Selection of Car Models with a Classic and Alternative Drive to the Car-Sharing Services from the System’s Rare Users Perspective

Abstract

Short-term, automated car rental services, i.e., car sharing, are a solution that has been improving in urban transportation systems over the past few years. Due to the intensive expansion of the systems, service providers face increasing challenges in their competitiveness. One of them is to meet the customer expectations for the fleet of vehicles offered in the system. Although this aspect is noted primarily in the literature review on fleet optimization and management, there is a gap in research on the appropriate selection of vehicle models. In response, the article aimed to identify the vehicles best suited for car-sharing systems from the customer’s point of view. The selection of suitable vehicles was treated as a multi-criteria decision-making issue; therefore, the study used ELECTRE III—one of the multi-criteria decision-making methods. The work focuses on researching the opinions of users who rarely use car-sharing services in Poland. The most popular car models in 2021, equipped with internal combustion, hybrid, and electric engines, were selected for the analysis. The results indicate that the best suited cars are relatively large, spacious, and equipped with electric drive and represent the D segment of vehicles in Europe. In addition, these vehicles are to be equipped with a powerful engine, a spacious boot, and a fast battery charging time. Interestingly, small city cars, so far associated with car sharing, ranked the worst in the classification method. In addition, factors such as the warranty period associated with the quality of the vehicles, or the number of car doors, are not very important to users. The results support car-sharing operators in the process of selecting or modernizing a fleet of vehicles.