When it comes to ecology, transportation represents the main challenge everyone faces. Car sharing brings an alternative transport for all. We need to go to work or grocery shopping but using fossil energy-fueled vehicles damages our planet and causes many issues, besides carbon emissions, including health issues. Public transportation is a solution when commuting, but it comes with several disadvantages, including the time it takes to get where we need to be.
Car manufacturers try to offer a solution for more responsible driving by creating electric vehicles (EVs). These vehicles run on electricity and have gained popularity in the past couple of years. In 2021, over 600,000 EVs were sold in the US, representing a significant growth and an 83% growth rate since 2018. However, not everyone can afford to buy these vehicles. Thankfully, more and more companies offer car-sharing services to manage this cost. With urbanization and changing mobility patterns, the need for traditional car ownership is decreasing in urban and suburban areas. Car sharing is emerging as a more sustainable and cost-effective solution, providing accessibility without the extra costs of maintenance, parking, and insurance. This shift not only reduces costs but also has a positive environmental impact.
In this article, you’ll learn more about car sharing, how it works, and the advantages of resorting to it.
Hoover Jefferson Station – Blink Mobility
What Is Car Sharing?
Car sharing, as the name indicates, lets people who are going to the same place connect to use a single vehicle instead of each using their own. The car sharing business model integrates automation tools to scale operations and streamline tasks, making it an efficient and scalable solution. It’s a trend that’s definitely attracting people who want to save money and reduce their carbon footprint. Car sharing is expected to grow by 20% from the forecast period 2021 to 2027, and some services go even further by offering car sharing with EVs, like Blink Mobility.
These services will be electric cars that let you ride anywhere for a low monthly membership fee, which comes with full vehicle access and many perks. It works like a traditional rental, with an EV vehicle and more convenience. Moreover, you’ll be using an EV, which in and of itself presents an excellent alternative to fossil-fueled vehicles.
Advantages of Electric Vehicles Car Sharing
Car sharing presents many advantages to its users, and we’ll detail why it’s a valuable alternative to using a traditional car.
Free-floating car sharing is a fully self-service automobile and public transit sharing concept without restrictions, offering flexibility and convenience in meeting the growing demand for travel demands in urban areas.
Less Expensive
Car sharing costs are automatically less than owning a vehicle because you don’t need to pay for repairs, recharging, or parking spots. You can simply take the vehicle in the street, drive it where you need to be, and park it again. Moreover, with monthly memberships, it’s possible to pay only $1 a month if you’re willing to share the vehicle. Even without a membership, it costs less than having your own car since you only pay $0.20 per 15 minutes, plus tax. This competitive pricing strategy has significantly contributed to the growing of market size limited number, and share of car-sharing services, making them a popular choice for cost-conscious consumers.
Less Greenhouse Effect
Industry growth and demand in the growth of the car-sharing market is driven by the environmental benefits of these services. With traditional car-sharing services, the carbon footprint is divided by the number of persons in the car, which is already a significant step in the right direction. However, with EV car sharing, this footprint is reduced to zero. Moreover, you didn’t order a car, so technically, you didn’t even contribute to the pollution involved with creating lithium batteries.
More Convenient
When you rent or resort to car sharing service providers, however, the infrastructure and market share dynamics of the car sharing industry contribute significantly to its convenience. There’s no need for a garage. In fact, even looking for a parking spot is easier since you can park in the dedicated areas. You’ll never wonder where your car is because once it’s parked, you can just come back and take another one with your membership. It’s timesaving and more straightforward, which proves essential, especially in urban areas.
Less Traffic
When you share your car with other people, there are fewer people on the road. The global car sharing market has a significant positive impact on reducing traffic congestion worldwide. The more drivers use this system, the fewer traffic jams are likely to happen. This also means that in the future, if people catch on the car sharing market report keep to the trend, then we can all get where we need to be faster.
Even though car sharing is a viable solution to reduce our impact and make transportation more convenient, it’s still a long way from becoming the new standard for high adoption of shared mobility. Here are the main aspects this emerging industry must overcome to impose a greener future.
Convincing Users
It’s one of the hardest things to do for car-sharing companies because the barriers are more psychological than real. A comprehensive car sharing market analysis reveals that factors such as the value of ownership, capitalism, and the novelty of the concept significantly influence user adoption and car sharing market size in different regions. Due to centuries of developing the value of ownership and capitalism, most people still prefer to buy rather than share. People want to have a car, and often times they enjoy having their belongings in the car. Moreover, it’s a brand-new concept people must get used to, and the fact that you have to pay to drive makes it sound more expensive than owning a car when it’s really not the case.
Lack of Government Procedures
At the time, governments didn’t have the necessary procedures in place stringent government regulations regarding some aspects of car sharing. According to various car sharing market trends and reports, there is a pressing need for regulatory frameworks and market insights to address these issues. For instance, in case of an infraction, who’s supposed to get fined? The car is matriculated in the company’s name, not the driver, making it hard to remove points from the driver’s license, and the fine needs to be paid by the company, which will then have to contact the users to sort it out.
Limited Space
In the global car sharing industry, implementing car-sharing spots in developing areas is easy. However, when it comes to densely populated cities and regions, companies can’t just use public parking spaces. It needs to work together with the town to create charging stations in key parts of the city without occupying too much space that’s intended for car owners.
Competition
For car-sharing businesses to keep expanding in the car sharing market worldwide, they need to prove they’re a better alternative than taxis and public transportation by understanding the competitive landscape and market dynamics. Taxis are more expensive but offer the comfort of having someone drive you to your exact destination. Public transportation is cheaper, but it can be late or canceled. Moreover, almost none of these alternative solutions offer EVs to their users, which can be a strong argument against carsharing market expansion.
Sharing Trips – A Step in the Right Direction
Until the entire world gets rid of fossil-fueled vehicles, global car sharing has a bright future in the coming years ahead, driven by its worldwide growth and impact. It’s a cheap solution that’ll pander to young people first and likely become a habit over time, like customers used to transportation companies like Uber.
The prospect of offering greenhouse gas emissions-free transportation is seducing more and more users and governments, so car sharing will only become more and more available as it settles into our daily lives.
