Business carsharing (or corporate carsharing) is a form of carsharing that enables commercial businesses to reduce or eliminate private vehicle eets typically maintained for business purposes. It may provide exclusive-use vehicles to clients that are shared among employees and departments or it may offer shared vehicles where the client accesses the vehicles as part of a larger carsharing eet (i.e., employees use the same vehicles that are shared by individuals and/or other business members) (Shaheen and Cohen, 2012).
As of October 2014, carsharing was operating in 33 countries, five continents, and an estimated 1,531 cities with approximately 4.8 million members sharing over 104,000 vehicles. Europe, the largest carsharing region measured by membership, accounts for 46% of worldwide membership and 56% of global fleets deployed. The world’s second largest carsharing market, North America, accounts for 34% of worldwide members and 23% of vehicle fleets. In 2014, Mexico maintained the highest member-vehicle ratios (131:1), followed by 107:1 in Italy.
Carsharing is the shared use of a vehicle fleet by members for tripmaking on a per trip basis. There are four forms of carsharing in North America today: 1) roundtrip, 2) one-way, 3) peer-to-peer, and 4) fractional. In roundtrip carsharing, members begin and end a trip at the same vehicle location and typically pay for use by the hour, mile, or both. One-way carsharing enables members, who pay by the minute, to begin and end a trip at different locations—either throughout a free floating zone or stationbased model with designated parking locations. Peer-to-peer carsharing functions much...
Transforming urban mobility requires integrating public with private services into a single transportation system. Local governments and private companies face the challenge of how to coordinate themselves. An emblematic example is one-way carsharing (shared use of a fleet of vehicles that are typically free-floating throughout an urban area). Surprisingly, good practices for public and private players driving this change remain relatively undocumented. This paper proposes a systematic and balanced public-private approach to foster transportation innovation management. We review both...
Adam Stocker, Jessica Lazarus, Sophia Becker, Susan Shaheen
2016
Researchers at the Transportation Sustainability Research Center (TSRC), UC Berkeley in partnership with Zipcar conducted a survey to better understand the impact that carsharing has on college member travel behavior, vehicle holdings and driving, quality of life, and transportation expense savings. The survey design was conducted as a joint effort among TSRC, Zipcar, and university representatives. The college/university carsharing market is a unique environment for both carsharing users and operators. Due to the particular living arrangements and travel needs of college members,...
Susan Shaheen, PhD, Elliot Martin, PhD, and Apaar Bansal
2018
This project is a two-year evaluation of pricing/incentives applied to the one-way, all electric carsharing system operated by car2go in San Diego, CA. This system is the only electric vehicle-based, one-way carsharing system with instant access (i.e., accessible without reservation) operating in the U.S. The goal of this project is to work with car2go and the San Diego region to develop and evaluate pricing/incentive structures for their members, which improve system operational efficiency (vehicle redistribution, state-of-charge management, use of vehicles placed at public transit...
Peer-to-peer (P2P) carsharing employs privately owned vehicles made temporarily available for shared use by an individual or members of a P2P carsharing network. Expenditures, such as insurance, are generally covered by the P2P operator during the access period. In exchange for providing the service, operators keep a portion of the usage fee. Members can access vehicles through a direct key or combination transfer from the owner or through operator-installed technology that enables “unattended access.” Although P2P carsharing is more commonplace in the United Kingdom, Netherlands,...
As of October 2016, carsharing was operating in 46 countries and six continents, with an estimated 2,095 cities and approximately 15 million members sharing over 157,000 vehicles. Asia, the largest carsharing region measured by membership, accounts for 58% of worldwide membership and 43% of global fleets deployed. The world’s second largest carsharing market, Europe, accounts for 29% of worldwide members and 37% of vehicle fleets.
Transportation issues can create seemingly no-win conflicts for planners, whether it’s dealing with traffic demand management, wrangling over parking requirements, addressing quality of life issues that accompany traffic congestion, or trying to reduce vehicle emissions to forestall climate change. A new “product-as-service” approach to vehicle use, called carsharing, is springing up in major metropolitan markets, smaller districts, and university campuses all across the country. Where the conditions are right to support carsharing, these programs can give planners another flexible...
Susan Shaheen, PhD, Elliot Martin, and Hannah Totte
2020
Reducing carbon emissions from the United States (U.S.) transportation sector has emerged as a priority action to combat climate changeCarsharing and zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) could be integral to creating a more sustainable transportation system. This paper presents the results of a study that evaluated the impacts of...