NY Times: Slowly, the Shared Car Is Making Inroads in Europe

July 14, 2005
Slowly, the Shared Car Is Making Inroads in Europe

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
International Herald Tribune

AMSTERDAM - When Mariane Polfliet discovered she had an emergency meeting in a hard to reach suburb of Amsterdam recently, there was no need for panic: within minutes, she had used her computer-coded key to drive away in one of the hundreds of shared cars that are now scattered around the quaint canals of this city's center.

There was something incongruous about the package: Ms. Polfliet, dressed for a Mercedes in an elegant tan suit with her lawyerly leather briefcase, driving the small bright red Peugeot with neon green wheels and "Greenwheels" stenciled amid swirls on the door.

But for thousands of people in the Netherlands, and hundreds of thousands worldwide, car-sharing groups like Greenwheels have filled the gap between private car ownership and public transportation. For cities where it has taken hold, the concept is helping to relieve traffic and reduce pollution, studies have found.

"Some lawyers don't want to visit clients in a car like this, but I don't care, because this idea has changed my life," said Ms. Polfliet, who uses Greenwheels instead of owning a private car. With it, she takes her boyfriend to hockey practice, buys wine in bulk for parties, shops at Ikea.

Although car sharing has been a mythic, green concept for decades, it has only become a larger-scale reality in the past few years - and then only in a handful of places, like Switzerland, Germany and the Netherlands, where it has been commercialized by a small number of companies. Over all, far more car-sharing ventures have failed than succeeded in the past 15 years, or have remained too tiny to have a major impact. Still, as urban centers face ever more serious traffic snarls and new technology makes car sharing simpler, dozens of cities in Europe, North America, and Asia - from Singapore to Turin to Minneapolis - are re-exploring the idea.

In January, representatives from a number of cities met in Brussels at a conference organized by a European Union initiative to promote car sharing. "We see a big potential for European cities," the report concluded, estimating that at least 500,000 private vehicles could be replaced in Europe by car sharing.

But the debate continues over whether car sharing is a boutique industry that works well in slightly offbeat places, like Amsterdam, or whether it can become an essential part of urban transportation, like buses and taxis. "I think it's going to be another 10 years before it's going to have a really big impact generally," said Dave Brook, an independent car consultant in the United States. "But we can say now that it's definitely a viable niche, and it's going to be a damn big niche as well."

Private companies, including some giants of the car industry like Hertz and Shell, have begun investing in or operating commercial car sharing to a limited extent. About 300,000 people are involved in car sharing worldwide, with the majority in Europe, according to Susan Shaheen, a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley. Mobility, the largest single company, with locations all over Switzerland, has 60,000 members and 2,400 cars. In the United States, there are just over 1,000 shared cars in all.

Companies in the United States, like Zipcar, often require drivers to book cars in advance, not unlike renting a car. Here, much of the use is more spontaneous, with customers using the Internet to book one of the many cars in their neighborhoods.

Car sharing logic is simple: Owning a car is both expensive and impractical in many cities. Here in Amsterdam, city center parking permits take six years to obtain, while bicycles ply the narrow streets and bridges with enviable ease.

But what happens when a child misses a school bus? Or someone needs to load up on groceries, or take a guest to the airport? With Greenwheels, members pay as little as 5 euros a month, a little over $6, in base fees, then substantially more for mileage or hourly rates, to tackle these tasks in a car.

"We were haunted by the idea that you could use technology to make this idea into a large scale, professional operation that would be very convenient for customers," said Jan Borghuis, co-founder of Greenwheels - dressed in the de facto company uniform of shorts, sandals and a T-shirt, in the company's ramshackle Rotterdam office surrounded by bicycle tires rather than auto parts. "We know it would have a good effect on the environment."

The actual environmental impact is less than straightforward, although researchers say it relieves traffic congestion and pollution to some degree by reducing car ownership. Studies suggest that one shared car replaces 4 to 10 private cars, as people sell their old vehicles, Ms. Shaheen said. The result is a 30 to 45 percent reduction in vehicle miles traveled for each new customer.

"On the whole, this is very good for the environment," said Rens Meijkamp, a Dutch researcher, who found that nearly 50 percent of Greenwheels clients used the service as a replacement for either a first or second private car.

On the other hand, there are customers who would otherwise take the bus, meaning that the concept inspires some additional driving.

But the industry is still trying to define itself - not yet mature even in Europe and "still in its adolescence" in the United States, Mr. Brook said. In some places, companies are developing partnerships with state railroads or supermarkets to place cars outside of them. In others, cities have given shared cars the right to drive in bus lanes. "

"I think the demand will develop as far as the supply will become more attractive, simple, and closer to each inhabitant," said J. B. Schmider, manager of the fledgling French Autopartage Network, which to date has only 2,500 members nationwide.

Car rental companies like their fleets to be rented out all the time. But car-sharing companies have a slightly different take on the financial equation. By having a huge number of members, and an excess capacity of cars in the right places, they hope to be able to provide a nearby car within minutes.

On a recent Friday, there was a rare public transportation strike in the Netherlands. It was, Mr. Borghuis said, "our moment of truth," since most Greenwheels customers take trains to work. "In most places, there were cars available when people needed them," he said. "That made us happy."


Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company