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.

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.

Rebranding in the Air

Several major carshares have rolled out new logos and names recently.  It's interesting to see the direction different companies have taken.

Modo, formerly Cooperative Auto Network, Vancouver, BC, Canada — The most complete design makeover, possibly in anticipation of the arrival of car2go.  What does Modo mean?  They say it’s a reference to modality, multi-modal, modern.  Very clean - I like it.

Hertz On Demand, formerly Connect by Hertz — Perhaps the most drastic make-over, taking the word carsharing out and tagging the service "Rent Spontaneously"; finally capitalizing on the signature yellow of the Hertz brand.  One can understand the strategic motivation to tie the service closer to the core brand and wouldn't be surprised if other rental companies follow suit.  Will blurring the distinction between car rental and car sharing make it more difficult to cities to partner for carsharing services?

U Haul Carshare, formerly U Carshare —  Now the name says exactly where its roots are.  (Perhaps they got tired of hearing everyone refer to it incorrectly, so may decided to change the name to what people where calling it already. Who knows?)  They've  moved beyond PT Cruisers and, thankfully, also moved beyond plastering a billboard's worth of advertising on the sides of their vehicles.  They've quietly expanded to 22 college campuses and one city (Salt Lake).

CommunAuto, Montreal — North America's oldest and probably the most profitable carshare has adopted a more streamlined logo.  All that and having the cheapest rates on the continent!  (Not sure if the 2 color design was intentionally making a pun - about being the
"un-auto"?)

Did I miss something?  Let me know by making a comment, below.

First Impression: Nissan Leaf - Good for Carsharing

I took a short test drive in a Nissan Leaf yesterday at SolarWorld offices near Portland and will share some impressions.  To give you a sense of it here's a short video on our test drive.  We got up to 40 mph. on this street.  (That's my wife driving and the Nissan handler talking.)  As you can hear, it's very quiet.

Nissan has done a very nice job on the exterior - it's a lot fresher looking than a Versa, and, for better or worse, not as distinctive as the Prius (perhaps to appeal to the Civic Hybrid mentality?)  Car designer and friend Jose Paris in his itMoves blog had a stronger reaction to the Leaf than I do.  (His blog is well-worth following for his thoughtful and progressive comments on lot's of things automotive.)

I was very impressed with how comfortable and familiar it seemed inside.  It has a similar interior feel to a Prius (which I own).  Although the Leaf is a lot smaller than our Prius it doesn't feel cramped (including the back seat (at least with 1 or 2 people in back).  I thought the performance was amazing - very peppy acceleration (the Nissan handler in the car with us said it would do 0-60 in 10 sec.)  With a quoted 90 mph top speed certainly seems like it would be a comfortable car for freeway driving.  However, the published 100 mile range would be at more moderate speeds!  There's a good amount of room behind the 60-40 split rear seats, which fold down.

Nissan does a good job of addressing the "range anxiety" question - using the nav system map to display circles from your current location showing you available range based on your current battery charge, as well as the map displaying the location of EV charging stations.  (They also claim they'll have roadside assistance providers to give you a boost or a tow if you run out of juice.)

Overall, Nissan has done a great job of putting enough technology on display to appeal to Prius owner and techy types) - a very similar dashboard layout, a navigation system, and even a backup camera.  If has full heater and air conditioning, radio (including optional XM button) etc.

The whole test drive experience was an up-scale production - including a mandatory warm up pitch to wow you with the technology, sell you on electric drive and compare the cost of fuel — electricity in our area is 10¢/kWh and Nissan claimed it would still be cheaper to operate than gas at $1.10/gal. (Presumably this will change somewhat when the equivalent of gas taxes are applied to the electricity for recharge; which will presumably will be facilitated since utilities are creating special low(er) tariff rates for off-peak recharging.) 

This summer I was also impressed (as a passenger) in an equally short (around a couple of blocks) trip in a Mitsubishi iMiev that Sharon Feigon of I-Go Carsharing had on loan.  Also very quiet and much cuter than a Leaf.  The model I rode in was a right hand drive prototype from Japan so it's hard to judge what the interior will be like when they're sold in the US.  The other prospective highway-rated EV out there is the Smart Electric Drive, likely to cost far more than either the Leaf or iMiev but presumably would offer at least some vestige of the Daimler panache.

At this stage, the primary thing that tempers my enthusiasm about EVs right now is that in most parts of the country EVs will make a the relatively low contribution to greenhouse gas reduction.  The problem is so much of our electricity comes from coal-fired electric generation (which we hope will change over time).

So does a Nissan Leaf make sense for carsharing?  Definitely - especially if someone else is paying for the charging stations.  Either the Leaf or iMiev would be an excellent specialty vehicle and should be a good marketing tool for the carsharing company.  Yes, there will be some management issues as customers get used to driving EVs, but they will quickly pass.  (I remember talking with a number of CarSharing Portland driving our Honda Insight (the original one, not the current one) who didn't understand the engine autostop feature and called on their cell phone when the engine stopped at a stop light!)

Given the government money flowing on both sides of the North American border to promote EVs, it's no surprise that a number of carshares will be adding EVs as soon as they're available.  I-Go will get some of the first production iMievs, City Carshare is getting a $2.4 million grant to add 12 Nissan Leafs, 12 Prius Plug In Hybrids and 5 Neighborhood Electric Vehicles (NEVs) along with 24 charging stations. Hertz Connect has announced they will be getting some of the Leafs in the Hertz allocation, as well.  CommunAuto in Montreal has announced they'll be adding 50 Leafs (Leaves?) to their fleet - with 18 stations already on the map.  (Since Hydro Quebec provides such a large part of Montreal's electricity, CommunAuto customers really will be doing their part to reduce GHGs for the planet.)  Hopefully car2go will get some Smart Electric Drives to round out the picture.

Meanwhile there's Altcar the so-called carsharing scheme started in Baltimore last year by Canadian EV manunfacturer Electrovaya renting vehicles the Maryland Science Center (I say it's "so-called carsharing" because after over a year they've still got only 1 station - perhaps that will change?)  In Europe, what may be the under-reported carsharing news of last year, newly revived EV manufacturer Th!nk created an all-electric carshares in Copenhagen, Gothenberg and Oslo called Move About and the Oslo branch recently reported they had signed up their 1,000th member.  Last year Better Place (battery swap company) partnered with the Danish Railways to provide EV carsharing at sevveral stations (but otherwise continues to avow they're not interested in carsharing). And, of course, when it finally launches, the "grand Pere" of them all will be the Autolib service in Paris.

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.

Hertz Connect Rolling Out New Cities

The new carshare on the street, Connect By Hertz, is showing it means business. After the initial launch in Manhattan, London and Paris, Connect spent some time getting their feet on the ground. But they were busy in the spring and by this summer Connect had expanded their New York fleet to over 400 hundred vehicles - competing in Zipcar's sweetest neighborhoods all over Manhattan. The growth was facilitated by their partnership with Icon Parking, Connect now has locations from the tip of Manhattan up to East and West 90th Streets. In comparison Zip has over 2000 vehicles in several boroughs and adjacent New Jersey communities).

A recent check of the Hertz Connect web site now lists Boston, Chicago, Washington DC and San Francisco, each with one location with several vehicles. In Chicago, for example, the downtown Loop location has 4 vehicles - 2 Priuses, a Ford Escape SUV and a Camry. (The Washington DC location is at Marriot hotel corporate headquarters and could be laying the groundwork for a very interesting partnership.) Oddly Denver isn't one of the cities listed, although the Spire condo project there indicates they'll be offering residents Connect services. That would make Denver the city with the most carsharing services right now - E-Go (Boulder Carshare), Occasional Car (a recent start up with 2 vehicles) and Hertz Connect.

And Connect has added a couple of college/university campuses to its list - having taken them away from Zipcar. These are naturals for Connect since Hertz likely has a branch in the town so adding carsharing is a piece of cake.

But exactly how they're achieving this growth is a bit of a mystery - since they don't seem to be using any of the traditional marketing approaches - transit advertising, media trade outs, etc. They have done some interesting awareness campaigns using Go Gorilla Media including sidewalk logo projections, sidewalk stenciling (is that legal?) and fake "lost dog" signs (the tear offs give the Hertz Connect web site).
Hertz Connect is going after a somewhat different customer demographic - offering more vehicles on the upscale end. In addition to a Mini or a Prius at just about every location, and the usual assortment of Mazda 3s and Toyota Yaris, there are many Camrys and some locations have Volvo C70s and even a Mercedes GLK 350!

Hertz Connect is being helped in NYC by Zipcar's on-going problems with customer service. The Zipcar call center can be infuriating (I know from experience) and fleet maintenance in NYC (and other cities) apparently leaves a LOT to be desired - read a bunch of uphappy Zipcar members complaining (and very few members complimenting) on Yelp.

The London and Paris operations of Connect remain mysteries with only minor expansions of the fleet. But perhaps that's not surprising because Zipcar has been having trouble figuring out the UK market and they've been in London and LOT longer than Hertz Connect. And speaking of mysteries, Mint in New York, is another mystery - very little action since their launch.

And while I'm on the subject of car rental companies operating carsharing, it's worth nothing that U-Carshare by U-Haul has been quietly adding additional cities and a couple of schools, as well. That said, the U-Carshare marketing strategy is also a mystery - almost invisible in my home town of Portland, Oregon (although they finally had a presence at the recent Sunday Parkways event I wrote about earlier).

It's shaping up to be an interesting year in carsharing.

Interesting New Developments in the Carsharing Industry

Note: this entry has been updated since its initial posting. - Dave


This week two significant developments in the carsharing industry were announced — the big one being Hertz' acquisition of Eileo, the Paris-based carsharing telematics supplier.

I have always had great admiration for Eileo as they had developed a unique approach to the immobilizer connection, simplifying installation of the car computer. For the past few years Eileo been adding a significant number of carsharing companies to their roster - over 20 in France, and beyond, including the UK, Australia, Israel and recently Hertz and Mind in the US. I counted over 50 "public" services support by Eileo.

And Eileo has developed some innovative capabilities, such as the ability to support floating parking locations. And it should be noted that Eileo has developed telematics in other areas outside of classic carsharing car computer and reservation and administration system. The Eileo website currently lists: a car park solution and a GPS-based fleet tracking solution. And Eileo has continued to support their "tribes" concept, providing free web hosting to encourage several neighbors to start their own informal carsharing, using Eileo car technology, of course.

Hertz has made a wise move, since other companies have demonstrated that you can easily waste millions of dollars thinking you can do a better job developing your own technology. But the Hertz-Eileo combination means that Mint Carsharing in New York City, which also uses the Eileo technology, is going to have to go shopping.

Carpooling or Carshare? Now you Can Have Both

And, in an interesting twist on the transportation alternatives Zipcar announced a partnership with Zimride , a web-based car-pooling service that uses Facebook to help identify potential ride sharers.

Zipcar says it their reservation system will allow users to automatically post the ride on the Zimride site, allowing other registered users to see it and contact the driver. The new carpooling feature, initially to be offered on the Stanford University campus, is sure to be a hit with the many other universities Zipccar serves. It's likely to be a big leg up in exposure for Zimride.

It should be noted that both the Invers and Eileo web reservation systems have long offered a ridesharing option, but only to other carsharing members using that particular service. This collaboration with Zimride will provide an interesting expansion.

Zipcar has already anticipated one potential problem: their website reminds Zip drivers that if Zimriders want to drive cars they must also be Zipcar members. And it will be interesting to see whether the Zip-Zim contributes the not uncommon confusion between carsharing and carpooling is some people's minds or not.

U Carshare Continues Below the Radar

Finally, U Carshare, the other new kid on the block has been quietly putting a few cars on the street. They've just announced Regis College and Viriginia Tech in Blacksburg coming soon. And currently they have cars at Berkeley, California ( 4 vehicles at 3 locations) the University of Wisconsin in Madison (8 vehicles at 7 locations), in my home town Portland, Oregon (see below), and the other Portland in Maine (4 vehicles at 2 locations). In Berkeley, they offer a Ford E-250 van at $15/hour or $109 per day; compared to PT Cruiser at $9 per hour or $65 per day.

In Portland, Oregon, U Carshare now has 10 vehicles, including 8 at on-street parking spaces, all with their signature PT Cruisers. But, so far, their marketing has been non-existent and I really can't figure out why. Word of mouth and free registration can only go so far in attracting new members. So we wonder what U-Haul corporate has up their sleeve - either a very economical stealth growth plan or they're laying the groundwork for something big. We'll wait and see.

Connect By Hertz Launches BIG

The long awaited carsharing service from Hertz car rental company finally surfaced last week - on the web at least  - Connect By Hertz.

And Hertz entered the market in a big way - in New York City, Paris and London.  (You'll have to use the "change location" button at the bottom of the any page to see the other cities.)

The official launch date is December 15 but some vehicles are currently available.

The initial launch in NYC is right in the heart of prime territory for Zipcar - where a substantial percentage of their Manhattan fleet is centered.

The Connect website features the now standard "darling" of hip carsharing marketing - the BMW Mini (in a very sporty image), listed as their "Jet Set" class vehicle which starts at $10/hour.  The other vehicle classes are: Social - Toyota Camry and Personal - Toyota Prius.  Other vehicles in the initial launch include Ford Escape and Mazda 3. This is a much more narrowly focused vehicle selection than Zipcar or Mint offers, presumably based on some familiarity with the market since they've been renting cars for many years in New York City. The web site suggests that all vehicles are equipped with Hertz "Never Lost" turn by turn navigation systems - a very smart move by Hertz!

In London the 3 vehicles are: Compact - Ford Fiesta; Family - Ford Focus; Fun - Mini.  In Paris, the line up is: Compact - Opel Corsa; Family - Opel Meriva and Sport - Mini.

Like every other carsharing company they are seeking the consumers' sweet spot to commit to a certain amount of spending per month (I originally said "driving per month" here - Dave).  Connect By Hertz offers three membership categories, each with different hourly rates:

• Connect - standard no monthly fee - usage at $10-$12-$14 per hour + annual membership of $50.
  
• Connect 50 - $50 per month min. - usage at $9-$10.80-$12.60 per hour
  
• Connect 125 - $125 per month - $8.50-$10.20-$11.90 per hour

The daily rental range presents a real challenge for a car rental company since they would prefer to minimize stealing customers from their traditional car rental business - at least unless they could hope to earn more money from them through carsharing.   Presently, the only direct competition would be the Prius, available from Connect for $70/day down to $59.50/day, depending on the rate plan, including 180 miles; while in the car rental division's "Green" collection the Prius rents for $97.49 per day, less taxes and without gas or GPS. Other comparable rentals would be a Ford Focus for $81/day and Mazda 6 for $87/day.  

Actually, the fine print on the Connect web site says if you rent a car for over 8 hours in a day, you'll only be charged for 8.   There's no mention of roll-over "hours" that Zipcar offers for its various Extra Value Plans (a very nice feature).  Reservation changes and cancellations can be made 4 hours or more in advance of the trip start at no fee; otherwise members pay the reserved hours, up to a day's use (8 hours).

Congratulations to Hertz for taking the plunge .  And congratulations, too, to Eileo for an international deal.   Meanwhile, we're wondering what's happening over at Mint?

PS: Here's an interesting interview with Hertz CEO Mark Frissora about Connect by Hertz (while it lasts on the internet).