The sharing of vehicles, rented by the hour, available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, through a fully digital service.
This is what carsharing is, too often confused with carpooling or the traditional rental of a vehicle.
Does car sharing have a future in France?
Citiz, one of the main operators in France, believes in it.
This cooperative is currently raising funds to double the number of cities where it is present by 2025.
This mobility solution has arguments to put forward: in particular that of being an alternative to the personal car and of questioning, when you get started, the relationship you have with the car in general.
Precious in the current context.
The end of Autolib in Paris, in the summer of 2018, raised fears of the worst for the future of car sharing in France.
Although the service had 100,000 regular users, the vehicles were rented four times a day, it never found its economic equilibrium.
To the point that the town hall of Paris and the Bolloré group decided to stop the costs and seek a way out for the more than 3,000 autolibs that crisscross the capital.
"It was not great in terms of image", slips today Jean-Baptiste Schmider, P-CEO of the Citiz cooperative which brings together fourteen local players in car sharing.
This network, launched 20 years ago, has 1,750 self-service accessible vehicles dispatched to 170 cities.
“We are in Lyon, Grenoble or Strasbourg, but also in Saint-Claude (Jura) or Pelussin (Loire)”, list Jean-Baptiste Schmider, to show that this
mode of transport is not reserved only for the big cities.
Not to be confused with carpooling
Above all, Citiz is determined not to stop there.
On objective-autopartage.coop, the cooperative is carrying out a fundraising campaign until March with the aim of raising 300,000 euros to help it deploy in 170 new cities by 2025. Léa Wester, head project at 6t, a research firm specializing in mobility, is also convinced that car sharing has a role to play in the energy transition.
“His first problem is that we never talk about it, many moreover confuse it with carpooling,” she observes.
The difference ?
Carpooling consists of having other users board your vehicle.
Car sharing offers the sharing of vehicles, rented by the hour, available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, through a fully digital service.
This is the whole promise of car sharing: to be an alternative to the personal car.
This service is rarely used for commuting.
“The average use in car sharing is for a period of 5 to 6 hours and for a journey of 50 km, continues the CEO of Citiz.
It's to do big shopping, to carry heavy loads, take your children to a leisure activity, or even go on a weekend in the countryside.
In other words, occasional but regular mobility needs.
An alternative to the personal car
“And it works”, assures Léa Wester, who was able to measure it in the “Autopartage 2022” survey, carried out by 6t for Ademe.
“Of the 2,000 users questioned, 70% once had a car and no longer had one at the time of the survey, she explains.
Among them, 40% cite the discovery of car sharing as one of the main reasons that made them decide to leave their car.
“Even the second when they have two.
Thus, on average, a car-sharing vehicle replaces between five and eight private cars each year.
"And its users reduce the number of kilometers traveled by up to 1,200 km per year on average", adds the Association of car-sharing players (AAA) in its 2022 barometer. Léa Wester confirms this other benefit of carpooling: "The relation to the car changes.
We are no longer in the reflex use of something that belongs to us.
On the contrary.
For each trip, the car is systematically counterbalanced with other mobility solutions.
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This gives car-sharing some nice arguments to put forward in the current context, where it is necessary both to decongest the road networks of large cities, to fight against air pollution and to decarbonize transport, the leading gas-emitting sector. greenhouse in France.
“If we replace the 40 million internal combustion vehicles in the current fleet with 40 million electric ones, we will not have solved the problem,” recalls Jean-Baptiste Schmider.
Planets finally aligning?
But if carsharing has virtues, it is far from being sufficiently developed to be able to be a real lever
at national scale.
By way of comparison, Germany has three times more subscribers to this type of service, notes the AAA.
Still, things have gotten better in recent years.
"Like carpooling, carsharing has recovered quite well from Covid-19," notes the CEO of Citiz.
On January 1, 2022, there were 12,677 shared vehicles dispatched in 736 municipalities, compared to 11,546 and 701 municipalities a year earlier.
As for the number of unique users [having at least used a car-sharing service during the year], it went from 294,000 to 323,000 in one year, almost returning to its pre-Covid-19 level.
Léa Wester had a hard time imagining that car sharing would not continue on this path.
Everything grows there, according to her, starting with the cost of the car which continues to increase.
In a report from last October, the Climate Action Network put it at 4,210 euros in 2022, against 3,680 euros five years earlier.
Added to this is the gradual introduction of low-emission zones which, by excluding an increasing share of vehicles from large cities, is forcing many French people to renew theirs.
“Or to choose car-sharing precisely”, slips Jean-Baptiste Schmider.
More surprisingly, Léa Wester also cites the bicycle boom as very favorable to car sharing.
“Among the car-sharers, there are many bike riders who have already embarked on this process of reducing their dependence on the car and who, in fact,
A boost expected from the state?
But if the planets seem to align, the Association of car-sharing actors would not be against more public support.
It is "necessary to support the development [de l'carsharing] in the municipalities of the second crown and beyond", where economic profitability is the most difficult to find, she writes in her barometer 2022. "But why not also a car-sharing bonus to encourage the French to try it,” asks Jean-Baptiste Schmider.
The government has just done it on carpooling.
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Company car-sharing, a very good gateway?
Car sharing is also available in companies.
And this service is growing, we assure Mobility Tech Green, a Rennes company that has made it a specialty.
“For economic reasons, more and more companies are looking to optimize their fleet of vehicles,” explains Alexandre Fournier, Mobility Tech Green marketing director.
The idea is no longer to allocate a company vehicle per employee, but to provide a reduced fleet that everyone will reserve according to their needs, including, possibly, personal.
Evenings or weekends.
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Mobility Tech Green thus supports large companies (La Poste, Enedis, Orange, etc.) in the management of their fleet.
“Since Covid-19, we have been working more and more with smaller companies, says Alexandre Fournier.
Some even take the step of opening up their fleet of vehicles to other companies that may need them from time to time.
Alexandre Fournier assures him then: "Going through the company is an excellent gateway to introduce car-sharing".
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