Car sharing

Carsharing or car sharing (US) or car clubs (UK) is a model of car rental where people rent cars for short periods of time, often by the hour. They are attractive to customers who make only occasional use of a vehicle, as well as others who would like occasional access to a vehicle of a different type than they use day-to-day. The organization renting the cars may be a commercial business or the users may be organized as a company, public agency, cooperative, or ad hoc grouping.

Carsharing services are available in over a thousand cities in many nations.

As of December 2012^[update], there were an estimated 1.7 million car-sharing members in 27 countries, including so-called peer-to-peer services, according to the Transportation Sustainability Research Center at U.C. Berkeley. Of these, 800,000 were car-sharing members in the United States. As of November 2014^[update], the world's largest carsharing networks across North America and Europe are Zipcar with 767,000 members and 11,000 vehicles, and Car2Go with over 900,000 members and 12,000 cars.

According to Navigant Consulting, global carsharing services revenue will approach US$1 billion in 2013 and grow to US$6.2 billion by 2020, with over 12 million members worldwide. The main factors driving the growth of carsharing are the rising levels of congestion faced by city dwellers; shifting generational mindsets about car ownership; the increasing costs of personal vehicle ownership; and a convergence of business models. Carsharing contributes to sustainable transport because it is a less car intensive means of urban transport, and according to The Economist, carsharing can reduce car ownership at an estimated rate of one rental car replacing 15 owned vehicles.

In the United Kingdom, where it is a recent development, the term "car clubs" is used for what in the United States is called "carsharing", "car sharing" or "car-sharing". In the UK, "car sharing" refers to what is called "carpooling" or "ride sharing" in the US, namely the shared use of a car for a specific journey, in particular for commuting to work, often by people who each have a car but travel together to save costs; in South Africa, this is called a "". In the UK, a "car pool" refers to a fleet of cars made available by an organization to its employees (which is usually referred to as a "motor pool" in the US), for example to travel to customers or between different office locations.

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