The Expectations towards Cars to Be Used in Car-Sharing Services—The Perspective of the Current Polish Non-Users

Abstract

In the era of upcoming European Union regulations limiting the registration of combustion cars from 2035, the development of various types of alternatives to balancing transport is on the agenda of modern cities. One of these types of services includes automated short-term car rental systems, i.e., car-sharing systems. In recent years, car-sharing services have been gaining more and more interest among operators and municipal authorities. Despite their intense activities, there are still people in society who have not used car-sharing services so far. A lot of research has been devoted to an attempt to answer their needs in the field of car-sharing, but there is a research gap in the field of detailed analyses of the fleet of cars that they would like to use. Noticing this niche, this article is dedicated to the topic of selecting vehicles for car-sharing systems from the point of view of current non-users and indicating the features that, in their opinion, are the most important parameters characterizing the given vehicles. The research was conducted for the Polish car-sharing market. The obtained results indicate that current non-users would be most interested in small, city B-class cars equipped with internal combustion or electric engines, equipped with a large luggage compartment, and meeting the highest safety standards. Interestingly, the issue of the charging time for electric vehicles was not considered crucial. The results showed that the expectations of non-user vehicles are in contradiction to the expectations of current system users. The article supports car-sharing operators who want to properly manage and modernize their fleet of vehicles to encourage the use of car-sharing among those who are currently unconvinced.