Carsharing offers consumers short-term access to vehicles, which facilitates better mobility and reduces the need for personal vehicle ownership. Carsharing does not require consumers to have automobile insurance. Instead, carsharing operators insure their members and are responsible for the risks and liabilities associated with vehicle use....
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...
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.
Ingrid Ballús Armet, Susan Shaheen, PhD, Kelly Clonts, and David Weinzimmer
2014
Peer-to-peer carsharing is an innovative approach to vehicle sharing in which vehicle owners temporarily rent their personal automobiles to others in their surrounding area. Peer-to-peer carsharing belongs to the larger sharing economy, an economic model premised on the notion of collaborative consumption as opposed to ownership. This study examined public perception of peer-to-peer carsharing and potential market characteristics through an intercept survey conducted in the San Francisco Bay Area, California. Three hundred respondents from 14 locations in San Francisco (n=150) and...
In October 2013, TSRC hosted the inaugural Shared-Use Mobility Summit in San Francisco, a two-day event facilitating a lively dialogue among mobility providers, policymakers, governmental agencies, non-profits, affiliated industries, technologists, academics, and other stakeholders on the current state of the practice, opportunities, and obstacles to market expansion in the fields of carsharing, public bikesharing, ridesharing, ondemand ride services, employer shuttles, and related sharing economy affiliates. Day One featured sessions on industry trends, success stories, the sharing...
Two large all electric carsharing programs will be launching in Las Vegas, Nevada and Indianapolis, Indiana in 2014-2015.
In Las Vegas, SHIFT carsharing will be launching in late-2014. SHIFT will feature two services “CoreDrive” and “CityDrive.” CoreDrive will feature a fleet of Smart and Chevrolet Volt electric vehicles designed for short trips within downtown Las Vegas. CityDrive will feature longer-range Tesla Model S vehicles intended for longer trips around the greater Las Vegas metropolitan area. SHIFT members will also have access to a trolley service and SHIFT bikesharing....
Carsharing continues to grow worldwide as a powerful strategy to provide an alternative to solo driving. The viability of electric vehicles, or EVs, has been exam-ined in various carsharing business models. Moreover, new technologies have given rise to electromobility, or e-mobility, systems. This paper discusses the evolution of e-mobility in carsharing business models and the challenges and opportunities that EVs present to carsharing operators around the world. Operators are now anticipating in-creased EV proliferation into vehicle fleets over the next 5-10 years as technology,...
Classic roundtrip carsharing has been documented as a strategy to reduce car ownership and vehicle miles/kilometers traveled in urban areas. The expansion of carsharing and other forms of shared-use mobility have led to a growing interest in understanding the latest models. In recent years, one-way carsharing has gained momentum across the globe with 18 operators providing services in ten countries worldwide. One-way carsharing does not require its users to return the vehicle to the same location from which it was accessed (in contrast to roundtrip carsharing). Users typically pay by the...
Since 1994, 83 carsharing programs have been deployed in the Americas — 45 are operational and 38 defunct. As of January 1, 2015, there were 20 active programs in Canada, 23 in the United States (U.S.), one program in Mexico, and one in Braziltotaling approximately 1,529,811 carsharing members sharing 22,134 vehicles in the Americas. The three largest carsharing operators in the U.S. and Canada support 95.9% and 83.2% of the total membership, respectively. Only one operator provides service in both Mexico and Brazil.
Susan Shaheen, PhD, Elliot Martin, PhD, and Apaar Bansal
2015
The California Zero-Emission Vehicle (ZEV) Mandate, adopted in 1990, was aimed at increasing the sale and dissemination of low- or zero-emission vehicles throughout the California auto market. ZEVs include plug-in hybrid vehicles (PHVs) and all-electric vehicles (EVs). In an attempt to accelerate the exposure of ZEVs in the general population, in 2001, additional credits were allotted to automakers in return for placing ZEVs into transportation networks, such as carsharing fleets. This policy is set to end in 2018. This white paper presents the results of a study that evaluated the impacts...
