Car Sharing... the Future?

I like everything in my car to be set just right. The climate needs to be at my perfect temp, at all times. I don’t want anyone else messing with my air conditioning. So, quit turning my AC Compressor on and off, and stop putting my AC Parts through so much wear and tear. You may think that I am super anal and you are super correct. Due to this, I am not a good candidate for a car sharing programs, but it might be the right fit for you.

The first evidence of car sharing goes back to 1948. The idea of sharing vehicles has come and gone several times, lacking the ability to stick. No one has seemed to be able to get it right. That has not stopped the fad from, once again, coming back. However, this time there is a new approach.

There is the old car sharing business model; a company owns a whole fleet of cars and members can rent those cars for a few hours or an entire day. Zipcar is the largest of these corporations with 650,000 members, who proudly refer to themselves as “Zipsters.”I wonder if Zipsters wear their seatbelts extremely tight around their tight hipster jeans. Zipcar has almost 10,000 vehicles in 19 major cities. They account for 80% of the car sharing market.

The new car share method is a peer-to-peer model. The company doesn’t actually own the vehicles. Instead, members share each other’s cars. Everything else is basically the same. This seems like a great business idea because it eliminates fleet maintenance, which is a massive expenditure. The tough part is getting members to trust their car with strangers. To ease members’ worries companies run background checks, and provide insurance.

The big companies that operate a peer-to-peer style are Getaround and RelayRides. General Motors just invested in RelayRides and will use OnStar to help members find and track vehicles. GM acknowledges that a car share program causes less people to buy automobiles, but reports state that there will be 4.4 million people participating in car share programs by 2016. GM wants to be the company that supplies those cars.