are creating special low(er) tariff rates for off-peak recharging.)

This summer I was also impressed (as a passenger) in an equally short (around a couple of blocks) trip in a Mitsubishi iMiev that Sharon Feigon of I-Go Carsharing had on loan. Also very quiet and much cuter than a Leaf. The model I rode in was a right hand drive prototype from Japan so it's hard to judge what the interior will be like when they're sold in the US. The other prospective highway-rated EV out there is the Smart Electric Drive, likely to cost far more than either the Leaf or iMiev but presumably would offer at least some vestige of the Daimler panache.

At this stage, the primary thing that tempers my enthusiasm about EVs right now is that in most parts of the country EVs will make a the relatively low contribution to greenhouse gas reduction. The problem is so much of our electricity comes from coal-fired electric generation (which we hope will change over time).

So does a Nissan Leaf make sense for carsharing? Definitely - especially if someone else is paying for the charging stations. Either the Leaf or iMiev would be an excellent specialty vehicle and should be a good marketing tool for the carsharing company. Yes, there will be some management issues as customers get used to driving EVs, but they will quickly pass. (I remember talking with a number of CarSharing Portland driving our Honda Insight (the original one, not the current one) who didn't understand the engine autostop feature and called on their cell phone when the engine stopped at a stop light!)

Given the government money flowing on both sides of the North American border to promote EVs, it's no surprise that a number of carshares will be adding EVs as soon as they're available. I-Go will get some of the first production iMievs, City Carshare is getting a $2.4 million grant to add 12 Nissan Leafs, 12 Prius Plug In Hybrids and 5 Neighborhood Electric Vehicles (NEVs) along with 24 charging stations. Hertz Connect has announced they will be getting some of the Leafs in the Hertz allocation, as well. CommunAuto in Montreal has announced they'll be adding 50 Leafs (Leaves?) to their fleet - with 18 stations already on the map. (Since Hydro Quebec provides such a large part of Montreal's electricity, CommunAuto customers really will be doing their part to reduce GHGs for the planet.) Hopefully car2go will get some Smart Electric Drives to round out the picture.

Meanwhile there's Altcar the so-called carsharing scheme started in Baltimore last year by Canadian EV manunfacturer Electrovaya renting vehicles the Maryland Science Center (I say it's "so-called carsharing" because after over a year they've still got only 1 station - perhaps that will change?) In Europe, what may be the under-reported carsharing news of last year, newly revived EV manufacturer Th!nk created an all-electric carshares in Copenhagen, Gothenberg and Oslo called Move About and the Oslo branch recently reported they had signed up their 1,000th member. Last year Better Place (battery swap company) partnered with the Danish Railways to provide EV carsharing at sevveral stations (but otherwise continues to avow they're not interested in carsharing). And, of course, when it finally launches, the "grand Pere" of them all will be the Autolib service in Paris.

Transport for Suburbia - it's the "network effect"

2010-10-05T08:52:00.000-07:00

Most planners, politicians and advocacy groups have written off suburbia as ever having enough population density for public transit. Yet they are a critical part of getting our energy and greenhouse gas house in order. The problem, we are told, is "there's not enough density to support transit".

The good news is that there's hope, confirmed in a recent book that I can highly recommend to anyone interested in transportation: Transport for Suburbia: Beyond the Automobile Age by Australian researcher Paul Mees (Earthscan, London, 2009).

Paul Mees "x-rays" these density statements (as he call it), showing where they came from and where they went wrong. He shows that part of the problem is that we've been measuring density inconsistently and the major problem is we are building incomplete transit systems. The book includes detailed histories of the transit systems in a number of major cities - Los Angeles, Chicago, Toronto, Vancouver, Melbourne, London, Zurich, Auckland, Singapore and Curituba, Brazil - describing how they responded to the highway building and other challenges, such as a privatization.

He points out that the in the past 20 years the density of many European cities has declined significantly, as they have allowed urban sprawl on their outskirts. Yet, these areas have much better public transport than almost city in the US with much higher density.

But Transport for Suburbia is not primarily about density, it's a very readable discussion of the elements high quality public transportation. The basis, Mees argues, is the "network effect" - providing convenient frequent service with easy transfers, allowing rider to get anywhere from anywhere on the network. In larger cities this would be high density rail, or bus rapid transit (busways), with feeder buses. He provides examples showing cities with such systems are more efficient and require less subsidy than other services.

Besides density, Transport for Suburbia takes on some of the sacred cows of transportation planners. His chapter on privatization is a treasure and he provides recommendations for how agencies can handle it. He argues that traffic congestion on highways is more effective in getting people to consider alternatives than are tolls and congestion pricing. Along the way you'll learn how the Swiss are able to provide high quality service with longer headways using a technique called "pulse scheduling" and (spoiler alert) why GM isn't responsible for killing the red-line trams in Los Angeles (since ridership was already in decline. And, Mees describes a transit system in a city of 44,000 people that offers 10 minute bus headways 6 days a week and has a higher transit mode split than London! (Answer: Schaffhausen, Switzerland)

The book concludes with a series of recommendations that summarize his points very nicely. If there's anything lacking in Transport for Suburbia, I would have liked a few more illustrations and charts. Parking disincentives for cars are mentioned only in passing and I think he underestimates the value of behavioral change strategies like TravelSmart, individualized marketing programs. But those are subjects for other books. And, for what it's worth, he doesn't mention carsharing.

The book is written for citizens as well as planners - it's low on the jargon and is "just right" at 200 pages. You can sample some of the pages from Transport for Suburbia in this preview.

car2go Austin passes 10,000 members

2010-10-03T14:00:00.000-07:00

Free is a very good price if you want to get people to try your product! And free certainly helped Daimler's innovative car2go personal mobility service in Austin, Texas, to 10,000 members in less than a year.

The Austin Business Journal article reports that about 50% of members are between 18 - 35 years old. So these membership numbers are all the more impressive since there has not been major the exposure to the University of Texas students until this fall.

Membership growth rates could change somewhat since car2go will soon charge $35 to join, at least that's the pitch when this was written. But car2go on Twitter and other buzz, such as their active sponsorship of local bands, will certainly help maintain the momentum.

The Austin Business Journal reports that 80,000 trips have occurred since the beginning of the year with the average trip between 30-60 minutes.

Daimler reported 235,000 trips during the first year in their Ulm, Germany, car2go pilot (although I believe there were somewhat more vehicles in operation). Membership is now 19€ for the Ulm program - about $26 - but one suspects there are on-going promotional deals available there, as well. Usage rates in Ulm are significantly lower - about 26¢/min. but a little more expensive per hour - $13.60/hr. - at current exchange rates.

A reminder about the basic operating parameters of car2go:

On-demand - no need to specify start or end times (see below)
One way trip option
Park anywhere in a large zone surrounding downtown - several stations are set up in downtown to make it easy to find parking and avoid having to hunt for a space.
Pay by the minute - 35¢ or $12.99 per hour (if the trip is over 40 minutes) or even by the day for $65 (if the trip is over 5 hours)
Insurance is state minimums (unlike traditional carsharing programs)
ONLY Smart cars (you can't rent the Wienermobile in my picture through car2go

In addition to much greater trip flexibility, there are some operational differences compared to traditional carsharing. For example, although you can make a reservation, it's not for a specific vehicle (which might not be at the location it was when you made the reservation) but for the nearest vehicle to the point you specified (which, in theory, could be very close or some distance away).

The service operates under a special pilot program arrangement with the City of Austin, allowing free parking at downtown parking meters and some parking lots in return for free use by city employees. An earlier Austin Business Journal report valued the barter deal at $85,000. The current pilot arrangement expires in November of this year. Here's a map of the floating parking zone in Austin. For reference, it takes 15-20 minutes to drive from the north end of the zone to the south end.

Since the number of non-car owning households in Austin is low, as is transit use, it's likely that car2go is displacing other types of trips. We'll very curious to see what the travel mode shifts are, which we're told, is in the works. And if we ever see such a study for Ulm, we'll keep you posted, as well.

California Passes Personal Vehicle Carsharing Insurance Law

2010-09-30T17:07:00.000-07:00

So-called peer to peer carsharing  (P2P) is one step closer to reality in California with the passage and signing into law of AB1871 introduced by Assembly member Dave Jones. Referred to as "personal vehicle carsharing" (dare I call it PVCS?) in the California measure, signed into law by Gov. Schwarzenegger today, the law change was needed because California statute specifically prohibited private car owners from renting out their vehicles.

It's not clear how many other states have laws specifically potentially blocking personal vehicle carsharing. My guess is that even in states where there isn't a prohibition, including some specific rules about PVCS can help minimize lawsuits.

The changes have been moved along by Spride, a California company founded by high investor Sunil Paul, and City Carshare, the non-profit carshare serving the San Francisco bay area. Spride and City Carshare immediately released a statement praising the passage of the law and saying that vehicle owners enrolling cars in Spride will have access to City Carshare's 13,000 members when the law goes into effect January 1, 2011. The statement says that vehicles will be outfitted with the same technology as City Carshare uses - the OpenCar telematics unit.

There have been no comments yet from the other California-based P2P carshare startup Getaround or from industry giant Zipcar.   Meanwhile on the east coast RelayRides, the first peer to peer carshare, which has been operating for over 3 months, continues to grow. (Disclosure: I am an advisor to RelayRides.)

The bill was introduced and moved by Assembly member Dave Jones (D-Sacramento). Jones is Democratic nominee for California Insurance Commissioner in this November’s election. SF Streetsblog reports that Jones "worked with car insurance companies from the beginning to craft a solution amenable to them.   Jones immediately said he would enroll his own car in a P2P program - but didn't say whether it would be Spride or Getaround, another California based personal vehicle carsharing service.

The new law is mercifully short and to the point. Basically, it:
• Defines Personal Vehicle Carsharing as "privately owned vehicles that are allowed to be used by drivers other than the owner as part of a communal pool of vehicles"
• Defines a Personal Vehicle Carsharing Company as one that operates a service and provides insurance at least 3 times the state minimum for personal auto insurance.

Staffer to Assembly member Jones report that getting the insurance industry and trial lawyers on board with the proposed changes were key to the smooth passage of the bill.

The law has a very important proviso that revenue generated can not exceed the expenses of operating the vehicle. It outlines eligible expenses as lease or loan payments, insurance, parking, depreciation, fuel and maintenance.

The law also prohibits personal auto insurers from canceling or not renewing a policy, or classifying the vehicle as "commercial or for-hire" vehicle because it is participating in a personal vehicle carsharing program.

I am remiss in reporting that CommunAuto, in Montreal, Canada, announced in July that they would be offering their members P2P carsharing as well. CommunAuto proposes to take a very low-tech and low cost approach which would not involve any technology installed in vehicles. In order to participate in CommunAuto's program, vehicle owners would have buy insurance from La Capitale General.

I am working with Oregon State Senator Jackie Dingfelder to make changes in Oregon law to facilitate PVCS, as well. Our efforts are patterned after the California approach, in order to keep things simple for carshare operators, insurance companies and vehicle owners and renters. I appreciate the help from Seattle-based Sightline Institute.

Full text of the California law and legislative history and analysis can be found here.

Cambridge Mass. is Carsharing Mecca

2010-08-06T15:47:00.000-07:00

In the beginning there was Zipcar. And there was much rejoicing and sharing of vehicles in Cambridge. Not surprising, since when they launched in the summer of 2000 vehicles were priced at $4.50/hr. for locations where parking was underwritten and $7/hr. where Zipcar had to pay for the parking. In those days of yore, Zipcar had 3 chariots in Cambridge (Green/Pleasant, Harvard Square and Kendall Square), 5 in Boston and 2 in Somerville.

Last year, with little fanfare knights from an opposing kingdom, Connect by Hertz positioned 3 upscale chariots in Boston with one almost in Cambridge. Exactly what their intentions are, remains unclear.

In the 5th month of the 10th year of the new millennium, when moon was full, upstart RelayRides set up shop, inviting vehicle owners to share their chariots with others in the kingdom and in return take a share of the harvest. Rates were set by yon vehicle owners, ranging from $6 to $12 depending on age and category of the chariot.

Now a 4th carshare has entered the walls of Cambridge - iCar - floating down the Charles in a basket with 10 vehicles at 3 locations. Ye iCar company offers a diverse selection of merrie chariots — from Suzuki sedans & 4wd, Nissan Cube, Toyotas and even a 15 passenger van — but the fleete of heart and lead of foote will have to wait since, alas, they have no Mini Cooper (yet). Chariots are in 4 categories and are priced based on several membership plans:

Pay Per Use — with Basic cars at $7/hr and best cars $11.25/hr.
Value Savings — prepaid monthly plans offering a Basic cars at $6.30 per hour (as low as $5.95/hr. if you prepay a whole bunch of hours each month)

Bundled miles range from 150 to 180 per day. Some chariots have GPS navigation systems, others have child seats. As with other carshares, ye householde livestock must be in a pet carrier.

iCar says its 100% woman-owned and they have more then 30 year experience in the chariot business.

Ladies (and gentlemen) get out your RFID cards and start your engines.

The other next big thing: Peer to Peer Carsharing (updated)

2010-05-09T21:05:00.000-07:00

(This posting has been updated 10-1-2010 to reflect new information.)

A couple of months ago I had in mind 2 "next big things" - car2go and peer to peer (p2p) carsharing. I've held off writing about p2p in anticipation that RelayRides would go live and I could talk about it as it actually works not as a hypothetical. (Full disclosure, I'm consulting with RelayRides.)

Since then p2p carsharing and car rental has been all over the internet — Spride, Gettaround and Go-Op in the US; Whipcar and Wombat Car Club in the UK. For what it's worth, there's a parallel movement to peer to peer car rental going on, as well — Spagg (apparently now defunct) may have been an example, and there are similar p2p car rental companies in Germany and Australia.)

What is peer to peer carsharing? It's traditional carsharing using privately owned vehicles temporarily made available to a carsharing company for others to drive. Like traditional carsharing the vehicles are decentralized, they're available by the hour, and they include gas and insurance in the rates (ideally full insurance coverage, not state minimum coverage).

But first, a point of clarification: some of the services that claim to be carsharing don't actually meet what I would call the minimum requirements for calling themselves carsharing — most importantly lacking "unattended access", through a lockbox or electronic technology. If you've got to meet the owner to exchange keys at the beginning and end of the trip I just don't see how that will provide sufficient convenience of access for drivers.

Here's why I think unattended access important: if you want to claim to be carsharing I want to be sure it will deliver the benefits that so many of us have worked so hard to establish over the years — fewer cars on the road, fewer parked cars, VMT reductions, increased use of transit, bicycling and walking. If not, why should local governments support carsharing? Car rental, even so-called hourly car rental, has never demonstrated these benefits.

Because of the lack of unattended access, in my mind, this excludes Whipcar as real carsharing at the present time. Fortunately, the major players all appear to be talking about some sort of technology, so, by my definition RelayRides, Spride, Gettaround and Go-Op are bona fide peer to peer carsharing services. (Caveat, the functionality of the technology offered by each service could be significantly different. )

Why is peer to peer so attractive?

Well, it's certainly a good deal for car owners, who can easily make several thousand dollars a year from their car ("Don't work for your car, make your car work for you," as Spride says.) Need I say more?

For the carsharing member (driver or renter in p2p terms), some adjustments will be necessary — it seems likely that in most cases instead of knowing a couple of favorite vehicle locations near your home or office, you'll have to go on the internet (or ideally smart phone) to locate the cars that are available during the timer period you have in mind; and there may be a little anxiety finding the location the first time, particularly in cities.

For the carsharing company it transforms a major expense (leasing or owning the fleet) into a variable cost that they only pay when the car is actually making money. And, the lower cost structure means that carsharing can be feasible in less dense, more suburban locations (i.e. lower hours per day utilization), increasing the benefits of carsharing beyond the center city and close-in neighborhoods of the relatively few cities in the US that presently have carsharing. That's the heart of why I think is peer to peer a next big thing.

A side benefit of p2p is that, in the same way that using carsharing instead of owning a car (or 2) can be a transition to car-lite lifestyle, renting a car out to others may also serve as a transition to a car-lite lifestyle for vehicle owners.

Why now?

Until now the hangup in getting peer to peer off the ground has been insurance. The issue has been figuring out whether there's an issue (and how to resolve it, if there is) about where/when the vehicle owner's personal auto insurance policy ends and the carsharing policy begins in the event of a claim. Apparently, the economic climate has loosed up the insurance underwriters' grips on the reins at insurance companies. (Whatever it takes, I guess...)

Another reason may be the explosion of interest in the iPhone and smart phones in general, which I think will make finding and booking p2p vehicles much easier and more spontaneious than having to log on to a carsharing company web site at home or work. And, no doubt, the down turn in the economy got the juices flowing with all sort of unorthodox start ups.

Finally, in this survey of peer to peer carsharing, I would be remiss not mention the unsung pioneer in the peer to peer carsharing world: a little community car club in the UK with the unlikely name of Wombat Car Club. They figured out the insurance years ahead of anyone else and have a very generous payment plan for car owners. Thanks for leading the way.

Everything You Wanted to Know About VMT

2010-04-04T09:46:00.000-07:00

Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) reduction has been the holy grail of transportation planners and greenhouse gas reduction programs for years. And, no wonder, for decades VMT has been growing as we continue to build streets, highways and freeways to accommodate a suburban lifestyle. Now, it's no secret that designing and transportation "system" around a single mode - automobiles - isn't the answer. And you wouldn't be reading this post if you didn't understand that carsharing is a way to provide "automobility" without overuse.

In February, the 9th annual New Partners for Smart Growth sponsored a conference I wish I'd atttended about the many aspects of trying to get our land use and transportation system back into "whack". One presentation that particularly caught my attention was a very comprehensive and informative presentation about VMT by Steven Polzin of the Center for Urban Transporation Research at the University of South Florida in Tampa. (It's from the Thursday morning Navigating the VMT Curve session.)

The 37 slides in his presentation answered many of my questions about the factors affecting VMT (age location, economy) as well as some surprising trends, such as this one about VMT and automobile ownership. Take a look at the full set.

Since land use is the key to a long-term solution of our transportation problems, I also appreciated two land use presentations about density - one with a nice overview of how planners got to suburbia with the best of intentions Retrofitting the Suburban Landscape (18 mb file) by Nir Buras of Buras Architectdure. And I found Getting to Small Footprint Density: Responding to the Market Demand for Walkable Urban Living by Daniel Parolek of Opticos Design, Inc. a helpful introduction, as well. The main page of conference sessions is here.

And while we're on the subject of VMT, at the recent TRB a major session was devoted to whether VMT reduction goals are a good way to measure the performance of our transportation system. Todd Litmann of the Victoria Transportation Policy Institute provides this excellent summary of the discussion from a post at Planetizen. Thanks.

An idea for promoting new vehicle locations

2010-02-28T08:57:00.000-08:00

BMW Mini has always had very creative marketing. And they've had to - building a small car in an age of much larger ones - and with a (more or less) one model line-up. From the early series of numbered slogans emphasizing the fun and virtues of driving a small car to a very clever Mini on a stand with a coin slot, as if it were a child's horseback ride in a supermarket. They've usually had just the right balance of humor and positioning that I admired and advocated.

Now here's another clever idea, and another one that carshares (with a bit of budget) could use to promote new vehicle locations - placing a VERY large cardboard box with the image of the vehicle on the side. The Mini "box" is set up as if it were a present that had just been opened.

What a perfect way to announce a new carsharing vehicle location - that is, before you have a vehicle to go there!

This Mini promotion is from the Netherlands but apparently, it's taken from an earlier RATP Metro promotion in Paris.

These ideas are from an interesting blog Creative Criminals, which also has a link to a YouTube video of the Mini box. Thanks for sharing.

North American Carsharing Predicted to Reach 4.4 million members by 2016

2010-02-01T07:05:00.000-08:00

In another optimistic projection about the future potential of carsharing, consulting firm Frost and Sullivan is predicting 4.4 million members in North America by 2016 - that's up from about 400,000 members now.

The projections are based on a summary of two Frost and Sullivan reports (N748-18) Car-sharing: a Sustainable and Innovative Personal Transport Solution with Great Potential and Huge Opportunities and (M4FA-18) Sustainable and Innovative Personal Transport Solutions – Strategic Analysis of Carsharing Market in Europe, says that carsharing membership in North America rose by 117% between 2007 and 2009 and the growth at that rate is expected to continue over the next 5 to 10 years. This leads to the estimate of 4.4 million members in North America and 5.5 million in Europe by 2016.

(It seems somewhat counterintuitive to me that Europe would have more carsharing members than the US but I haven't seen the report yet to understand the rationale.)

This report follows on Zipcar's press release from June 2009 predicting worldwide market size for carsharing at 37 million members.

Nevertheless, even if only a fraction of these gains occur, carsharing has a very bright future ahead. The marketing departments and street teams better get to work!

Blogging from TRB: Carshare, Bikeshare, We All Care for Vehicle Share!

2010-01-27T05:47:00.001-08:00

Thought you'd enjoy reading this informative summary of car and bikesharing info from this year's Transportation Research Board meeting in Washington, DC. It was prepared by the a staffer at TheCityFix, the website of EMBARQ – The World Resources Institute Center for Sustainable Transport.

Blogging from TRB: Carshare, Bikeshare, We All Care for Vehicle Share!

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TheCityFix is a very interesting organization working in several major world cities to promote more efficient transportation. Included on the staff is Clayton Lane, PhillyCarshare founder who is featured in this nice video about promoting LA Metro.

This is the Future of Urban Transportation

2010-01-23T16:11:00.000-08:00

Do you have 10 minutes to see the future of urban transportation. Watch this video of Dan Sturges at the recent SMART conference sponsored by Sue Zielinski and the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute.

As you can see Dan is passionate about the future of urban transportation. Once upon a time he thought the answer was a new class of lighter vehicles so he invented the Neighborhood Electric Vehicle (NEV) in the form of the Trans2, which became the GEM. But don't call them glorified golf carts. He's been passionate about Segway and electric bikes and developed a public sharing system - Intrago Mobility.

During the past decade he's been developing his concept talking about "thick cities" (downtowns) and "thin cities" (suburbs) and "near cars" (light vehicles) and "far cars" (heavier highway vehicles). Now he's connected the dots into an integrated system, which he describes in this 10 minute video.

I've done some projects with him over the years and find him one of the most original thinkers about transportation out there. You can follow Dan's Twitter feed if you want to keep up with him.

PS: Thanks for the pat on the back, Dan.