I was looking online for some information for a paper I am writing, and found instead, completely unrelated, information about car-sharing cooperatives in Europe in the late 1980's. The car-sharing movement began in Europe and traveled to the United States via Canada. Car sharing (such as zip-car as well as car sharing co-ops and non-profits) is pretty common now in some American cities. It was cool to read about the origins of this idea.


I happened upon a car sharing handbook re-printed by RAIN magazine in 1998 for starting ones own car sharing cooperative. Check out the handbook on RAIN's website.
The magazine also featured an article about Stattauto, one of the first car-sharing organizations, as well as an interview with the founders. Although dated, the interview is pretty interesting and entertaining.
When Stattauto began, member were required not to own a car. This was supposed to reduce car ownership. However, the founders decided that if people are paying for the car sharing service they will not want to also pay to keep a car, so the rule became unnecessary. Stattauto is structured so that the per-mile and per-hour charges are high enough to discourage driving for all but the most necessary trips. This may run counter-intuitive to most companies' goal to encourage the use of their services. Perhaps car-sharing can stay truer to the goals of reducing driving if not run by a for profit corporation. I have not looked into this, however, so this is just a guess.

A few blocks from my house a zip-car and an i-go car have their homes.

I was wondering if people had access to a car sharing program near them. If so do you use it? Does it work well?


Post edited by: greeniac19850, at: 03/24/2008

Post edited by: greeniac19850, at: 03/25/2008

Post edited by: greeniac19850, at: 03/25/2008

Post edited by: greeniac19850, at: 03/25/2008