Car Insurance Car

(This was originally published in February 2014, but I've extensively updated it.)

From about day 2 after the initial launch in of Car2Go in Ulm, Germany people have been wondering if/when/whether Daimler would ever to include one of their larger vehicles in the car2go fleet?  Well, they did in February 2014 — Car2Go Black — in Berlin and Hamburg with 100 Mercedes B-Class vehicles.  Now it's got locations in 8 cities in Germany.



it appears they're doing it with the same flair and originality that marked the first Car2Go.  They could have easily and simply seeded a city fleet with 20-30 B-class sedans and let them float around the city and called it good, but they didn't.

Instead, it appears they've given a lot of thought about how to provide a flexible, convenient service.  They decided to place these "black" vehicles in several strategic locations around a city and let the customers come to them (I'm sure they're hoping it will be in a Car2Go Smart).  Black vehicles can be unlocked via RFID card of smartphone app.  The key is in the glove box, not on the dashboard as in the Smart cars.

Reservations are required and They system allows one-way trips between Car2go Black cities but the destination must be specified at the time of reservation.  Reservations can be made for up to 14 days, with trip start and ends in 15 minute increments.

Car2Go Black pricing (PDF) is a model of simplicity and seems competitive with the car rental service it is — (as of April 2015) 14.90 € per hour including 50 kilometers per trip with additional distance at 0.29 € per km. or 89€ per day, including 200 km/day and same price for additional km.  For cities with airport locations, there's a 4.90€ additional fee.  Locating, unlocking and billing will be through the Daimler Moovel app.

Commentary

I think Daimler has come up with a very clever compliment to its original Smart Car2Go system.  And should be pretty efficient to operate, as well, given that it's basically a largely unattended car rental service.

They may not know it, but Car2Go has pretty much implemented mobility guru Dan Sturges' ideas of "near cars" (Car2Go Smart) and "far cars" (Car2Go Black) as a complete urban automobility solution.

And Car2Go Black already has a ready pool of thousands of existing customers signed up and in their system - credit cards and all!  From an OEM's point of view Car2Go Black could be to be a great way for Car2Go customers to try out the "move up" B-Class model, just in case they're is in the market for a new car! (I don't know about whether this was done in Europe, but Car2Go in the USA did a member promotion offering a discount on the purchase of a new Smart car a couple months ago.)

So, around town, Car2Go Black will be a premium car rental.  But 14.90 € per hour (the same price as Car2Go Smart cars) is quite a bit more expensive than what other carshares charge for their most luxurious vehicles (not Mercedes, admittedly) and is similar to DriveNow's hourly rate for Mini Coopers and BMW 1-series.  However, Avis would be glad to rent you a B-class for around town use in Berlin or Hamburg for a similar price, but which wouldn't include fuel or insurance (but would be a lot more if you wanted one-way trip between cities).

A trip from Berlin to Hamburg would be about 120 € in a Car2Go Black (assuming the Autobahn cooperated), which is about what a high speed train trip for 1 person without a discount card would cost (in fairness, the train makes the trip about 50% faster).  How often the one-way between cities option will get used is anyone's guess. And it's worth nothing that the one-way between cities is not original with Car2Go — a similar one-way option to travel between cities is already offered by DriveNow between Köln and Dusseldorf.

As with all flavors of carsharing: Customer Convenience = Car Utilization.  And how convenient this station-based carsharing will be depends at least somewhat on how convenient the parking / garage locations turn out to be.  Car2Go Black is a particularly good strategy for Daimler, since the Smart vehicle is such a specialized "city" car.  DriveNow, with it's more versatile fleet, can provide similar, if not greater convenience for longer, out of town trips with it's floating fleet vehicles.  Both approaches have pluses and minuses so it's really up to the customer!

As a reminder about the bigger picture, Car2Go isn't the only trick up Daimler Innovation's sleeve.  They have made substantial moves into the ridesharing market as well.  In addition to their investment in Carsharing.com, they have invested in the trip planner app Moovel and now bundled their full suite of mobility services (from themselves and partner) under Moovel listed here (don't ask me why it show up under the Mercedes name).  Integrated mobility coming soon to a smartphone near you!

I know I'm not the only person who will be watching Car2Go Black closely.  Best of luck, meine Damen und Herren.

The two leading flexible carsharing (one way/on demand) providers in Europe, DriveNow and Car@Go, have made a useful contribution to understanding the effects on members' transportation patterns with the release of a summary of a Joint Mobility Study By DriveNow and Car2Go.

The companies surveyed 2,881 members in Europe, all of whom had been members for at least 3 months and had used a vehicle in the past 30 days.  There was a fairly even distribution of ages from 18-50 and somewhat lower representation above that.  Over 2/3rd of those responding to the survey were male and about the same percentage had no children in the household (the report makes no statement whether the demographics are representative of the membership of the organizations).

Here's how members said they used vehicles:


Since the earliest days of Autolib' in Paris, there has been a concern that flexible carsharing would take passengers from public transport, and contribute to traffic on city streets.  Although the report indicates that carsharing members continue to use public transport and bicycling, there were some situations where users did subsitute flexible carsharing for a transit trips - when the transit trip would have been long or required several changes (echoing a finding from the early studies of City Carshare by Robert Cervero).   The main reason members gave for using flexible carsharing were when it was "the best and quickest way to reach my destination" (80%).  In addition to improved convenience over a transit trip, members used flexible carsharing if they believed the trip was less expensive than a taxi (62%) or if cycling was not convenient (43%).

Another concern about flexible carsharing has been that it might not have the same effect of motivating people to reduce the number of cars they own (and hence the temptation to use those cars) as traditional round-trip carsharing.  In the survey, 37% of members reported giving up a vehicle - of which more than 3/4s gave up their primary vehicle.  That's impressive!

Cars given up by flexible carsharing service members by year

What members said they liked about flexible carsharing were:

• I have the option to use a car spontaneously, if required (54%)
• The majority of my destinations are also accessible via other types of transport (53%)
• The upkeep of my own car was too expensive for me (45%)
• I hardly used my own car (42%)
• My life situation has changed (40%)

Regarding the growth of flexible carsharing, members indicated they would use it more, "If the cars were more reliably available in my area when I need one" (74%; which just about every user of flexible carsharing can testify is an occasional problem) and, "If I could use the cars for longer at a reasonable price, e.g. for weekend trips" (43%; an attraction of car ownership, as well as lower-priced traditional round trip carsharing).

Not too surprisingly, the report concludes that since the benefits of flexible carsharing are real, "upscaling the services would increase the beneficial effects" for cities.  I agree.

Industry report or not, I compliment both companies for providing a snapshot of their members.

(Sorry readers, I can't locate a link to the full report and charts online.  Here's the press release in German.)

My recent post showing updates on a classic graphic of transportation modes based on flexibility-distance received a lot of interest.  I recently came across another variation on this chart from Vincent Pilloy of the Paris-based transportation consultancy Innov360.



Unlike the other conceptualizations Pilloy's conceptualization includes walking and car pooling - useful additions to the chart, I think.  However, I'm not sure why P2P carsharing would be more useful for longer distance carsharing trips.

It was part of a blog post describing the various types of carsharing - round trip, one way station-based, free floating, etc.  Nicely done.

The success of carsharing clearly isn't just about how good the operator of the service is, it's also based on the overall balance and richness of the transportation environment of the city (and how the operator designs their service to fit into that environment.  Figuring out some way to "rate" cities on mobility seems like a key to greater understanding for policy makers, as well as a way for the carsharing operator to understand the city they're serving better.
This is interesting and useful attempt to define a set of criteria and develop ratings for 84 world cities in this full report The Future of Urban Mobility (PDF) report by Arthur D. Little for UITP organization.





The author's, François-Joseph Van Audenhove, Laurent Dauby. Oleksii Korniichuk, Jérôme Pourbaix
have divided the mobility factors into Maturity and Performance categores, and include both carsharing and bike sharing in the Maturity ratings.  (I wonder if they'd include Uber if they'd been writing the report in 2015?)  These factors were weighted and the index score calculated.

Of course one can quibble.  I would have substituted "smart PHONE penetration for "smart card penetration" and, ideally, some sort of land use rating to describe the proximity of neighborhood services that enable residents to not make trips at all.

While developing a index is can be useful, much can get lost in the process.  I noticed that Lost Angeles scored slightly better than Portland (my home town) but it's hard for me to imagine that LA really has a "better" urban transport system?

When I was first getting interested in carsharing, way back in 1996, I came across a wonderful graphic that really helped me understand the role of carsharing in transportation.  You've probably seen this graphic in numerous Powerpoints — which modes are best for which types of trips, based on the Distance of the trip and amount of Flexibility (time, destinations) needed during the trip.

I first saw the graphic on Eric Britton's foundational website and e-mail discussion group at World Carshare Consortium, which is still alive and well (as is Eric, who has created more website and discussion groups since then than I can keep track of!)  He told me that the original source, from 20 years earlier, didn't actually call it carsharing but the term "paratransit"(after all the term wasn't coined until 1987 when carsharing as we know it got started, almost simultaneously in Switzerland and Germany).  Somewhere along the line, the word Carsharing got substituted and the chart became history.

 (From Ron Kirby and Kisten Bhat: Para-transit: Neglected options for urban mobility, Urban Institute, 1974)

Well, that graphic was history, until now. But even carsharing evolves and now we have a new flavor - one-way/on-demand carsharing (e.g. Autolib, Car2Go, Enjoy, JoeCar), which has somewhat different trip characteristics.  So I was very pleased to find an updated version of this chart from Marco Viviani of CommunAuto, Montreal, showing the place for One-Way.

Something that Viviani's graphic does very nicely is to convey what those swirly black line arcs in the upper graphics represent - the possible overlap between modes.

One might argue that the One-Way bubble should really be a big elipse that also slightly overlaps with Public Transit, since the most recent evaluations show a slight decrease in transit trips by one-way users.  (But, for what it's worth, I would suggest this should not be a big concern since these are likely trips that would have been difficult to do on transit - either because of time and schedules or because of the number of changes required.)

I suppose one could include Uber, Lyft and Sidecar in the Taxi category, if you really wanted to update it.  The next question will be where autonomous cars belong on the chart?

Hope this is useful.

I'm regularly asked what are some other sources of information about the rapidly diversifying carsharing industry, so here are a couple of comments and a couple of places to spend some time.

First, the comments: if you're looking for operational data - hours per day of utilization, revenues, etc. - I'll tell you right now, there's ALMOST NOTHING on the web.  The reason is not hard to figure out: most of the companies are for-profit and don't want their competitors doing exactly what you're trying to do - reverse engineer their business model.  Nothing surprising about that, is there?  You can try to do a little reverse engineering from Zipcar's old SEC filings (pre/post IPO), City Carshare's tax forms (they're a nonprofit) on GuideStar, and the financial statements in Mobility Switzerland's annual report (they're a cooperative).

What is on the web has a lot to do with the growth of the industry and the demographics of members and trip patterns, as it relates to impacts on urban transportation.  Almost all of the information out there is about traditional round trip, station-based carsharing, since the first studies of one-way/on-demand carsharing and P2P carsharing are only now underway with results expected to start trickling out in the fall of 2014.

Finally, I would warn you you can spend a huge amount of time on the internet looking for information that just doesn't exist.  Trust me!

The starting point for any research on carsharing is the 2005 study by Adam Millard-Ball Carsharing Where and How It Succeeds.  This is the bible on round-trip station-based carsharing.  Fortunately, you can download the entire book for free from the Transportation Research Board here.  Really, start with this report whether you're a car rental company, a city government agency or a business major writing a report or a business plan.

TSRC — At the Transportation Sustainability Research Center at U.C. Berkeley, Dr. Susan Shaheen has been researching carsharing longer than anyone, and we are fortunate that she's got an academic home that has enabled her to research and publish so much about the evolution carsharing.  Reports by her, Eliot Martin and Adam Cohen are cited everywhere and for good reason.

Some other sources to check out:

Auto Rental News magazine — Chris Brown the editor of Auto Rental News realized early on the implications of carsharing on the rental car industry and started covering it.

CSA — The Car Sharing Association is a North American-based trade and advocacy group with a growing world-wide membership, which primarily serves as a forum for operators.  Some of the most useful current information is from the presentations from their 2013 conference here.

My Twitter feed — You'll quickly see that I Tweet a lot more than I write blog posts.  I cover current developments in carsharing and "new mobility", in general.  My most recent Tweets are to the right.

Carsharing.Net — Carsharing.net is curated by Autoshare (Toronto) CEO and Canadian carsharing pioneer Kevin McLaughlin and has a bunch of information, some new, some old including some "how to's" about starting a carshare from some of the pioneers. You can still download my 2004 TRB paper CarSharing - Start Up Issues and New Operational Models from the Carsharing.net website here.  People tell me is still a useful overview, even though the technology sectiion is woefully out of date.

Frost and Sullivan — Martyn Briggs and his band of researchers at Frost and Sullivan have produced a number of very interesting reports about carsharing and future of mobility and the automotive sector in both North America and Europe over the past few years.  Of course, they'd really like to sell you the full reports.  Search their site for the latest press releases here.

CommunAuto — Special mention should be made of the extensive bibliography of both French and English research reports on carsharing, starting pre 1981 and extending to 2005.  This is a gold mine for history buffs.




For international research you mostly have to go to consultants like me or hope you find something useful at the websties of trade associations in various countries.

World Carshare Forum — Eric Britton has been interested in carsharing even long than I have and has been an inspiration to pioneers in the industry through the World CarShare Forum.  But as carsharing has become well-established he's broadened his interests into more general sustainable mobility topics.  He's tireless in just about every medium imaginable, Facebook, Linked In, etc. Well, worth a read.

CarPlus — The CarPlus Trust in the UK is another go-to source for English-langauge information about "car clubs" in the UK ("carsharing in the Queen's English is what we Colonists call "carpooling").  They're an umbrella organization, setting standards and promoting the car club idea all over the British Isles and their best practice guides and annual report of car clubs is a model that every cities and, indeed, other countries should emulate. You'll also find references to reports by Dr. Scott LeVine of the Royal Auto Club Foundation in the Resources section, such as his recent Car Rental 2.0.

BCS — Bundesverband Car Sharing (Federal Association of Car Sharing) headed by long-time carsharing researcher/advocate Dr. Willi Loose, is the trade group for the carsharing industry in Germany and they also publish a useful annual report.  They have an abbreviated but useful summary of international research on their website translated here.  As with other country sites, you can search for the cities that offer casharing - and in Germany that can be daunting, since there are over 110 companies offering carsharing in Germany.

France — Somewhat suprisingly, there's no organization representing all the carsharing services in France.  The Autopartage France group of cooperative carsharing services has recently rebranded itself as the Citiz Network.  They link to a very interesting national survey of carsharing in France translated here.   An interesting, if a bit purist, discussion forum about autopartage is La Voiture Autrement, machine translated into English here.

Australia — has several major carshares serving multiple cities.  The Australian government has published several reports about carsharing over the years.

Japan — Not surprisingly, given the density and cost of owning a car carsharing has taken off in Japan with a major parking operator and car rental firm offering carsharing.  In addition, there are many smaller groups offering EVcarsharing services, as well as experimental programs from Toyota (Ha:Mo) and Nissan (Choimobi). Email me if you are interested in more information.

The rest of Asia — Without Google Search and GoogleTranslate, the scattered news articles about carsharing developments would be the inscrutable Orient!

And a final comment, do not overlook Wikipedia.  Even I am constantly discovering detailed stuff on Wikipedia I'd never seen before.

Happy hunting.  But don't say I didn't warn you!  That's what we consultants are in business for - to help you sort out the wheat from the chaff - much faster and more economically.

 It would appear that the Chinese economy is already hooked on the prosperity from a thriving car industry, even though their highways are already over capacity (like some other countries I know), and many Chinese cities face terrible air quality problems.  Carsharing to the rescue?  And EV carsharing could be an even better strategy for minimizing pollution from motor vehicles.

Unfortunately, many Chinese cities seems to be unable to see the value of "good" cars in carsharing fleets and have not developed pro-carsharing policies.  But that may be changing, thanks to the leadership of one city, Hangzhou, a city of 8.7 million people, already a transportation nirvana with the largest bikeshare network in the world.

My friend and transportation visionary, Dan Sturges, forwarded this very informative video from Novem ber 2013 about the Chinese carsharing system developed by Kandi Technology Group.  It shows the JL7001BEV, a Smart-car look alike EVbut with a back seat, which they've developed.  The carsharing service is being launched in Hangzhou.  The video also shows the automated "vehicle dispenser" towers, which have gotten a lot of attention in the western press.

 

The service is charging a rental rate of $3.25 per hour.  Currently vehicles must be returned to the originating garage but plans are to allow one-way between garages.  In addition to the garages, Kandi has deals to provide vehicles at hotels in Hangzhou, as well.

This service will certainly be a force to reckon with in Chinese and possibly Asian carsharing if they keep on the course reported by investors:

• 10 completed garage towers in Hangzhou, with 18 in various stages of construction; ranging in size from 30 to 300 vehicles (as of Dec. 2013) with talk of up to 750 parking towers.
• Up to 100,000 EVs
• Expansion to provinces of Shanghai (next), Jiangsu, Shandong, Hainan, and Chengdu in 2014

One of my pet peeves is incorrect terminology that more than occasionally appears in the media and blogosphere, about carsharing and new mobility services.   I thought it would be helpful to put together this schematic of how I see the various service models fitting together.

I've approached it from the user's point of view and divided things into scheduled or spontaneous trips.  I've mostly cited North American companies as examples but there are plenty of companies offering similar services in Europe and starting to appear in Asia.

As always, your comments and suggestions are welcomed.  You can download a printable PDF of the page here.

Like me you've probably noticed the HUNDREDS of MILLIONS of DOLLARS being invested in  services like Car2Go, DriveNow (one way), Über, Lyft & Sidecar (taxi) and CiteeCar (plain old round trip carsharing). The sharing economy is a hot topic, not only on the blogosphere, but with entrepreneurs, VC firms and in the bureaus of a number of major cities around the world.   Something is definitely happening and it's going to transform mobility in urban areas, soon!

These new mobility services — whether classic carsharing, point to point/flexible carsharing or shared seats in vehicles — are transforming mobility cities.  Consumers are voting with the pocketbooks and investors seem to be irrationally exuberant that shared transportation may be the "internet" investment golden calf of the new century.

But cities are also feeling a pinch, as they struggle to come to terms with access to the public right of way for carsharing parking, as well as attempting to figure out a regulatory strategy for services that challenge the traditional domain of taxis.

These are just a sample of issues that will be discussed at the upcoming Shared Use Mobility Summit meeting, being held in San Francisco, October 10-11, 2013.

“These shared uses can be integrated and linked with public transit,” said Susan Shaheen, PhD, co-director of the UC Berkeley Transportation Sustainability Research Center and organizer of the conference.

“Shared mobility is already familiar through carsharing companies like City CarShare and Zipcar or through bike sharing kiosks. Dynamic-ridesharing systems, like Carma, are part of this, as are other types of sharing networks such as Sidecar and Lyft. It’s evolving into a new industry.”

The overall goals, said Dr. Shaheen, include helping to provide more mobility choices, reducing traffic congestion, filling empty seats, mitigating various forms of pollution, helping people control transportation costs, reducing fossil fuel consumption, reducing pressures on parking spaces, and improving efficiency. Employment opportunities are created through these services as well. It also provides transportation choices for those who cannot afford to buy and maintain a vehicle.

The list of confirmed speakers include:

• Sunil Paul, CEO Sidecar
• Gabe Klein, Chicago Dept. of Transportation
• Sean O'Sullivan, CEO of Carma
• Timothy Papandreou, Deputy Director San Francisco MTA
• Lisa Gansky, Mesh Labs, author and "markitect", 
• Jennifer Dill, Transportation Oregon Research and Education Consortium, Portland State University (OTREC), 
• Natalie Foster, Director of Peers (supporting sharing economy), 
• Sharon Feigon, Alternative Transportation for Chicagoland Inc. (formerly I-Go Carsharing CEO), 
• Guy Fraker, CEO of get2kno Inc, and futurist, author and insurance industry specialist, 
• Alan Greenburg, Senior Policy Analyst, Federal Highway Administration

(And look for me somewhere on the program, as well.)

Below is a tentative listing of sessions.  The updated current program and speakers are here.

Day 1

• The Nuts & Bolts: Public Bikesharing, Carsharing, Personal Vehicle Sharing, Ridesharing, Innovations for Providing & Sharing Rides, and Shuttle Service
• Some Success Stories 
• The Sharing Economy: Scaling the Shared-Use Mobility Marketplace
• Governance 2.0 (“Micro” Level): Shared-Use Policy Approaches for City and County
• The Impacts of Shared-Use Mobility Services
• Spotlight Evening Panel: The Future of Mobility and Transportation Policy and Planning

Day 2

• Fostering Multi-Modal Integration and Public Transit Connections
• Shared-Use Mobility Panels: Industry Updates and Policy Considerations 
• Mobility Sector Breakouts: Encouraging Policy and Multi-Modal Collaboration
• Afternoon Pick-Your-Segment:
•  a)   Insuring Shared-Use Mobility Services
•  b)   Bikesharing:  Funding 2.0
•  c)    Ridesharing Institute Breakout Discussion
• Final Summary: The Future of Shared-Use Mobility

Registration for the Shared Use Mobility Summit is $350 for the two day session, including lunch both days. Here is registration and conference hotel information.

Shared-Use Mobility Summit sponsors include U.S. Federal Highway Administration, State Farm, Toyota, Enterprise Car Share, Capitol Corridor, Cubic, Metropolitan Transportation Commission, Ridesharing Institute, Transportation Research Board, the California Department of Transportation, American Public Transportation Association, UC Berkeley Transportation Sustainability Center, SMART, get2kno, Lyft, Carsharing Association, Car2go, Zipcar, DriveNow, bikeshare.com, ITS America, ITS California, meshlabs, and others. The conference has received generous support from a number of sponsors, including numerous sharing economy companies and the Rockerfeller Foundation.

Hope to see you there.

Carsharing services have more than 1 million members in North America!

In case you missed it, Dr. Susan Shaheen and her staff at the Transportation Sustainability Research Center at U.C. Berkeley have issued their semi-annual update on the status of Worldwide carsharing.

· As of January 1, 2013, there were 46 active carshare programs in North America with 1,033,564 members sharing 15,603 vehicles. 

   · As of January 1,2013, 20 Canadian carshare operators claimed 141,351 members and shared 3,432 vehicles. In the United States, 891,953 members shared 12,131 vehicles among 25 operators. In Mexico, 620 members shared 40  vehicles among one operator. 

   · Between January 2012 and January 2013, carsharing membership grew 24.1% in the United States and 53.4% in Canada. Between January 2012 and January 2013, carsharing fleets grew 23.6% in the United  States and 35.9% in Canada. 

The TSRC report says that as of their last international survey in Oct. 2012 carsharing was operating in 27 countries with 1,788,000 members (est.) sharing over 43,550 vehicles.   At the same time there were 33 personal vehicle sharing operators worldwide, with 10 active or in pilot phase, three planned, and four defunct in North America. In addition, one-way/on-demand carsharing was operating in seven countries worldwide including Austria, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK and USA.

As always, this information is extremely useful and much appreciated.  Thank you.

Carrot, Mexico City's no longer new start up carshare, is growing like gangbusters as you can see in this impressive infographic that Diego Solorzano and his team recently put together.

40 cars, 1,500 active members, steady growth and very satisfied users - what's not to like!

They told me they've also started a unique one-way option to one of their destinations - Santa Fe, a business destinations about 15 km from their main service area (in the lower left corner of the map below).  Customers can book any car for a one-way trip to this destination and only pay an extra hour for the option.


They have gotten around the issue of having to rewrite their reservation system (Metavera) in a unique way - a pre-login screen for reservations where the person can select one-way or hourly reservations.  Apparently, the one-way option is not yet very well-known (I only found out about via Twitter) but I'm sure that will change as members encounter this pre-login screen.  I'm sure it will be handy for members (going to the destination) and hopefully not a big headache for the Carrot fleet manager.

Congratulations and best wishes to the entire Carrot team.