Carsharing Worldwide: Case Studies on Carsharing Development in China, Europe, Japan, and the United States

Abstract

Carsharing has received considerable attention as a sustainable mobility paradigm. Various service designs and dynamic business environments have increased the decision complexity for the carsharing business. Therefore, carsharing operators require a tool for assessing business development from holistic perspectives. This research provides a framework for outlining the requirements of the carsharing system with holistic perspectives of stakeholders being considered, as well as to derive assessment metrics for examining carsharing development. To create the framework, the system modeling tool, context diagram, was adopted to map out the interactions of externalities with the system and the requirements of the system. Eight assessment metrics: the market condition, business advantage, parking condition, electric vehicle deployment, self-serving configuration, vehicle reservation, vehicle maintenance, and pricing scheme, were eventually identified from the system modeling. From these dimensions, we review 24 carsharing cases from China, Europe, Japan, and the United States, and we summarize discrepancies among different marketplaces and some managerial insights on carsharing development, such as carsharing motivators and inhibitors, innovations in respect of different business backgrounds, approaches of increasing parking privileges, approaches of increasing electrifications, essential digital features, reservation regimes, methods of vehicle maintenances, and service pricing regimes.