Research shows that car-sharing provides numerous benefits to communities. A report from Mobility Lab, an Arlington, Va.-based research organization, describes advantages including reducing household car ownership and vehicle miles traveled, alleviating parking and traffic congestion, and increasing public transportation use. Todd Litman, founder of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute in Canada, found that car-sharing can reduce average vehicle use by as much as 60 percent.
Information like this makes it easier to embrace smart transportation technologies. But announcements from auto manufacturers, a car-sharing company and Kelley Blue Book highlight just how confounding it is becoming to predict future use patterns of these types of technology.
Nevertheless, car manufacturers don't seem completely confident that individual car ownership will continue to be the dominant mobility model. In January, General Motors announced a $500 million investment in the ride-sharing company Lyft and launched a car-sharing program called Maven. Just last week, GM and Lyft said they were launching a short-term car rental program aimed at prospective Lyft drivers who don't have qualifying cars. And Ford recently announced a pilot program that will offer vehicle leases to self-organized groups of three to six people. Initially available at only three Austin, Texas, dealerships, this model fits midway between car-sharing and full personal car ownership.
Then, in February, Daimler AG's car-sharing company Car2Go reported that the Canadian city of Vancouver was the first city in the world to exceed 100,000 members. One-sixth of the British Columbia city's residents are Car2Go members. With over a million members worldwide and a presence in some 60 cities, Car2Go has shown car-sharing to be a popular service for urbanites. But even in the car-sharing hotbed of Vancouver, Car2Go has dealt with wide variations in membership and use. In the less densely populated suburban areas just outside of the city, Car2Go and other car-sharing companies have seen memberships drop significantly to a fraction of the downtown numbers.
Marc-David Seidel, a professor at the University of British Columbia's Sauder School of Business, offered some insight on where car-sharing might -- and might not -- work. "While car-sharing can be good for the public," he says, "it's not a public service, and it's hard for car-sharing companies to turn a profit in lower-density cities, even if those cities have pockets of high density."
This story originally appeared on Governing.