Carsharing competition heats up (and you better watch out)

Paris, France. 19 Mar 2001 8:00 AM

Spring came fast that year at the New Mobility shop in Paris; we were working under pressure to muster world-wide support for the first-ever “Earth Car Free Day” due for 19 April, which we were organizing  with a team from the Earth Day Network. As part of this effort, we wrote a series of articles that appeared in the lively Grist e-mag exploring some less known new mobility concepts and strategies , which you can see here. And of these the most widely read had to do with carsharing and a gentleman from the Mafia. [Please be sure you read Paul Minett's take-no-prisoners comment at the end of this piece.]

CarSharing: A 1% solution (And why it is a critical 1%)

The learning process has been long and painful. But it is almost 2012, the results are in, and we now know this one thing for sure: There are no one single, mega-dollar, build-it, big bang, fix-it solutions for transportation systems reform. No, the process is far more complex than that. Successful 21st century transport policy depends on the coordination and integration of large numbers of, for the most part, often quite small things. Small perhaps in themselves, one by one, but when you put all these small things together you start to get the new and far better transportation systems that we need and deserve. Large numbers of small things, each doing their part in concert. We call them “one percent solutions”. And carsharing is part of that complex process.

P2P Carsharing galloping ahead in the USA

As we have seen in a certain number of articles over the last year or so — click here to review — the totally unexpected dark horse of carsharing which has emerged and is presently galloping with surprising speed in quite a number of places around the world is the concept of peer-to-peer (think do-it-yourself) carsharing.  Here is a good resume of the present state of play of P2P in the United States that has just appeared in a popular American newspaper.  And since carsharing. is a critical components of the overall sustainable transportation package for cities — you can bet on it! — there is good reason to stay on top of that if you are a decision-maker, entrepreneur, competitor  or source of counsel in our sector.

@World Carshare Inventory – 2011/12 Update

Paris, 1 November 2011

Dear World Carshare Colleagues and others who may be interested,

We are currently updating the several sites and sources that together constitute the World Carshare Consortium (see below). It’s about time. If you go to our original program site in support of carsharing at www.worldcarshare.com, which first saw the light of day back in August 1999, you will see quite a cornucopia of information and sources, some of which still current and useful, and others of which starting to look a bit tired and needing either a major overhaul or quick trip to the trash basket.

Autolib’ to the starting line

This weekend saw the first public testing of the much bruited Autolib’ carshare project currently getting underway here in Paris. And as you wait for our in-depth coverage, on-the-spot  interviews and film  we thought you might find it handy to refresh your understanding of the basic objectives and challenges, with this reprint of our 10 December 2010 article in which we try to take a balanced view of this ambitious transportation project.  You will be hearing a lot more about Autolib’ in the coming months. If it works, it will be a major transformative project and will make a lot of people start to think in quite different terms about how they are going to get around in the city in the future. (For a quick print update try here and here.  And for a short video, here)

Peer reviews on momo memorandum on carsharing — directed to the European Commission

Why this memorandum on carsharing and the European Commission?

- Eric Britton, Editor, World Streets
-  Read full report and peer commentaries here.

Extracts:
The sustainability agenda is not only important. It is critical.  Moreover it is critical for Europe and it is critical for the world.

Carsharing works and does an important job
In point of fact when it comes to sustainable transport in cities Europe is leading the way world-wide, as our cities one by one are starting to get control of motor cars  and in parallel begin to offer a broader array of better transport alternatives. There are more than two hundred cities across Europe today that are working on advancing the sustainable transport agenda though this two-pronged approach of car-control and new mobility options that work. And all of this against a background of near term actions that kick in within months and a few years at most. This is the proven European formula for sustainable mobility.

1st National Working Party on Carsharing in France “The Culture of Carsharing”

The following notes were prepared on the fly to guide my presentation as the “closing summary” I was invited to make at the closure of the Strasburg conference. I took it as my task to sum up a certain number of observations that the formal presentations and the lively exchanges over the day brought to mind. And then to round them out here with some other findings and recommendations that I hope will be useful to the carshare community in France. The presentation itself was in French, but if you turn to Youtube.com you will see an informal commentary in English to round out these bare notes.

Stop press! Carsharing is apparently not dead after all.*

We always enjoy a good knock-up on World Streets. Keeps us thinking. After yesterday’s piece in which Nicolas le Douarec undertook to stretch our minds and challenge us to consider carsharing from some other perspectives, including apparently in a coffin, we hear today from an old friend Michael Glotz-Richter from Bremen who has been orchestrating carsharing in his city and trans-European collaboration in the field for the last decade, running an EU program which currently goes by the somewhat mystifying acronym of momo (see below). Here is what Michael has to say about yesterday’s reported corpse.

Carsharing is dead, long live . . . car rental?

We have been reading and hearing quite a bit in the French media, and in particular in the context of the city of Paris’s ambitious planned Autolib project, that “carsharing is dead in France”. Which came as something of a surprise given that our own read of the evidence does not at all square with this position. So we asked Nicolas le Douarec, who has something of a record in bringing carsharing to Paris, what he thought about that death warrant. His heady response follows.

BMW enters the one-way carsharing market

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”.

“Carsharing will ease Shanghai’s traffic problems”

We very much like this article that has just appeared in motoring.asiaone.com, in that it provides an example of how good new mobility ideas that have enjoyed a certain success in one place — in this instance the long time carsharing project of the City of Bremen — can start to make their way into other cities and parts of the world. Will this actually work out for Shanghai? Well at least it’s a start.

Autolib’ – Paris bets big on new carshare technology

A sustainable transport system is a system of choices – quite the opposite in many ways of the old all-car no-choice model that all too often spends most of its time in taking up scarce space but not moving. With this very much in view, the City of Paris has just stepped up to the plate and is now in the process of bringing into service what they propose will be a new link in the chain of sustainable transport options: a carsharing system not quite like any other. No less than three thousand cars to come on line in shared service in just nine months – and electric cars at that – working out of 1000 to 1200 stations spotted over not only the central city but a number of surrounding communities as well. The biggest and most daring carshare bet of all time.

The P2P carsharing saga continues: The WhipCar story

WhipCar is a very recent British start-up in the still little known peer-to-peer car owner/rental business.  World Streets recently interviewed the group’s founders and managers, Tom Wright and Vinay Gupta, to get at their side of this unfolding rather surprising 21st century alternate car story.  (And the first thing they told us was that it’s not quite carsharing. Let’s have a look.)

Carsharing in Sweden: 2010 Update

This latest country survey from Sweden provides and update and excellent coverage of the carshare situation there, thanks to Per Schillander of the SRA. More than 18,000 registered drivers, almost 60 different programs, and at last count 573 vehicles. You will want to read this in parallel with his comprehensive report from last winter: Car Sharing in Sweden in 2010