THE FUTURE OF CAR SHARING

My father used to say “Car is a Liability and not an Asset”. I believe I can defer that statement now. Gone are the days where owning a vehicle was considered as a liability rather than an asset. Here is a scenario which a few years ago would have been considered illogical and even technologically impossible, but is now very close to our present day reality…

Brian is smart and he wants his idle sitting car to make money while he is at work. He parks his car on one of the designated parking spot and returns to his desk. A few minutes later he receives notification on his phone from Jordon who wants to rent his car for couple of hours. Jordon doesn’t like to own a car because he doesn’t want hefty monthly payments that are attributed to getting a  car, and not to mention the other costs associated with it: maintenance, parking, Insurance, etc. Brian accepts the request with a smile on his face. His car is now off to work so that it can make money for his boss who is at work as well.

Jordon likes the convenience of picking up the car of his choice from a convenient location, drive around where he needs to go, play his favorite music as soon as he gets in the car without configuring it and drop it back once he’s done. All of this is available to him for a very nominal charge per hour instead of a long-term commitment, where he feels he’s signing his life away. 

Either you are visiting around town and need a car just for business or you live in downtown and driving is something which you rarely do; car-sharing gives you lot of convenience and flexibility and all of that comes to you at a low cost.

Thanks to car sharing apps like Maven, ZipCar, Car2Go,and many others, car share programs initially geared toward urban professionals, are looking to utilize vehicles for quick errands. They live in urban neighborhoods with medium to high household densities; and a large proportion of them rent their homes.

Younger generations are leading the way toward pay-per-use mobility in place of owning a car; nearly 50% of millennials like using a smartphone app for transport and already plan the travel so they can multi-task.

Global car-sharing services revenue will grow from $1 billion in 2013 to about $6.2 billion by 2020, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 30.9%

Worldwide membership in car-sharing programs will grow from 2.3 million in 2013 to more than 12 million by 2020.

• Canada however, which has 5,000 cars available to more than 280,000 users, according to 2014 data from the U.S.-based Transportation Sustainability Research Center (TSRC), has been among the world pioneers

A 2005 study by California researchers showed that 82 per cent of U.S. car share users and 96 per cent in Canada were residential individuals using these vehicles to get around their neighborhoods.

With all fairness we can say the future of car-sharing is bright in Canada :)

Meghayu Dave is currently working as Strategic Sourcing Specialist for General Motors. His opinions are solely his own and do not reflect the opinion of his employer. He feels very fortunate that he is surrounded by one of the best Team and talent in the world of sourcing.