More and more shared cars, but they are hardly used

Nearly a million people have once registered with a car-sharing service, but 80 percent never use such a car-sharing service. 200,000 people have used a shared car at least once in the past three years, or 2 percent of the people with a driving license. This is evident from figures from KiM that were published in October. It is at odds with the apparent popularity of shared cars, which is apparent from the figures published today by the Traffic and Transport Knowledge Platform (CROW-KpVV). That report that there were almost 90,000 shared cars on the road this spring and that there were more than 13,000 more than last year.

Only 0.02 percent of all car journeys are made with a shared car and that share has not grown since 2014, according to KiM. More than half of the active car sharers use the shared car at most a few times a year, often at the expense of public transport. The intended decrease in car ownership by shared cars is negligible. The predictions were very different. In 2015, it was still thought that shared cars would be of interest to 20 percent of motorists. In the Green Deal Car Sharing II of 2018, the government and the business community still aimed for 100,000 shared cars and 700,000 users. They turned out to be castles in the air. What has happened: since 2015, 915,000 passenger cars have been added to the Netherlands.

Professor of transport policy Bert van Wee of TU Delft talks to the General Newspaper from: “A few years ago, sharing was almost a hype. Shared cars would become common, because it would be cheaper and more practical. In practice, people seem to prefer to have their own car. For some people, the car offers “also fun and status and that is of course less with a shared car. I do not want to speak of a flop, because there are companies that make money with shared cars, but the high expectations have not been fulfilled.”

It seems expensive

One explanation for the lack of interest in shared cars is the price, Marco van Burgsteden of CROW suspects. For example, if you want to visit a friend who lives 100 kilometers away with a Greenwheels car, you will lose almost €120. “But the hidden costs of owning your own car are also high. If you have to make that trip once a month, a shared car is already cheaper. The high costs of using a shared car make that so. a vehicle is not just used for every short trip.”

About forty companies together now offer 87,825 shared cars. There are a hundred times as many passenger cars as shared cars in the Netherlands. The CROW also includes private shared cars in that figure, whereby you rent a car from someone in the area for a fee, for example via Snappcar. There are far fewer shared cars from companies such as Greenwheels, less than 18,000 units, compared to the total fleet, this is only one in five hundred passenger cars.

Benefits of and for shared cars

Shared cars would have major environmental benefits. They are smaller, more economical and more often electric than an average car. If they strategically have a permanent place in the neighborhood, they can prevent a (second) car being purchased, is still the idea. In busy cities, the shared car is seen as the private means of transport of the future. In the Merwedekanaalzone in Utrecht, for example, 6,500 homes are being built without parking facilities. There will be two collection points for shared cars.

According to KiM, the popularity of shared cars can increase by making car ownership and parking more expensive, making shared cars more financially attractive, but municipalities are not eager to reserve scarce parking spaces for shared cars. And the limited supply in turn inhibits the growth of the shared car. Andrew Berkhout, director of shared car company Greenwheels, argued earlier on this site for lowering the VAT on shared cars from 21 to 9 percent, as is the case with public transport. That would make the shared car financially attractive to more people.

‘It will not replace car ownership’

Van Burgsteden says that the idealistic motives for the use of a shared car have now disappeared and the popularity can only increase if it becomes more practical in the cities not to own a car. Van Wee suspects that the shared car will be slightly more popular in a few years. “But it won’t replace current car ownership, certainly not.” According to the CROW, there has been some increase in the popularity of shared cars in the last two years, especially in the big cities. But it is a growth from very little to something more. It is possible, policymakers hope, that there will be a revival if Google Maps shows available shared cars in addition to public transport travel options.