Millions of people in large urban cities are taking advantage of car sharing. Owning a car in most cities isn’t very practical for many consumers, and they’re turning to car-sharing platforms as a means of financial savings, more efficient vehicle utilization, and personal conveniences.

Good cars are safe, fast, affordable to purchase, economical to operate, reliable, capacious, comfortable, and attractive. No, of course you can’t get all of those characteristics in one car; each conflicts with one or more of the others.

There are many different types of car-sharing services, which have been in operation in several countries for more than a decade. The most popular kind in Germany is “free floating,” whereby cars are picked up, driven and parked all around the city by users who reserve them using an app.

Carsharing has become more prevalent and well-recognized in cities large and small. How vehicles are successfully shared amongst a membership base is made possible with technology, which coordinates and enables the communication between the user, the vehicle, and the operating system.

Carsharing has been around in Germany since the late 1980s. But the idea of free-floating carsharing born at Daimler and developed to market maturity in the form of spin-off company car2go Deutschland GmbH, represented a real innovation on the carsharing market at the time.

The benefits of car sharing, for society

• Less traffic and congestion.
• Lower wear for roads.
• Less air pollution.
• Less need for parking.
• Development of other transport and mobility infrastructure.
• More fleets of newer vehicles.
• New technology is adopted faster.
• Better acceptance of mobility as a service.

Disadvantages of car sharing:

• Provided insurance may need to be supplemented.
• The vehicle you want is not guaranteed to be available when you want it.
• Inconvenience.
• Lifestyle impact.
• Mileage limits.
• Membership requirements.

The environmental benefits of car sharing

• Fewer cars on the road.
• Increased usage of smaller and newer cars.
• Sharing companies increase electric vehicle usage.
• Reduction in vehicle miles traveled.
• Reduced GHG emissions.
• More room for urban green space.
• More resources and information.

8 disadvantages of car sharing are: If you don’t like the person you’re riding with, you still have an obligation to get them to their destination safely. Work ride sharing situations where you find you don’t like the person you’re sharing with can cause tension.

Seven Best Car Sharing Apps

1. Car2go. App Store rating: 4.8/5. Google Play rating: 4.5/5.
2. Zipcar. App Store rating: 4.5/5. Google Play rating: 3.8/5.
3. GIG Car Share. App Store rating: 4.8/5.
4. HyreCar. App Store rating: 4.4/5.
5. Getaround. App Store rating: 4.8/5.
6. Turo. App Store rating: 4.8/5.
7. Enterprise CarShare. App Store rating: 4.8/5.

Top 10 Carpooling Pros & Cons – Summary List

Carpooling Pros	Carpooling Cons
Making new friends	Not suitable for certain remote areas
Good opportunity for people who can’t drive	Unreliability might become a problem
Reduction in noise pollution	Not entirely eco-friendly
Fewer traffic jams	You might not like your carpool fellows

If your routine consists of more infrequent trips, or you can rely on public transportation most of the time, car sharing is a much more affordable option versus ownership. There is no sense in taking on the expenses of a car if it will sit most of the time.

Setting up your sharing

1. Find Someone To Share With Ask neighbours in your street if they know of anyone.
2. Agree Arrangements Discuss whether your needs for sharing match each other.
3. Set Up Insurance The car owner should contact their insurance company to tell them what you are planning.

Once you get to the car, you usually unlock it with your membership card (the magic of RFID) and that’s it. As long as you bring it back to the same parking spot in one piece, that should be all. Gas and insurance are covered in what you pay (membership fee + whatever extra you pay per hour and/or mile driven).

Traditional car sharing companies provide 24 hour access to a fleet of cars for short trips or errands. These companies rely on a large outlay of capital to build the fleet of cars that will be available, and complex technological set ups to organize insurance and car availability.

Top 8 Carsharing Mobile Apps

• Sixt.
• Car2go.
• DriveNow.
• Zipcar.
• Getaround.
• Turo.
• Maven.
• Urbi.

A survey of almost 11,000 people in the U.S. indicated that 36 percent of people used ridesharing services in 2018, an increase from 15 percent in 2015.

Here are some of the best ridesharing apps that are leading this space.

1. Uber: You Move the World. Android Rating: 4.2.
2. LYFT: Riding is the new Driving.
3. Via: We Ride Together.
4. BlaBla Car: Share your journey.
5. Bridj: Better Transit for everyone.
6. GoKid: Where Kids can Carpool Too.
7. Hitch: Guaranteed Rides between Cities.

Size of global carsharing industry As of May 2019 carsharing is offered in 59 countries, which equates to 30% of the entire world. There are 236 carshare operators in 3,128 cities worldwide. Most cities only have one operator and in most cases it is a station-based provider (such as Zipcar, Communauto or Flinkster).

noun. an arrangement or instance involving the sharing of rides in a motor vehicle with other people, especially commuters: a statewide campaign to encourage ridesharing. a car service that allows a person to use a smartphone app to arrange a ride in a usually privately owned vehicle.

When you work for a ridesharing company, you connect with passengers via its app, pick them up in your personal vehicle, drive them to their destination, and accept fares electronically at each ride’s conclusion.

The Lyft app launched in 2012 (Uber, originally called UberCab, in 2009), but Lyft started life as a side project for Zimrides, a carpooling service founded in 2007 that leveraged Facebook and students for long-distance ride-sharing back when Uber was just a limousine-shaped gleam in the eye of Canadian co-founder …

Ridesharing is the original Uber product that continues to move millions of people around the world every day.

Uber has suspended its Uber Pool feature in the United States, Canada, London, and Paris due to the worsening outbreak of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. Uber Pool allows riders to share rides via a route of predetermined stops.

These terms are used interchangeably and dominate conversations about shared mobility, to the point where individuals, insurance companies, and regulatory agencies now equate both ridesharing and ride-hailing with transportation network companies (TNCs) like Uber and Lyft.

In the case of rideshare, the vehicle driver is generally the owner as he/she rides his own vehicle to earn money by giving a paid lift to others. A taxi, on the other hand, is owned by a different person or group than the driver. Rideshare vehicles usually have a company sticker or logo as an identifier.

“The concept of ridesharing has been around for a long time,” Shaheen said in an interview with Washingtonian last year. “It starts with the [World War II] effort to save tires and really evolved. Historically, the term has meant car-pooling, van-pooling.”

A ridesharing company (also known as a transportation network company, ride-hailing service; the vehicles are called app-taxis or e-taxis) is a company that, via websites and mobile apps, matches passengers with drivers of vehicles for hire that, unlike taxicabs, cannot legally be hailed from the street.

Even with the loss of China, Uber remained the largest ride hailing platform on the planet. Didi would scoop up several smaller operators, and is today responsible for over 95 percent of all mobile taxi operations in China.