Car2Go launches in Portland

I took my first trip in a Portland car2go vehicle this wet morning — a 10 minute trip from NW Portland over to my house in NE Portland.  Given the weather it was probably the least auspicious launch of any car2go city.  But by noon at least the rain had stopped and people were venturing out of the houses and condos and coming downtown.

Yes I could have done the trip by transit — 44 minutes by bus with one transfer (and we have frequent service) — or 22 minutes by bicycle, but I was soaked and, besides I had this brand new car2go membership cards that was itching to be used.

Portland must now hold some sort of record for the most number of carsharing vehicles per capita — a little over 700 vehicles from the 3 companies — Zipcar, Getaround and now car2go — for 500,000 people in the city.  With 3 services, each with slightly different niches, the choices to go car-lite or even car free have never been greater.

What are the niches for Zipcar, Getaround and car2go? This is my take:

•  Zipcar is the premium brand for reservation-based, round-trip carsharing.  They've got a wide variety of new and late model cars, pickups and minivans.  The cars are parked throughout the close-in neighborhoods and, for regular users, they've got some membership plans that bring the cost down.

• Getaround, the peer to peer carsharing option for reservation-based round-trips has slightly older vehicles (none older than 1995) in an almost infinite variety of types, with the older vehicles at considerable discount over Zipcar, making them the affordable carshare choice.  Accessing the fleet is a bit more complicated since you have to request most vehicles from the owner via text message and you may have to meet them to exchange the keys (depending on how they've set up their Carkit.  (It's worth noting that both Relayrides and Just Share It also have a few vehicles listed in Portland.)  

• Car2go, of course, is on-demand carsharing with floating parking anywhere in a large (but not quite large enough) "home zone" + one-way trip option.  As long as a Smart car will get you and a friend to your destination it's an amazing service.  And, I think it will likely transform many peoples' trip habits as they get familiar with it.

I've put together a table comparing the services here.

One local, long-time industry observer (not me) predicts that zero car households in the close-in neighborhoods could be greater than 50% in the next few years — that's a long way from the current 16% we are now.  Of course that won't be solely because of carsharing — Portland has done many things right over the past 20 years — density, walkable neighborhoods, good transit.  And, it looks like we'll even get public bikesharing sometime soon!

And if you're interested in what infrastructure is conducive for households to actually start lowering their vehicle ownership, transportation planner Jarrett Walker has written a very interesting piece about it.  He thinks Portland has many of the right factors in place, even though we are not even in the top 50 cities for low car ownership.

So, I welcome car2go to Portland.  You're in good company here.  And thanks for the free coffee and Honkin' Huge Burrito (from one of Portland original food carts) this morning, too.

Carsharing Competition Returns to Washington DC

National capitals seem to have a way of attracting carsharing companies:  London, Berlin, Paris, Madrid and Amsterdam all have several competing carshare operators.  With the demise of Flexcar in late 2007, Zipcar has had Washington DC mostly to itself.  

Now both Hertz On Demand and car2go have announced a full-scale operations.  Hertz On Demand publicly launching the city and car2go intending to launch later this year.   This will be an interesting year in DC!

Zipcar — is the big kahuna of casharing, with 850+ vehicles in the DC metro area, including Arlington, Virginia across the river (arguably the city with the most  transportation options and most progressive transportation policies in the US (except for taxing carsharing) and several cities in Maryland.  Zipcar was the big loser in a DC DOT parking space bidding fracas last year, but the hegemony was bound to end.  And Zipcar is no stranger to parking bidding wars, having driven up carsharing parking costs in several other cities when they entered the market.

With the return of competition to Washington, Zipcar has competition in all four of what it calls its "established markets" — Boston, New York, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.  These cities were all launched between 2000-2005.  (That these markets are their "established" markets always seemed a bit arbitrary to me, since they now operate several markets established by Flexcar of the same vintage, and which were launched with similar level of investment - Seattle (2000) and Portland (1998).

DC's thoughtful online new source TBD Online thinks Hertz and car2go may be "better deals" than Zipcar, primarily because of no annual fees, but Zipcar has shown it will match and beat the deals of competitors in other markets, so I fully expect them to effectively counter with equally attractive new member packages, especially when the weather gets better and the spring marketing swings into action.  And pricing for Hertz and Zip are essentially the same and car2go's pricing really isn't comparable.

Hertz On Demand has had a couple of cars in the area for several years and has quietly started to build out their fleet with 10 cars in a couple of neighborhoods when I was in DC in January for TRB.  Hertz says they're planning to get to 100 vehicles in phase I, but didn't give any idea how long that might be.  The recently launched batter electric rental cars at Union Station will be converted to Hertz Car Rental to On Demand service.

Hertz has indicated they would NOT be offering one-way service, at least not initially, as they do in New York City.  But, my guess is they will do start offering one-way to the airports sooner rather than later.  Although offering one-way to airports is great for marketing and a wonderful service for customers, it's probably closer to self-drive taxi than anything else.  In the meantime, their vehicles have the clunky but useful Never Lost navigation system and their insurance has a $250 deductible rather than $750 for Zipcar.

Car2Go has been long-rumored to be eyeing Washington and now it's real.  The "floating parking" service area spans the entire District of Columbia, but excludes several areas - including the National Mall - presumably in hopes of avoiding huge vehicle relocation issues that Capitol BikeShare continues to struggle with.  The Smart vehicles will be gas, not electric.   I expect that car2go will be very well received in DC, already a very multi-modal town.

I'm still waiting to see what sort of impact car2go's unique one-way service only with Smart cars has on traditional "round-trip" carsharing services.  My suspicion that the small 2-seat vehicle defines a different type of trip than that of "round trip" carsharing with its bigger 4-5 passenger vehicles, is now somewhat confirmed in other car2go cities.  Fortunately, an early study from Europe is showing that vehicle ownership rates for car2go members is lower after joining, though not as much as traditional round-trip carsharing services.

Some Other Perspectives on Competition

Is competition bad or good for carsharing?  It sort of depends on who you're asking.  It's probably good for the companies, since multiple players in the market likely provides some legitimacy to this new mobility option in the minds of some prospective customers.  But as far as the allocation of public resources, such as on-street parking spaces, it may be a mixed bag since most customers are only members of one service, at least of the round-trip type (I fully expect many Zipcar and Hertz On Demand members will also have car2go membership.)  

For what it's worth: during the competition deliberations when Zipcar was acquiring Streetcar in London at least one city (Islington) reported to the Competition Commission, that it preferred to keep its partnership with only a single carsharing operator since they felt it would be better for residents since they could be assured of using every carsharing in the area, and was certainly easier for them administratively.

Meanwhile, down in Raleigh, North Carolina, there are complaints that competition is hurting the growth of carsharing.  Actually, I doubt it's the competition as much as the lack of commitment by the carsharing companies.  WeCar has never put much juice into marketing WeCar that I've seen and the Zipcar operation there is on two college campuses and, in general, they seem to keep these operations close to campus and not use them as springboards to developing city-wide operations.

Gen Y says Why?

Zipcar's second annual transportation survey again highlights that the 18 to 34 year old demographic has different ideas about transportation than their elders.   If one needed persuading, it's more good news that the future personal transportation isn't going to be an extension of the 1950s through 1990s.

It seems likely to me that the perspective of the Millenial (AKA Gen Y) on travel would be even more extreme if more had access to better transportation alternatives, such as better bike lanes, better bus and rail service, and more sidewalks.

Although Zipcar describes the results of the survey in terms of their target demographic, it's worth noting that a significant number of people in ALL age categories are interested in reducing their driving.

What would people do with the money they save from driving owning less?  Not surprisingly, people say they would save the money or pay off debt.  Convenience and the environment came in 3rd and 4th place as motivations.

Zipcar's offers this suggestion to government agencies:

"Policy makers should also take notice and accept that our youngest generation will not think about transportation the way we have for the last hundred years, nor will future generations," [said Zipcar CEO Scott] Griffith.  "Our most forward-looking policy makers are thinking about housing, land use, highways, bridges and gas taxes like it's 2015 rather than 1971.  It is my hope that these thought leaders will inspire a broader dialogue on mobility policy instead of sticking with an outdated transportation policy that directs limited funds almost exclusively toward highways." 

But don't worry the car isn't going away any time soon, even though it certainly won't be your father's Oldsmobile (which went away in 2004).  2011 witnessed the launch of freeway capable battery electric cars (Nissan Leaf and Mitsubishi iMiev) and the idiosyncratic Smart car has been joined on this side of the Atlantic by competitor microcars, the Fiat 500 (strong sales) and just before the end of the year, the Scion (Toyota) IQ (gas powered), somewhat legitimizing the market segment.

You can see Zipcar's 12 slide deck on the survey here and read the press release here.

My Favorite Zipcar Ad

Don't ask me why, but this ad really amuses me — humorous and makes the point.  

However, Zipcar wasn't so lucky with another ad showing how hard it was to carry a bunch of stuff on a bicycle.  The cycling blogosphere erupted in a minor meltdown for a few days about how "anti-cycling" the ad was.  You can read about and see all 6 ads here.

Electrifying Carsharing

(Note to readers: this article has been significantly updated since the original posting.)


With the arrival of highway-capable battery electric vehicles (EVs), a number of carsharing companies are adding them to their fleets.  And it's happening all over the world.  Here are some of operations and concepts that caught my attention.


In the North America many of the operations are adding Nissan Leafs, since it was the first vehicle in wide availability but Mitsubishi iMievs are becoming available.  

• Hertz On Demand — New York City has been busy adding Nissan Leafs and other vehicles to their New York City operation.  Although not widely publicized they offer one-way trips between many of their parking locations.  Although they don't offer city-wide carsharing in other cities, they do offer EVs in San Francisco and Washington DC, as well as London.  Hertz has set out a goal of 1,000 EVs systemwide by the end of 2012.
• CommunAuto — Montreal & Quebec City; has had a long interest in EVs, starting with a proposed Branché project in 2003; possibly the first carsharing service to add battery EVs in North America; will add 50 Nissan Leafs in 2012.
• car2go — San Diego; opened for business on November 18 with Smart ED (electric drive) in one-way service over a large area of downtown (including the airport) and adjacent neighborhoods.
• Getaround — And then there's Getaround P2P carsharing using the Tesla Roadster as their signature vehicle for marketing; now they have 3 privately-owned Teslas enrolled - at $50 per hour ("gas and insurance included").  They've also undertaken to recruit EV owners through a marketing campaign with PlugShare.com
• City Carshare — Announced plans to power half it's fleet with renewable energy; they will do this using Renewable Energy Credits (REC) from 3 Degrees.
• I-Go — Chicago, with great fanfare (deservedly) announced not one but plans to add 11 solar powered charging stations for Mitsubishi iMievs they will adding to their fleet in 2012. Each station, from 350 Green. will cover 4 parking spaces and house 2 I-Go EVs and have room for charging two other EVs. Congratulations IGO!

(Arguably, the first EV carsharing was the Electrovaya Altcar service at the Baltimore Science Center starting in 2009, but it is defunct now.)

France — EVs from major manufacturers have been available in France continuously since the 1980s and France started the first EV carshare in 1999.

  
• Auto Bleue — Nice; the first EV carsharing in France; round-trip service model; a very well funded partnership with Veolia Transport, EDF (the French electric utility) and Transdev; launched in the spring of 2011 with 15 stations 61 vehicles; eventual goal is 70 stations and over 200 vehicles; telematics by Vulog.  "Nice" logos, too, as they say in Nice,)
•  Autolib — Paris; Group Bolloré started it's one-way EV carsharing last week month with the official launch of 250 "Blue Car" vehicles less than a year after signing the contract with the City of Paris.  Pricing is the same as somewhat similar car2go service with Smart EDs in Amsterdam (see below) - 0.29 € per minute.  (I will have a more complete report about Autolib soon.)
• Yelomobile — La Rochelle; rebranded successor to Liselec, the oldest EV carshare (started 1999) operated by the city; with an upgrade from Veolia Transport which integrates the brand (and the member card) with city's Yelo buses and public parking operations.
•  Cité Vu— Antibes (southern France); operated by telematics supplier VuLog allows round trip and one way service between 6 locations.
• Carbox — Toulouse; Carbox is a unique business to business carsharing service, primarily in Paris, but also provides fleet carsharing to Airbus in Toulouse, recently announced they would be adding 15 Citroen C-Zeros (Mitsubishi iMievs) to the 150 vehicles they currently provide the aircraft manufacturer.  

Spain seems to be suddenly very active in EV carsharing, with several demonstration projects:

• CochEle — Sevilla; This is by far the largest operation 6 stations and 16 Peugeot iON (Mitsubishi iMievs) vehicles; rates are 4.95 € per hour or 19.95 € day + 0.29 € per kilometer (I'm a little mystified why they charge so much for "fuel"?)  Cochele has announced a partnership with NH Hotels (major hotel chain in Spain) showing the MIT folding City Cars now being built in Spain (no details)
• E:sharing — Sagunto (just north of Valencia, on the Mediterranean); using Th!nk vehicles; currently with 2 stations
• SareCar - Ataun (northern Spain; tiny village of only 1,500 people); demonstration project with 2 Th!nk vehicles.

Elsewhere in Europe — 

• Move About — offers carsharing with Th!nk EVs in corporate fleet sharing service as well as public carsharing in Oslo, Norway (80 vehicles), Copenhagen, Denmark (launched this month); and Goteborg (Gothenberg) Sweden 5 vehicles in a science park.  Here's a nice video (in English) showing the service.
• GreenWheels — started adding their first Peugeot Ion to their fleet in Amsterdam in July with plans to add 25 EVs total, 7 more in that city, as well as additional vehicles in Utrecht and Rotterdam.
• car2go — Amsterdam; expects to have all 300 Smart Electric Drive models deployed by the end of the year; rates are slightly lower than car2go in other cities (0.29 € per minute; 12.90 € per hour and 39 € per day)

Japan was one of the earliest countries to offer EV carsharing, but took some time out until the current generation of EVs.  Several Japanese auto makers have announced EV carsharing —Nissan (partnering with Mitsububishi in Kyoto) and Toyota (at housing developments in Tokoyo and Nagoya using IQ EV vehicles).  These build on innovative demonstration projects in the 1990s at the manufacturer's corporate campuses -- a project on the Toyota campus using their earlier generation "Crayon" vehicle; and the Honda ICVS project (which currently sponsors the Intellishare program at UC Riverside and once had Honda EVs; as well as the DIRACC one-way carsharing program in Singapore; currently testing in EVs in various commuter projects.

Several independent development concepts have also been announced.  One called the "Green Cross-over Project" would locate EVs at convenience stores and equip them with vehicle-to-grid (V2G) capabilities.  Another would use home delivery storage lockers, which already have security features, to make carsharing vehicle keys available to members.


China, which has been very active in developing all sorts of electric mobility - e-bikes, a variety of cars, now a EV carsharing service has launched:

• EVNet — Hangzhou; arguably the first carsharing in China (and joins the largest public system in the world); has 15 vehicles at 4 rental locations near university and office park, both gas and Chery EV (surprisingly their signature Smart car is gasoline Smart not the Chinese knock-off electric Smart). Thanks to Lewis Chen of Invers for this tip and to the Team Red (my consulting firm) man in Shanghai, Dominik Villaret, for update that rates are between $3 - $5 per hour  They have good support from the city government.  Watch this short video.

The future of EV carsharing?

Given the high cost of battery-electric vehicles themselves, plus the cost of charging stations, carsharing and EVs seem like a logical relationship. I have recommended to cities I've worked with, that if they are obtaining EVs and charging stations for their city fleet they consider partnering with a local carshare to make these vehicles available to the general public, while still having access to them for city employee use.  Such application also better utilizes the charging stations.   Since carsharing offers a variety of vehicle types, members can select whether an EV is the right type of vehicle for the type of trip they're planning to make — replacing more trips with vehicles that are the cleanest operating.  The carsharing company should be able to keep an EV in use much more than most private individuals could.   

The installation of solar charging stations overcomes one of the major drawbacks to current battery EVs - instead of recharging from electricity generated from coal-fired power plants, these EVs would be truly renewable transportation.

In the long run some transportation experts believe there will be fleets of shared very light shared EVs, even smaller than Smart cars, in major cities.  These might look like the Renault Twizzy or other light vehicle designs not yet thought of.

Meanwhile in the present, one of the important operational questions all carsharing operators are asking themselves is how often members won't accurately judge the range of their trip and find themselves stranded a long way from home; and what will they do about it.  As of now, there aren't any AAA trucks with quick chargers cruising the streets.  Car2go has got an even more complex situation to manage.  They don't require that vehicles be returned to a charging station so really have to depend that members will look at the fuel level reported on the web or app to decide which vehicle to take.

Where is Zipcar on the on the question of EVs?  They have been cautious (or perhaps "strategic", depending on your point of view). Only 2 years ago Scott Griffith was quoted that Zipcar would "not be going electric anytime soon".  Earlier this year they did announce a partnership with Toyota to place a number of Prius Plug In Hybrids in several Zipcar cities, so they've arguably gone at least partially electric!  For them to implement battery EVs would require a not insignificant upgrade to their system to be able to manage vehicle battery state of charge so that members would get a vehicle with sufficient range to meet their needs.

As EV technology improves (particularly range and recharge times) and vehicle costs come down (or subsidies increase) my guess is Zipcar will be increasingly interested.

CommunAuto, one of the most skillful companies in building partnerships, explains their approach pretty well in these slides from their Nissan Leaf partnership launch event.

If you know of other interesting or exemplary EV carsharing services or concepts.  Please let me know and I'll add them to this post or create new ones.  Thanks.

CAR2GO Is On a Roll

I was fortunate to be able to attend the press conference announcing the launch of car2go in Vancouver this June.  As you would expect, it was an impressive and well-staged event.   Mayor Gregor Robertson was most enthusiastic and car2go CEO Nicholas Cole was able to work in some "Go Canucks" to take advantage of the hockey fever sweeping Canada right now.


(It didn't hurt that Vancouver's "liquid sunshine" let up for the morning, and don't ask me why, but just seeing a Smart car makes me smile.  So having several of them sitting around in their special white with blue car2go trim is a good sign.)

The plans car2go has for Vancouver are impressive - starting out with 225 Smarts (the new special car2go model), floating parking + designated on-street stations in certain areas; a large floating parking zone (18 sq. miles or 47 sq. km) and rates same as Austin - 35¢ per minute; $13 per hour or $66 per day and 45¢ per kilometer for trips over 200 per day.

Vancouver follows on the earlier announcement of car2go in Hamburg and recent announcement of a fleet of electric car2go Smarts coming to Amsterdam.   And it appears that several more cities will be announced this year, as well.  

Car2go joins Modo Car Coop (the very impressively rebranded Cooperative Auto Network) and Zipcar (offering premium service) in the traditional "round-trip" carsharing by the hour.  Meanwhile, on the launch day the Twitter-sphere had a flurry of Tweet and counter-Tweet about car2go.  The Modo loyalists were sticking up for the home-town company but, perhaps not surprisingly, the coolness factor of one-way seemed to dominate the conversation.  Zipcar was silent the whole time.

I've noted before that Daimler has used the phrase "personal public transportation" to describe car2go.  Given the unique aspects of the Smart car, it's an apt phrase.  Certainly there will be many people who will maintain memberships in both services - especially given car2go's willingness to give them away at first - using Modo for longer trips and when more people or stuff needs to be carried.  35¢ a minute adds up and $13 per hour if you're traveling outside of the zone makes it somewhat of a lifestyle statement.  (If you're traveling within the floating parking zone I think there's little reason not to end your trip when shopping or going to a meeting - if you're downtown and "your" vehicle is taken, there are almost certainly going to be others available nearby (you do have an iPhone, don't you?) and if you're in the outskirts of the zone, then the likelihood that someone will take the vehicle is very low - except if you've parked near a rail station.)  

So perhaps we'll have an interesting test of the competition of "mobility on demand" model versus the classic carsharing as an "alternative to car ownership" service.  (I don't think the demise of Austin Carsharing last year says as much about possible competition between the two services as it does about the viability of Austin Carshare.)

But the real test will be how Zipcar responds to this additional pressure.  They've been struggling to get traction ever since coming to Vancouver — the price differential compared to Modo for similar vehicles is significant.  Modo's rates are highly affordable $3 per hour + 40¢ for the first kilometers (declining to 15¢ per km for longer distances) or $33 per day.  Zipcar is $11/hour gas included or $75/day.  But I wouldn't underestimate Zip, especially after their recently completed IPO.

For me, the big unanswered question right now is about the transportation impacts of any "mobility on demand" service.  I certainly expect that a small percentage of walking, cycling and public transport trips will be shifted to the Smart cars.  But this is probably analogous to the increased VMT from non-car owning members after they join carsharing.  And I'm told that an evaluation by the University in Ulm is forthcoming.

It's worth noting that Car2go has set up a nice retail shop in Gastown and I expect they will do good business in walk-in memberships and customer relations.  (I've been very impressed by the activity I consistently see in the Zipcar store in downtown Portland.)  Something else that car2go has done right (at least I'm aware of it in Austin) is becoming part of the community - no small feat for corporate carsharing - they seem to be at or associated with many events in Austin - an event-ful town!  So, we'll see if they can replicate that engagement in VanCity.

Finally, this trip provided my first look at new Smart with the new (proprietary) telematics system with a very handy ignition key and card holder right in the unit (see picture) and integral navigation system (bravo Daimler telematics people).  Plus the vehicles have a solar roof - cool, eh?  (But what is a solar roof on gasoline car all about, anyway? See comment below for the answer. - DB)  

As always, getting into a Smart is an exercise in cognitive dissonance - it appears so tiny on the outside and yet feels so unexpectedly roomy on the inside.  The best thing about this new Smart is that Daimler seems to have finally overcome the jerky, uncertain autoshifting that I have found so disconcerting in the previous Smarts.

Car2go seems to be off to a good start in Vancouver.

Zipcar IPO set for April 14

In filing yet more papers with the US Securities and Exchange Commission recently, Zipcar took the final step in its long process to sell equity shares to the public.  April 14 is the day when the marketplace will first say what Zipcar is worth.  

Since this is a carsharing industry blog, you may well be wondering why I have been so silent on such a major milestone in the carsharing world.  The reason is I'm a Zipcar stockholder.  (I got my tiny amount of shares as a co-founder of Flexcar and with the so-called "merger" of Flexcar and Zipcar, they became Zipcar shares.)  Under SEC rules, during the IPO process current shareholders must observe a "quiet period", so I have kept my comments to myself.  Like other industry observers, I've been fascinated by the operational detail revealed in Zipcar's SEC filings.   

The whole IPO process has been a long and involved, with detours to buy Streetcar in London and invest in Avancar in Barcelona, but hopefully the IPO will have a good outcome.  Although competitors might wish differently, a successful Zipcar IPO will be another sign that the world is ready for alternatives to cars and car ownership.

Cambridge Mass. is Carsharing Mecca

In the beginning there was Zipcar.   And there was much rejoicing and sharing of vehicles in Cambridge.  Not surprising, since when they launched in the summer of 2000 vehicles were priced at $4.50/hr. for locations where parking was underwritten and $7/hr. where Zipcar had to pay for the parking.  In those days of yore, Zipcar had 3 chariots in Cambridge (Green/Pleasant, Harvard Square and Kendall Square),  5 in Boston and 2 in Somerville.

Last year, with little fanfare knights from an opposing kingdom, Connect by Hertz positioned 3 upscale chariots in Boston with one almost in Cambridge.  Exactly what their intentions are, remains unclear.

In the 5th month of the 10th year of the new millennium, when moon was full, upstart RelayRides set up shop, inviting vehicle owners to share their chariots with others in the kingdom and in return take a share of the harvest.  Rates were set by yon vehicle owners, ranging from $6 to $12 depending on age and category of the chariot.

Now a 4th carshare has entered the walls of Cambridge - iCar - floating down the Charles in a basket with 10 vehicles at 3 locations.  Ye iCar company offers a diverse selection of merrie chariots — from Suzuki sedans & 4wd, Nissan Cube, Toyotas and even a 15 passenger van —  but the fleete of heart and lead of foote will have to wait since, alas, they have no Mini Cooper (yet).  Chariots are in 4 categories and are priced based on several membership plans:

• Pay Per Use — with Basic cars at $7/hr and best cars $11.25/hr.
• Value Savings — prepaid monthly plans offering a Basic cars at $6.30 per hour (as low as $5.95/hr. if you prepay a whole bunch of hours each month)

Bundled miles range from 150 to 180 per day.  Some chariots have GPS navigation systems, others have child seats.  As with other carshares, ye householde livestock must be in a pet carrier.

iCar says its 100% woman-owned and they have more then 30 year experience in the chariot business.

Ladies (and gentlemen) get out your RFID cards and start your engines.

North American Carsharing Predicted to Reach 4.4 million members by 2016

In another optimistic projection about the future potential of carsharing, consulting firm Frost and Sullivan is predicting 4.4 million members in North America by 2016 - that's up from about 400,000 members now.

The projections are based on a summary of two Frost and Sullivan reports (N748-18) Car-sharing: a Sustainable and Innovative Personal Transport Solution with Great Potential and Huge Opportunities and (M4FA-18) Sustainable and Innovative Personal Transport Solutions – Strategic Analysis of Carsharing Market in Europe, says that carsharing membership in North America rose by 117% between 2007 and 2009 and the growth at that rate is expected to continue over the next 5 to 10 years. This leads to the estimate of 4.4 million members in North America and 5.5 million in Europe by 2016.


(It seems somewhat counterintuitive to me that Europe would have more carsharing members than the US but I haven't seen the report yet to understand the rationale.)

This report follows on Zipcar's press release from June 2009 predicting worldwide market size for carsharing at 37 million members.

Nevertheless, even if only a fraction of these gains occur, carsharing has a very bright future ahead. The marketing departments and street teams better get to work!

Some thoughts about 2009

Welcome to the new year. Following are various thoughts about the past year (sometime dropping back a little further into late 2008). (A shorter version of this article appeared on World Streets.)

Perhaps the most important news of 2009 is to acknowledge that car sharing in North America turned 15 years old this year, thanks to Communauto - a silent leader of the industry. Congratulations Benoit, Marco and everyone there.

There continued to be a strong growth in membership in other carsharing cities.  My guess is that most companies also experienced a growth in revenues and profitability, especially Zipcar (since they haven't added any new major cities or expansion in overall fleet size (compared to where they were at the time of the Flexcar merger). I would be amazed if any carshare didn't experience an increase in vehicle utilization (hours per day) helping out the bottom line.

Campus Carsharing — What expansion that occurred in the carsharing industry was primarily in college and university carsharing services - which can be a very good deal for the carsharing companies since they usually involve a contractual arrangement with guaranteed revenues and handling of some (most) of the fleet management to the university. As has been pointed out elsewhere if you look at the budgets of higher education, they really seem to "get" the issues of transportation and are willing to do spend some money on it. Near the end of 2009, Zipcar was at more than 140 college campuses, claiming a growth of 75 percent in the past 12 months, serving a total student population of 1 million.

Meanwhile cities with revitalizing downtowns seemed to realizing that carsharing offered something of benefit and several RFPs ("request for proposals" - tenders to the rest of the world) hit the street - Miami Beach, Baltimore and Pasadena, to name a few. The usual suspects, Zipcar, Hertz Connect, U-Haul and WeCar responded. Meanwhile, in the LA basin, which once had more than 200 Flexcars, several cities are toward putting out incentives to attract carsharing - Long Beach, Santa Monica, Los Angeles city proper - as part of more comprehensive strategy to meet greenhouse gas reduction goals set by the State of California.

(Here's a special note from yours truly to cities thinking about an RFP: please don't try to ask for some sort of revenue percentage from the carshare, at least not in the first 5 years. Structure your RFP so there's as much incentive as possible to grow the service in your city. But do include definite evaluation component so you can document the value of carsharing to your city council and residents.)

Partnerships — carsharing companies made some headway in 2009: I-Go Carsharing in Chicago announced a major partnership with the Chicago Transit Authority, ace-ing out Zipcar, for the Chicago Card Plus - a stored value card for transit travel and an RFID card for carsharing. Earlier, I-Go signed another partnership with the Parks District

Developments — Kevin McLaughlin reminds me that, "In Toronto, the city is finally realizing that its all about parking. Both AutoShare and Zipcar have been taking advantage of the development offsets being granted to new condo builders if they provide carsharing parking in their buildings (often as high as 10 fewer spaces per shared car, in the range of $200,000 cost savings!)" Toronto recently approved its first large condo (300 units) with NO PARKING for residents, and 9 shared vehicle onsite."

The City of Winnepeg also provided a developer an alternative to meeting parking requirements by setting up an in-house carsharing service, since no commercial company operates in Winnepeg at the present time (entrepreneurs, Hertz, Enterprise are you listening?)

On street parking continues to a conundrum for many cities. For some reason most continue not to "get it"! They're happy to provide parking for taxi cabs, which are operated by private companies but somehow providing carsharing is controversial, even though the benefits to the city (of having cab stands) are not well documented and the benefits flow to visitors. (I've got nothing against cabs, which employ people and provide a useful service; I just want cities to acknowledge carsharing.)

Technology

On the technology front, the big news was the major investment in French carsharing technology company Eileo by Hertz. Another major development is the joint marketing agreement between Convadis (Swiss car computer maker) and Metavera (Toronto-based carsharing reservation system provider). It was a natural link up since Convadis faced limitations selling their product since they didn't have an integrated reservation system and Metavera was looking for a more fully-featured option to supplement their long-term link up with OpenCar Networks, used by most all of the independent carshares in North America. On the sidelines 5,000 miles away another carsharing technology provider Nic Low of Goget started marketing their own on-board computer for fleet applications at Fleetcutter.

Apps — This was the year of the (iPhone) app (application in non-jargon). Zipcar continued its focus on the flash with what is arguable the industry's biggest (carsharing) marketing coup of all time, scoring inclusion on stage at Apple's World Wide Developers Conference to showcase its iPhone app (replacing the interesting but limited Where app). While scoring headlines and TV segments, as happens with technology, the actual rollout was delayed for months over a seemingly trivial hardware glitch - making sure all the Zipcar's could honk their horns with a tap of the button on the iPhone screen; only to later realize that demonstrations of horn honking capabilities was likely to be highly annoying to neighbors living close to Zipcars (so the feature is only activated after the member has logged in to the vehicle with their member card).

But the independent carshares were on the wave, as well, and Metavera, which provides reservations and support to most of them through the Autovera system, unveiled its a mobile reservation site to work with iPhone, Blackberries, etc., while continuing to improve its web carsharing system with functionality that keeps up with Zip.

Battery electric vehicles edged closer to becoming a viable alternatives to gasoline/diesel with Nissan unveiling the Leaf EV; Daimler, after a year to testing their Smart ED (electric drive) in the UK, started production; BMW demonstrating the EV concept in a Mini, with a host of other companies threatening to manufacture - Norwegian Th!nk finally whirred (one can hardly say "roared" for an EV) back to life announcing a plans to produce their new models in Indiana. The most interesting is Electrovaya, which opened what they called "carsharing" in

Baltimore with a service called Altcar. Although it's being promoted as carsharing, still at year's end all the vehicles were all located at the Maryland Science Center downtown. At the present they still didn't have any electronics to allow unattended access, but I expect they will take the plunge in 2010. Better Place, Shai Aggasi's much promoted and heavily invested EV battery service, which has always indicated it wasn't interested in carsharing, cleverly signed a deal in Denmark for the railroad system (DSB) to operate a public carsharing service at several train stations in Copenhagen and elsewhere. Finally, the City of Paris continued to move closer to their Autolib, EV carsharing system, taking time out in 2009 to get the surrounding cities to participate in the program as well. Similar to car2go, Autolib would offer one way carsharing between stations. Planning on up to 4,000 vehicles in Paris and surrounding communities, Autolib could completely redefine public transportation in Paris, in much the same way the Velib revolutionized bicycle travel there. Or it could be a bust... (or something in between). This Business Week article contains a good update of the status.

Meanwhile, given the US fascination for plug-in hybrids, in 2009 Zipcar followed HourCar (including a solar recharger station) and Autoshare into the Plug In Hybrid world with a single vehicle on their system in San Francisco.

Some comments about specific companies during 2009

Hertz Connect continued to grow their fleet in Manhattan up to over 400 by the end of the year - certainly attracting members that have been frustrated with Zipcar's on-going customer service problems there. Near the end of the year Hertz surprised everyone with announcements of major new international operations in Madrid and Berlin. Fleet sizes in existing cities are up slightly Paris now with 77 and London at 115. Hertz did send a message to Zipcar by listing 4 cars in Boston and further challenged them with token vehicles in Chicago and San Francisco.

U-Carshare (U-Haul) went live in Salt Lake City with 28 vehicles - concluding a protracted RFP process. The Salt Lake operation branched out from the traditional ad-covered PT Cruisers with a wide range of vehicles, including the requisite Mini Cooper, hybrid Civic and Ford Escape, Prius, as well as Toyota Yaris, Mazda 3, Ford Focus and several pickups and larger Ford vans, both passenger and cargo configurations. In other cities, such as Portland, Oregon, U-Carshare vehicle numbers are static and they continue to take a very passive approach to marketing - with no visible advertising other that on-street here and presence at a couple of public events.

WeCar (Enterprise) - continues to play its cards very close, with several university/college deals including University of South Florida in Tampa and some fleet management contracts (with carsharing reservations and access systems). Of course, Enterprise has the biggest challenge integrating carsharing into their existing business model of any car rental company since they already have extensive network of neighborhood rental locations, which, arguably would lose a little business from carsharing but would also likely funnel some longer-term rental business they would otherwise have missed

Independent carshares in North America continue to move forward - most continuing to grow at a more modest rate than previous years. Philly Carshare is on the upswing after disastrous decision to terminate members and raise rates. Nonprofit Boulder Carshare signaled a change of strategy with it's new name EGo, expansion and upgrade of its fleet in Boulder and more significantly locating 2 vehicles in Denver, joining OccasionalCar there (see below). They continue to offer vehicles at the remarkably sensible prices of $4/hr. + 30¢ per mile. Another nonprofit, Austin Carshare, which has been struggling to figure out where the capital to grow would come from since its founding 3 years ago, sent out a letter in the fall to members that they were considering becoming a cooperative. Nothing decided yet - perhaps watching what happens to car2go. Chicago's I-Go Carsharing passed the 13,000 member mark announcing further expansion in targeted suburban pods including Oak Park, Evanston, Skokie, Forest Park, and most recently Des Plaines. Cooperative Auto Network in Vanccouver continues to provide excellent service and supports a number of smaller services in British Columbia with their Carshare Everywhere reservation system.

Both CAN and Autoshare in Toronto have demonstrated for years that in car technology isn't an essential element for a successful carshare although both are finally edging toward it.

New carshares on the street included: CuseCar in upstate Syracuse, New York with a commitment to hybrid gas-electric and alt. fuel vehicles. They are installing EV Chargepoints around the city. They have up to 5 locations. CuseCar has been remarkable in it's ability to attract funding for alt. fuel vehicles ($150K from the NYSERDA) as well as funds to remodel the old Syracuse train station downtown. CarShare Halifax (Nova Scotia, Canada), the furthest east carshare in North America completed it's first year of operations, having launched in December 2008. CarShare HFX is approaching 10 vehicles now. Also launching in December 2008 nonprofit Carshare Vermont serving Burling and Winooski, Vermont. They're up to 9 vehicles and 450 members. At almost the same time for profit CSO OccasionalCar launched in Denver in early 2009 and has 6 vehicles. Finally, in another name change, Roaring Fork Valley Vehicles in Aspen, Colorado changed its name to CarToGo, further crowding the "car to go" naming - joining car2go is Israel and Daimler's car2go in Ulm and Austin.

Meanwhile there's a host of smaller carshares all over the US and especially Canada - with 5, 10, 25 vehicles. And there's continued interest in startups for the second tier cities that the "big boys" don't seem to want to do into. (Portland would probably not have carsharing today if Zipcar or Flexcar were making the decisions.)

Zipcar - last but not least, the market leader probably crossed the line into overall profitability, amidst several mentions of an Initial Public Offering sometime in the not to distant future. They've gotten to profitability by very carefully managing their business - continuing drive more usage (hours per day) on the existing fleet. What expansion they did was primarily in contracted deals with universities, which produce a good flow revenue.

Near the end of the year Zipcar announced another overseas investment, in Avancar, Barcelona, Spain.
The exact terms of the investment are a sketchy but it's going to give Avancar the ability to grow and there's certainly plenty of potential in Barcelona, as well as other cities in Spain. Laying the groundwork for this expansion was an analysis and press release claiming a world wide potential for carsharing at 37 million members and over 10 billion dollars in annual revenues.

Ikea — You might have missed it, but back in March, there was a minor flurry of speculation that multinational retail giant Ikea might be getting into the car business under the brand name of Lesko, around which they developed a stealth marketing campaign. Speculation ran from manufacturing a vehicle to operating a carsharing service. It turns out Lesko IS a carsharing service - but in the UK sense of the word - and what Ikea did was set up a "covoiture" ride board on their web site so people could hitch rides. (How they would get all their stuff home is not explained.) If they'd waited just a little longer they could have bought Saab or Volvo!

Next big things

The big news in my mind was the launch of car2go in Austin. It's a very gutsy move on Daimler's move to launch in an archetypal US city. As I have said elsewhere, I don't believe that car2go is necessarily targeting the classic market, so it has the potential to be the game changer that American urban transportation needs.

I haven't (yet) written about it (since I'm directly involved with it), but another start up that announced itself in 2009 promising to unveil another operating scheme - RelayRides - the first peer to peer (or person to person) carsharing service. It will enable private car owners to make their vehicles available for carsharing for a day or more at a time with the possibility to earn a substantial chunk of money each year. Of course, the operational challenges are significant since you now have to manage both the member/driver and vehicle owner sides of the equation. But, heck, what's technology for, anyway?

So, what did I miss? If so, please click on the Comment button below and remind me what's been happening in your carsharing world. Best wishes for 2010.

Multi-Mobility in the Los Angeles Basin - Some thoughts about Carsharing and Bicycles

Carsharing was one topics up for consideration at the second Multi-Mobility Forum sponsored by the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority on October 8. The driving force is the SB 375 passed by the California legislature last year mandating substantial cuts in greenhouse gases from transportation by 2020. Attending were representatives from many of the cities in the LA region.

Some people attending remembered the "glory days" of carsharing in Los Angeles region when Flexcar had more than 250 vehicles that were finally starting to generate revenues. They wondered what it would take to attract a major carsharing operator like Zipcar or Hertz Connect back again.

Technically, carsharing never completely left the area. Even before the merger with Zipcar, Flexcar had scaled-back the LA fleet (as they did in other markets, as well) and Zipcar continues to provide about 20 carsharing vehicles at the UCLA and USC campuses and immediately adjacent areas.

In my short presentation I reminded everyone that carsharing isn't a transportation demand management strategy by itself (like transit, ridesharing or bicycling), but it's the "glue" that can increase participation in these programs since it provides an alternative to car ownership (or second car ownership). And, as we all know (from personal experience):

Car ownership = Car over-use

Several of the presentations were about bicycle programs, including an interesting program to encourage people to buy folding bicycles for use on transit (see photo at the top of this post). I was personally fascinated by the folding bicycle demonstrated by Big Fish at the forum and also pleased to see the Bike Station was developing a modular approach to provide services through its new incarnation as Mobis.

I think public bicycles have some important lessons for carsharing. Most importantly, the lesson from the Paris Velib system, is to Think Big. Only by thinking big (and doing big) can you attract the kind of public attention that can make a difference. In addition, in my presentation I offered some suggestions for working with carsharing companies. I've posted several of the slides from presentation at the end of this post.

Unfortunately, unable to attend this session was Dan Sturges of Intrago Mobility, who coined the phrase multi-mobility and has one of the clearest visions of what the future of personal transportation could look like. His vision includes a combination of small electric and pedal vehicle for short trips ("near car") and strategically-located carsharing vehicles in clusters near major hubs for longer trips ("far cars"). His company is putting together the system that will make all this possible.

Several cities in the LA area are ripe for large-scale "classic" neighborhood carsharing (again): Long Beach and Santa Monica, in particular and I wish them well. Many thanks to Fred Silver of Calstart and Robin Blair of LA Metro for hosting the event.

A New York Perspective on (Car)Sharing and some history, as well

Sunday's New York Times has a very nice article about carsharing, including a little history of yours truly, as well as Zipcar founder Robin Chase. I think the author Mark Levine has done a nice job telling the story, but then I'm biased since I'm quoted.

Something else the article talks about is the differing views of for-profit and nonprofit carsharing companies. Rick Hutchison of City Carshare is certainly right in saying that carsharing (in it's present form at least) is a low margin business. All companies have been struggling valiantly to increase profit margins since the day they started - for-profits to deliver returns to their investors and nonprofits to avoid rate increases (or maybe even lower rates if they got really big). The entry of car rental companies onto the field suggests they've also run the numbers and think it's not as low a margin business as it appears. My view is that there's room in most, if not all cities, for both for-profit and nonprofit carsharing. After all, less than 1-2% of people living in most neighborhoods served by carsharing are members, so it's not as if there isn't huge potential. In the short run, either one or the other company might give up or they differentiate themselves sufficiently to attract different customers.

I particularly liked this anecdote from Zipcar founder Robin Chase quoted from the article) because it gets to the heart of the dilemma about carsharing:

She and [business partner Antje] Danielson came up with a list of five potential names for the company, and Chase walked around Boston asking people on the street for their reactions. “Antje really wanted to do ‘Wheelshare,’ ” she says, “but that seemed too close to ‘Wheelchair.’ Then we tried ‘U.S. Carshare.’ That was how I learned that 40 percent of the people I talked to had an extremely negative reaction to the word ‘sharing.’ The word makes people nervous. They feel they’re being scolded or told to wait their turn. At that point I banned my staff from using the phrase ‘car sharing.’ Do we call hotels ‘bed sharing’? That’s way too intimate. Do we call bowling ‘shoe sharing’? Who would want to bowl?” Chase landed on the name Zipcar, accompanied by the slogan “Wheels When You Want Them.”



Since we're talking about history, here are some more screen shots from early Zip and Flex web sites (courtesy of WaybackMachine.org). As with Zipcar, Flexcar under founding CEO Neil Peterson, CEO of Flexcar, would avoided the "S" word.


Flexcar's first site hit cyberspace on May 10, 2000 and Zipcar's a few weeks later on June 21. Flexcar stuck with their "Shift Your Thinking" slogan until Revolution LLC came on the scene in 2006 and they decided that "sharing" wasn't a problem and declared themselves to be "the car-sharing company" as well as "the nation's first and best carsharing company".


Both Flex and Zip web sites underwent major upgrades in 2002, with Flexcar losing the orange in the X (apparently in a dispute with Cingular cell phone company which had a remarkably similar image at the time.


That same year Zip tried out another car logo...

...until they came up with their current Z version.

Here's City Carshare in the "old days", also back in 2002.

Sorry, no iconic green VW Beetle on their home page at the time. (Comically, Zipcar actually threatened City Carshare with legal action claiming that Zipcar had trademarked the green Beetle, even though CityCarshare started using them first.)

And to complete our little historical romp, although the original CarSharing Portland website isn't available, here's what the original brochure looked like (circa 1998):

Enough nostalgia. Onward.

New Carshare Hits the Streets in Manhattan

It looked like Zipcar finally has competition in Manhattan. It's a new brand kid on the block Mint Cars On Demand.

Mint rates are competitive: the service offers three classes of vehicles: Economy $8.10, Classic $9.90 and Premium $11.70 per hour; daily rates are $58, $71 and $85 per day. Billing is per trip. Charges for the EZ Pass automatic toll payment system, included in every vehicle, come later.

While Mint has chosen to use the Smart car as its signature vehicle, the web site says they also have Toyota Yaris, Honda FIT, Smart cars, Honda Accord, Toyota Tacoma, Scion xB, Nissan Versa & Mercedes C300. They're wired with the French Eileo system - the first application in the US.

According to the map, they're starting out with 7 locations, each with several vehicles to start out. Parking for carsharing in NYC is notoriously difficult to find and for many of Zipcar's existing vehicles it is suggested that members call ahead to the parking garage attendant to have them "dig out" the vehicle ahead of the reservation time. And if you wonder what parking is like in NYC, here's their location at 86 Warren St.


Unfortunately, Mint is only offering "state minimum" insurance coverage, so members will want to have their own insurance or a very good umbrella policy. But like any rental car company they would be glad to sell you Supplemental Liability and Collision Damage Waiver coverage. This is really too bad.

The web site says the new carshare is from a "leading parking operator" in New York City. This is not the first time a carshare has partnered with a parking operator - Flexcar did it in Atlanta, Avis partnered with Vinci for their Okigo operation in Paris and, of course, City Carshare in San Francisco partnered with the city parking agency from the start.

As a side note, Mint has added a couple of interesting variations on the "others fees and charges":
- Making, changing, or cancelling a reservation by phone is $4.50.
- Cancelling or shortening an hourly reservation within 2 hours of start time is $4.50 + 100% of the reservation cost.
Cancelling or shortening a daily reservation within 24 hours of start time is $4.50 + 100% of the reservation cost. (That ought to deter people reserving a vehicle for the weekend and canceling at the last minute!)

While ut certainly hasn't hurt in other cities, we'll be watching to see whether 2 brands are better than one.