My simple answer to this - Snake Oil. PERIOD. There is no study done (that I am aware of) that links

This blog post is not about the pros and cons of car sharing service although I will briefly cover this as well. This post is intended to show you how you can monitor your usage costs and thereby SAVE MONEY by using your local car sharing service. I will also compare car sharing program travel cuts canada costs with regular car rental service and car ownership.
The purpose of this post is to enable the reader to make an informed decision on whether car sharing service is right for them and/or to enable existing car sharing service users to optimize their usage. Although my content is Canadian based, it can be applied to any car sharing service globally.
“ Carsharing or car-sharing is a model of car rental where people rent cars for short periods of time, often by the hour. They are attractive to customers travel cuts canada who make only occasional use of a vehicle, as well as others who would like occasional access to a vehicle of a different type than they use day-to-day. The organization renting the cars may be a commercial business travel cuts canada or the users may be organized as a democratically controlled company, public agency, cooperative, ad hoc grouping. Today there are more than one thousand cities in the world where people can carshare ”.
When I arrived in Toronto I owned my vehicle. The cost of parking and insurance in Downtown Toronto was prohibitive and thus I chose to sell my car and benefit from the extensive public transit available in the City. However, work and personal reasons required the use of a vehicle on many occasions.  In fact in my professional life, I am required to have a car. I was for the longest time I could fathom, the only one of my kind in my vehicle intensive profession that survived without owning a vehicle, saved money, travel cuts canada and in fact made some extra money than I otherwise would have with car ownership. Read on to see how.
At that time car sharing was relatively new concept travel cuts canada in Canada. I came across a new operator on the scene called AutoShare . I relied on using this car sharing program for all my professional and personal needs. I have been a member of AutoShare since 2005 and thus have extensive experience on using car sharing service. I have also compared it against other car sharing programs that later arrived. Each program offers some benefits that are suitable travel cuts canada for some and not for all. It is up to you to decide which program is best suited for you. In some cases, you don’t have a choice really, since there may be only one provider at present.
There are different programs and services offered by each provider. You should review travel cuts canada the program features on the respective websites and understand it clearly. You can also speak to a rep from the company to explain the process to you.
There will also be several penalty fees. You MUST be aware of these from the beginning. I consider these penalty fees akin to credit card interest travel cuts canada fees. As long as you keep paying the balance off each month you are fine, but boy o boy, even a small shortfall in full payment BAM! You are hit with the full interest charge. In effect, these penalty fees can add up in time and prevent your plans for money savings in the long run. WATCH OUT! You have been warned.
For example, one penalty travel cuts canada charge I particularly despised as a car sharing user (and common to all other providers) is the late return fee. Indeed, the purpose travel cuts canada of this is in place to users don’t misuse the system travel cuts canada and freeload on excess travel cuts canada time or inconvenience the next user of the same vehicle. However, travel cuts canada the penalty fee was quite high. This meant that getting the vehicle back to the lot in time was CRITICAL. This may cause users to drive aggressively to reach the lot in time, which could have resulted in potential accidents to vehicle and person/s. Plus sometimes there may be genuine reasons for delay, like traffic or sudden road closures. What would be beneficial to have is perhaps an incremental late charge – so you are penalized more for extensively and intentionally delaying return, but not much for a small infraction.
However, like personal travel cuts canada savings and budgeting plans that ask you to keep tab of expenses, I highly recommend you monitor your detailed usage costs on a monthly and annual basis to make sure that your usage costs lower than your total cost of vehicle ownership. As long as the former usage costs remains lower than that for the latter, you are good. For this purpose I have included travel cuts canada below a pre-formatted downloadable Excel worksheet that I used when I was regular user of AutoShare. I think the worksheet is self-explanatory and can be modified easily with variable and fixed costs specific to your car sharing program. A brief explanation is given below. Feel free to leave a comment with any question you may have on this chart.
This example below is taken from a prior year usage with AutoShare. As you can see, the Gross Trip Charge was based on a combination of total kilometers driven plus hours rented. The KM usage rate and hourly rate varied based on the plan I selected and for the total time I chose for the rental. Based on your program features, input the appropriate rates per usage. There is a column labeled Reimbursed Charge . This pertains to any charges that are reimbursed to you (eg. Gas fill, car wash, discounts etc.) that are deducted from the Gross Trip Charge. Finally, there is the Monthly travel cuts canada Plan Fee that must be included to obtain total Fees.
The service travel cuts canada will require you to fill your own gas and return tank full (like regular car rental companies) OR use one of their pre-loaded gas cars in the vehicle to fill the tank when it runs low OR credit travel cuts canada you for the amount you filled (because you are already paying gas charge in the aforementioned DISTANCE usage fee that is based on the total kilometers driven).
I have never considered gas cost as a variable in my calculations travel cuts canada because this is outside of the vehicle usage costs. In other words, whether you use car rental, car sharing, or your own vehicle you pay fuel costs at existing market rates in all cases. Thus to isolate the costs exclusive to vehicle usage for comparative purposes, fuel costs have to be removed.
Given what you know for monthly and annual charges using car sharing service, you can compare it with charges from alternative vehicle usage options such as car rental facilities and of course car ownership.
Before the advent of car sharing services, there has always been the Avises and Hertzes of the car rental business. Their model is simple. A daily or weekly rate + gas refill + optional service fees. I am a big fan of car rental companies. I get to sample various new models and most of their vehicles don’t have the stigma of the pesky ‘sharing’ tag imprinted in large on car sharing vehicles. Discretion is highly needed in certain instances say when you have to drive around a key client travel cuts canada or family members. In my hypothetical rental scenario, I have excluded all optional travel cuts canada rental charges such as insurance travel cuts canada coverage from the rental company as most premium credit cards offer this coverage by default (always check first with your card company) and if I had to actually pay these fees on regular basis, then car rental becomes a mighty expensive option. For this example I have used rates from a Budget location in Toronto. You can easily price rental rates online for respective car rental companies.
Let me warn all car sharers upfront who plan to forgo ownership for sharing. YOU WILL FACE TAUNTS from family friends and co-workers. Car ownership pride is akin to home ownership pride which is a universal travel cuts canada phenomenon. I have faced taunts and glib comments travel cuts canada from all sorts of folks from all walks of life. There is a certain stigma to being seen in a vehicle that implicitly shouts “ I can’t afford to own my car so I’m driving around in a pay as you go vehicle ”. It is true, it does exist, no one cares for your eco-cred, so learn to deal with it. PERIOD.
In this hypothetical scenario I am only going to compare ownership with a typical mid-size vehicle that is bank financed. The base model is a new Ford Focus ($14,869 MSRP), $3,000 cash down, $11,500 financed over 5-year term using 5.5% interest rate. A simple travel cuts canada calculator is available at TD Bank site [ www.tdautoloanscalculator.com ]
As you can see clearly, car sharing and even car rental is a bargain in comparison to car ownership under the scenario that I use a vehicle no more than 7 times in a month. Indeed travel cuts canada there will be a point with increased usage where car sharing and car rental will be more expensive than ownership.
But you can see now from this exercise that you have quantitative data that you can compile to make the case for choosing between car sharing, car rental and car ownership across different travel cuts canada stages of your life.
My simple answer to this – Snake Oil. PERIOD. There is no study done (that I am aware of) that links reduced overall emissions to car sharing programs. I compare this to the Prius Paradox – An user feels good by driving a Prius due to low emissions but ends up negating this benefit by driving more thereby burning more fuel in the long run and discounting the impact of not so eco-friendly fuel cell batteries.
In my case, I know for certain that if car sharing or car rental was not available or cost prohibitive to me I could simple chose to take public travel cuts canada transportation at much lower cost. Even when I had the lower cost option of taking public transport, I chose the higher cost option of taking car sharing vehicle due to convenience!
Take the reimbursement charges as an example. I always filled up the tank with gas on each AutoShare trip no matter what even though it was not mandatory. Why? Well, to avail of the various and generous reward merchants offered by fuel operators. In other words, I maximized the reward utility by charging this cost on my credit card and loyalty card to rack up reward points rapidly.
If you look back at my excel spreadsheet example, travel cuts canada you will see that I would pay this equivalent portion of the charge any case to the company. If I did not fill gas,