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Carsharing Year in Review - 2011 2011 has been a landmark year for carsharing in the US and worldwide. Here's my annual review of developments in carsharing for 2011. Before getting into specific developments, I'd like to make two general observations: Are we seeing a demographic tipping point? - This was the year when the mainstream marketers admitted that many in Gen Y ("the Millennials") weren't thinking about cars the same way their parents were - they'd rather have their iPhone than a car. Car registrations and VMT are down; significantly fewer teenagers waiting before getting their driver's licenses; and especially an explosion of bicycle use in cities (even those without bike-friendly reputations). I've always thought this 2009 headline in the Globe and Mail (Toronto) newspaper captured this shift in thinking about cars very nicely - "Object of desire or necessary evil?" Parking is fundamental - Parking is a fundamental but often under appreciated aspect of car use. It wasn't until Donald Shoup layed the cards on the table in his landmark "The High Cost of Free Parking" that most of us realized just how fundamental parking really is. And carsharing operators also know how fundamental parking is to the success of their business. That's why designated parking on public streets has been such a holy grail - convenient access and great marketing exposure. And, as you'll see in several items below, some carsharing companies are slicing the parking issue in new ways - car2go and Zebramobil, as well as RelayRides in San Francisco are opting for floating parking (among other things). And while on the topic of parking, I can't ignore the really goofy decisions that led to a bidding war for dedicated on-street parking spaces for carsharing companies in Washington DC during 2011.  DC has had a troubled history with carsharing parking, almost from the start in 2001 on-street parking seemed to generate more negative publicity than I've heard in any other city.  

MIT Smart Cities: City Car Published February 12, 2008 Energy Policy , Transportation 2 Comments Tags: Automotive X Prize, Electric Car When I think of car sharing in the U.S., I think of Flexcar and Zipcar [they have merged -- new name is Zipcar]. Together I think they had around 5,000 vehicles at merger time in 2007. But so far carsharing has no measurable impact on urban traffic or CO2 load. Some of the consumer resistance may be price. That's where the MIT City Car looks promising - this is exactly what I want for the urban short-trips that involved carrying stuff back to the transport station. I could imagine the Buenos Aires CBD traffic density being cut in half or more by a hundred thousand of these way-cool cars, with a "luggage cart" stand every couple of blocks. And a little car that can move in any direction on its four independent wheel-robots would be very appealing - though possibly deadly amidst speeding BA taxis… UPDATE 080212: Some clarifications are required, prompted by comments to this post from carsharing pioneer Dave Brook - whose blog is a recommended source on the industry. I'll just briefly enumerate these points: 1. Carsharing cannot make a major impact on urban traffic/CO2 load unless the concept wins large scale adoption by consumers who elect to substitute public transport + carsharing for their current single-passenger-per-vehicle preferences. 2. Not being privy to any objective studies of consumer preferences, I'm speculating that at least two factors will gate acceptance: convenience and price. On convenience the City Car concept might contribute if deployed with sufficient spatial frequency to e.g. make Ms. shopper happy running her errands within a convenient carsharing radius around a transport station. My speculation is that density is probably not coarser than a 2 block grid. 3. Price - The City Car could make high frequency deployment more economic by introducing several operating cost efficiencies

Carsharing.US Information, issues and ideas for U.S. and North American carsharing services and partners.

Zipcar and fair prices for public spaces By Mike DeBonis Zipcar is about to have some competition. (Flickr user Andrew Currie/CC BY 2.0 ) For years now, Zipcar had the local car-sharing industry pretty much to itself, turning it from a curiosity into a crucial service relied on by a significant and rising number of city residents not interested in owning cars of their own. But as the appeal and profitability of car-sharing grows, the more appealing it has become to potential Zipcar competitors - it merged with its only previous D.C. competitor, Flexcar, in 2007 - and the more unfair it seems for the city to treat Zipcar as a monopoly. So earlier this year, the city announced it would hold an auction for use of the more than 80 on-street parking spaces currently reserved for use by Zipcar. The benefits were twofold: The car-sharing market would open up, and the District would get paid a market rate for use of its public space. But Zipcar is ticked. Where it once had 86 spaces for its use, it now, after the auction, says it will have only about a dozen on-street spaces. That's prompted John Williams, a Seattle public relations consultant working with Zipcar, to get in touch with local reporters to take issue with the way the city transportation department handled things. (TBD's John Hendel covered the issue Friday.) Williams says that Zipcar has no problem with competition, but it is upset with the auction process, which essentially handed individual spots to the highest bidder (which, of course, is the way auctions tend to work). Zipcar would have preferred a "more strategic approach" in which its experience in the business and its existing large customer base were taken into account. And, Williams is not shy to point out, the auction could very well mean higher costs for its users. Good points in there. Zipcar turned car-sharing into a viable business in this town, and right now, everyone who wants a shared car wants a Zipcar - arguments both f

Private car-sharing company ZipCar given exclusive use of public street parking Could selling street spaces be Permit Parking by Inside-Booster & News-Star on Wednesday, October 19, 2011 at 9:11pm by Peter von Buol   ZipCar, a private car-sharing company which rents vehicles to its members by-the-hour, has quietly been given exclusive free use of specially-designated on-street parking spaces throughout the city, including some on residential streets.   When a ZipCar sign recently popped up alongside a building on the 1300 block of W. Wellington, a local resident contacted Inside Booster and said she was annoyed the city has started setting aside on-street public parking spaces for the exclusive use of people who drive vehicles owned by ZipCars.    "One parking spot at the Northwest corner of Wellington and Lakewood now has signs put up by the city saying no one can park here except ZipCars. It is a public street and has always been a public parking spot, but now anyone not in a ZipCar will be ticketed and fined for parking there," wrote Betty Geilen.   Indeed, if this is now city policy how long will it be before the city sees the revenue-generating potential in leasing these parking spots to ZipCar or other car-sharing companies?  Or on an even bigger scale by leasing public street parking spaces on city streets to private parties and citizens?   "When I drive back from work at about six o'clock, all the parking spaces are usually already gone [which means] I usually have to park two blocks away. We chose not to put a garage in our back yard because we have an apple tree, which produces oxygen and is therefore 'green' and environmentally-friendly," continued Geilen.   Geilen also complained the signs installed by the city to mark the spot have given the company free city-sponsored advertising.   "They have a prominent spot where there is a lot of foot-traffic right by the bar at Wellington and Lakewood," she said. "It would be impossible fo

Zipcar and Flexcar Driven Together Zipcar (AP) Network News X PROFILE View More Activity TOOLBOX Resize Print E-mail Reprints   By Thomas Heath Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, October 31, 2007 Flexcar and Zipcar, two companies seeking to change American habits by renting cars by the hour, plan to merge in a deal that would reshape the nascent car-sharing industry. [an error occurred while processing this directive] After years of losses for both companies, Flexcar, based in Seattle and controlled by America Online founder Steve Case, said it will merge with the larger Zipcar, based near Boston, in hopes of achieving profitability within the year. "We just wanted to rapidly expand in new markets and rapidly expand the fleets," said Case, whose Revolution LLC bought Flexcar in 2005. "They're both in turbo-growth mode. We think the companies combined will be on a path to profitability in the next year or so, and with rapid and significant expansion will be ready" for an initial public offering of stock. The two companies, the nation's largest car-sharing firms, are owned by private investors. They did not disclose the merger's financial terms. Both companies were founded in 1999 with the intent of serving environmentally minded city dwellers and university students who could be weaned from the expense and other complications of automobile ownership. Zipcar, for instance, rents cars for $7.75 to $15 per hour on top of an annual fee. Together, the two companies helped popularize an industry that now includes more than two dozen competitors. "It's a niche that wasn't exploited by the larger traditional car-rental companies," said Chris Brown, managing editor of Auto Rental News. "I don't think it will ever eat into a huge percentage of the $20 billion U.S. car-rental market. It's kind of like this little cult of users that are all in it together in this cool new system." Even so, sensing profit or as a defensive measure, car-rental giants like Hert