10 years ago when the shared car disrupter Zipcar was launched, some of us imagined how everything was going to change, particularly if you’d had an IT background and had seen whole hardware businesses replaced by tiny footprint of a 1000 virtual amazon web services. Then the Car industry woke up to the risk and invested in shared startups to protect their market position – BMW / Ford etc. , with Whipcar for example peer to peer sharing came out. Rachel Botsman talked about sharing and trust, so many things we buy and don’t share are unused for 95% of the time. It looked to be a classic case of market disruption, and although everyone wanted to go electric immediately, sharing looked to be a good way to get people there fast.
Intellectually we’re in the same place, but the two successful disrupters we have that are now out there growing and heading towards profitability are Tesla and Uber both of whom have a vested interest in stopping the growth of the shared car market with one wanting to sell you a car with a driver and the other wanting you to upgrade to a great electric car, but make sure you keep buying. Tesla has effectively moved into the spot that used to be occupied by Porsche and everyone is following them, Uber meanwhile wants to compete with Taxi services and lead the market when it sees driverless cars become commonplace.
Zipcar in the meantime has been bought by Avis and continues to grow but unspectacularly and seeming to be surrounded by legislation from the use of shared parking bays to the acceptance of insurance approaches for casual users. In London TfL doesn’t embrace shared and local authorities take their own view. Shared has been a terrible place to be during Covid times.
But the facts of shared cars remain that they are extremely effective from a carbon viewpoint:
1 Shared Car displaces 10 Individually owned cars. You could reduce carbon expenditure by 10 tonnes per car, and reduce pollution and congestion, plus obtain other carbon benefits if the cars displaced are targeted carefully.
Most cars spend 95% of their time parked up, wowing their owners with their looks and if a Tesla their green credentials. A shared car however is used 40% of the time, so represents a much better usage of carbon capital.
Car Owners become very poor at walking, cycling and using public transport. Common sense marginal costs mean that we count that extra 2 mile ride to the shops at just the price of the petrol and with electric cars that marginal price is going even lower. So the typical car owner might nudge their usage up to 6% but it’s done at the expense of their health, the environment and any carbon impact. ( Not going there – where did the electricity come from? )
This shared car benefit doesn’t work if you are not in a city where your home destination can easily be shared by many other people and is remote and isolated, but in many large cities we could all be enjoying a cleaner environment, better fitness and reduced costs by dumping the car and choosing shared modes of transport. When we add into this the burgeoning opportunities of new micro mobility options – bikes and scooters with great range and comfort sticking with private cars seems to benefit two new disrupters and all of the old automobile companies as they can stick to providing branded products rather than see shared cars become a ubiquitous commoditised cheap service. When choosing shared transport partners the first question to be asking them in any city should be how much do you think we can reduce car ownership by? More than 50%
Online quote: I can drive my Tesla at 2c per mile when charged from my solar panels. My old BMW cost 10c per mile ($3 per gallon of gas at 30 mpg). It is 80% cheaper to run an EV than an gas-powered car.