Since 1998, 94 carsharing programs have been deployed in North America - 40 are operational and 52 are defunct. As of January 1, 2018, there were 18 active programs in Canada, 21 in the United States (U.S.), and one program in Mexico. In North America, carsharing membership totaled approximately 2,110,111 members sharing 23,376 vehicles. The three largest carsharing operators in the U.S. and Canada accounted for 91% and 86% of the total membership, respectively. Only one operator provided service in Mexico as of January 2018.
Elliot Martin, Adam Stocker, Aqshems Nichols, Susan Shaheen
2021
The study found that roundtrip carsharing in NYC mostly serves as a substitute for car rental, other personal vehicle modes, and personal vehicle ownership. The analysis showed that the broader pilot program had a modest impact on user behavior through carsharing (i.e., reduced vehicle ownership, reduced VMT, and mode shift). It also found that the pilot program likely expanded the membership base of carsharing to demographic cohorts that are traditionally underrepresented in carsharing populations (i.e., increased participation by lower education levels, lower household incomes,...
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...
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...
Susan Shaheen, PhD, Elliot Martin, PhD, and Apaar Bansal
2018
Shared mobility services have now become firmly integrated into urban transportation systems across the globe. Carsharing, bikesharing, ridesourcing or transportation network companies (TNCs), and other systems now offer urban travelers access to transportation services that had long been previously only possible through personal vehicle ownership. Carsharing is arguably the pioneer mode of the sharing economy, given it ushered in a new way of thinking and access to the private automobile in the 20th century. Since its North American inception in Montreal in...
Car-sharing platforms, which have suffered during the Covid-19 lockdown, see an opportunity emerging: an increase in short-distance, local trips as U.S. consumers look for a different way of getting to work and running errands.
Executives from Turo, GetAround and ZipCar are hoping their pitch to customers—a means of travel that is cheaper than car ownership and sanitary—...
ShareNow — previously known as car2go — officially shut down its carsharing business in D.C. and North America over the weekend after eight years in the city. Despite its departure, experts say that carsharing isn’t struggling here in the D.C. region.
“Washington D.C. is actually one of the strongest marketplaces for these types of on-demand options in the entire United States,” said Susan Shaheen, a...
The US is about to lose another car-share service. On Wednesday, the Daimler- and BMW-owned entity that operates the service Share Now said the company's cars would disappear from North American streets by the end of February 2020. For customers in New York, Montreal, Seattle, Washington, DC, and Vancouver, that’s a bummer. It’s a bummer as well for those who enjoyed short-term rentals in London, Brussels, and...
When it comes to marketing, Turo tries to make every dollar count.
The company — sometimes referred to as the “Airbnb of car rentals” — was founded in 2009 with operations in San Francisco and Boston, and has since expanded to more than 5,000 cities across the U.S., Canada, Germany, and the U.K. It competes not only against established car rental giants such as National, Enterprise, Dollar, Avis and Hertz,...
