the emergence of a nation-wide carsharing co - communauto

The Emergence of a Nation-wide Carsharing

Co-operative in Switzerland

This report by Sylvia Harms and Bernard Truffer has been kindly made available by itsauthors for the library. Background information on the project of which it is part is availableat http://www.jrc.es/snm/

SNM case study: Carsharing

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Table of contents

Summary.......................................................................................................................................4

Acknowledgements.....................................................................................................................5

Introduction...................................................................................................................................6

1. Carsharing in Europe: The situation before the experiments .......................................... 91.1 The niche of organised carsharing .......................................................................................9

1.2 The Swiss carsharing co-operatives...................................................................................111.2.1 ShareCom ......................................................................................................................111.2.2 ATG•AutoTeilet Genossenschaft ......................................................................................12

1.3 Carsharing in Germany and in the Netherlands.................................................................141.3.1. Germany........................................................................................................................141.3.2 The Netherlands..............................................................................................................15

2. Development of the niche in Switzerland.......................................................................... 172.1 The beginning: Two organisational philosophies and growth mechanisms ......................17

2.1.1 ShareCom ......................................................................................................................172.1.2 ATG ...............................................................................................................................18

2.2 Strategies in technological innovation................................................................................182.2.1 ShareCom ......................................................................................................................182.2.2 ATG ...............................................................................................................................19

2.3 Development of the two carsharing-organisations.............................................................192.3.1 Development phases: Pre-phase (before 1987).................................................................202.3.2 Foundation phase (1987-89) ............................................................................................212.3.3 Beginning growth phase and first attempts for a fusion (1989-92) .......................................222.3.4 Consolidation phase and political support measures (1992-95)...........................................242.3.5 A phase of events and changes (1995-96) ........................................................................262.3.6 Merger and foundation of the Mobility co-operative (1997) .................................................292.3.7 Pro Share, a spinn-off of the merger .................................................................................31

2.4 The support network for carsharing in Switzerland............................................................332.4.1 National traffic clubs ........................................................................................................332.4.2 Automobile industry .........................................................................................................342.4.3 Car rental firms................................................................................................................342.4.4 Local authorities and parties.............................................................................................352.4.5 Media .............................................................................................................................362.4.6 Other organisations .........................................................................................................36


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2.4.7 Members ........................................................................................................................372.4.8 ECS and BOA.................................................................................................................372.4.9 Network graph.................................................................................................................39

3. Other carsharing experiments in Europe .......................................................................... 403.1 StattAuto Berlin: The scientific approach ...........................................................................40

3.2 „Stichting voor Gedeeld Autogebruik“: The market-led approach......................................43

3.3 Introduction of carsharing in Switzerland, Germany and the Netherlands ........................47

4. The role of political support measures within the different experiments...................... 494.1 Political support measures in Switzerland..........................................................................49

4.1.1 Support activities.............................................................................................................494.1.2 Lessons learned in the context of the promotional program ................................................50

4.2 Political support measures in other countries ....................................................................54

5. The carsharing-users: Is carsharing a „sustainable transportation system“? ............. 565.1 The carsharing-users in Switzerland..................................................................................56

5.1.1 Data base .......................................................................................................................565.1.2 Bottom-up experimentation and learning from the users.....................................................565.1.3 Mobility patterns and motivations......................................................................................585.1.4 The emergence of new mobility forms...............................................................................61

5.2 The carsharing-users in Germany and in the Netherlands................................................625.2.1 Bottom-up experimentation and learning from the users.....................................................625.2.2 Mobility patterns, motivations and new mobility forms ........................................................63

6. Discussion and evaluation...................................................................................................676.1 Technology, niche, variation and selection ........................................................................67

6.2 Success factors...................................................................................................................68

6.3 Regime shift ........................................................................................................................70

7. References.............................................................................................................................72

Appendix A: Background of this report ..................................................................................76


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SummaryThis report focuses on the emergence and professionalisation of two carsharing co-operative in Switzerland.They were both founded, independently of each other, in 1987 and merged into one national co-operative inmay 1997. Today, the co-operative covers almost the totality of organised carsharing in Switzerland.“Organised carsharing”, means that an organisation owns a number of cars which may be used by membersof the organisations following certain reservation procedures.

Switzerland was the first country in which organised forms of carsharing were developed. But only shorttime later, from 1988 onwards (and independently of the ongoing developments in Switzerland) a number ofcarsharing organisations were founded in other European countries as well, especially in Germany, theNetherlands and Austria. However, the market was much more diversified here from the very beginning -with respect to the providers as well as the organisational form of carsharing. Today, about 70.000 people aremembers of a carsharing organisation in those four countries, not to count those who privately share carswith friends, neighbours or family members. Annual growth rates are relatively high in all countries. In orderto learn about the essential societal and infrastructure preconditions which enabled carsharing to becomepopular, the report compares the Swiss developments with the emergence of carsharing in Germany and inthe Netherlands.

Carsharing can be considered as a service innovation. Mobility is covered by conventional middle classautomobiles while the main innovation consists of the organisation of a shared car use. However, in order tobe successful, a number of technological innovations had to be introduced, as well. A reservation andaccounting system as well as means for access control had to be invented (e.g. by installing on-boardcomputers in the cars). The huge success of carsharing was thus dependent on the existence, diffusion andmaturity of new information and telecommunication technologies. In order to reach a broader market, thesupport of different societal actors was essential. Besides official promotion programs lanced by nationalagencies, also traffic clubs, environmental organisations, the media and others helped the carsharingorganisations on their way to success.

During the diffusion process of carsharing, providers as well as carsharing users underwent a number oflearning processes. In Switzerland and in Germany providers and users of carsharing were identical in thebeginning. By giving the users a right to a say in organisational matters, the needs of the users couldadequately be considered in carrying out organisational changes. In return, the early carsharing users activelyhelped to build up the carsharing organisations by applying specific „protection measures“ to the newtechnology. In the Netherlands, the users’ needs were captured by regular market surveys.

Seen the users’ mobility behaviour, carsharing proves to be a technology that opens ways to a moresustainable transport system. Former car owners continuously reduce their car use and make use of publictransport more frequently, former non-car owners keep their low level of individual mobility. Those learningprocesses seem to be system-inherent: The reservation system and cost structure of carsharing organisationshinder consumers from making use of the car in a habitual way.

Carsharing cannot operate without a sufficiently dense and attractive network of public transport. In regionswhere such a network is at disposal, carsharing may establish itself as a complement for a largely public


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transport oriented mobility style. In the long run, carsharing has the potential to form part of a larger systemof „integrated mobility services“, i.e., a fruitful combination of individual and public transport. Such offershave already been developed in Switzerland and in Germany in the context of the carsharing initiatives.

Acknowledgements

We thank all interview partners (the list is given below) and participants in the groupdiscussions for taking part in our research and answering the many questions we had. Wealso thank the carsharing managers who put a lot of information material at our disposal.

Furthermore, we were in close contact to and had a lively exchange of information andideas with other researchers in Switzerland, Germany and the Netherlands. Here wewould like to thank Sassa Franke (Berlin, Germany), Andreas Knie (WZB, Berlin), RensMeijkamp (Delft, The Netherlands), Felix Davatz (Zurich, Switzerland), and ConradWagner (Lucerne, Switzerland) for this interesting and stimulating exchange. Specialthanks are due to Peter Muheim (Lucerne, Switzerland) who extensively reviewed thecase study material.

Finally, we would like to thank our project-coordinators, partners and the members of theuser group in the Strategic Niche Mangement project for their many valuable commentsand hints during project workshops and the very positive working environment over theentire project time.

Responsibility for the statements made in the report remains with the authors.


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Introduction

The report on the emergence of a nation-wide carsharing co-operative in Switzerland wascarried out for the research project «Strategic Niche Management as a Tool for Transitionto a Sustainable Transportation System» (duration: May 1996 - October 1998). Thisproject is supported by the European Commission, DG XII, within the area "HumanDimensions of Environmental Change" of the RTD Programme "Environment andClimate".1

The report is based on a number of different sources:

• We analysed official documents published by ATG and ShareCom (the original Swisscarsharing co-operatives, see below), by Mobility (the new, national carsharing co-operative) and ProShare (the spin-off carsharing association), and by differentcarsharing organisations in Germany and in the Netherlands. Those documents rangedfrom statutes of the respective organisations, member journals and information for newmembers, to reports on surveys among their members and reports on the developmentof their organisation.

• We analysed media reports on carsharing and reports and lectures regardingcarsharing in Switzerland, Germany and in the Netherlands.

∞ We carried out personal interviews with the carsharing organisers (on different

organisational levels). A list of our interview partners is given below. Those interviewswere non-standardised in-depth interviews, following a detailed interview guide. In theinterviews, we wanted to learn about the development of the respective organisation,developmental phases, facilitating and hindering factors in the development, the goalsand expectations of the organisers with respect to their enterprise (and possiblechanges of those expectations by time), the supporting network surrounding theorganisation, received and desired political support measures and the experiences theymade with the members of their organisation. The interviews thus tried to understandthe organisational development as well as the accompanying learning and changeprocesses during the course of the years. Such processes can best be grasped withopen, non-standardised interviews since no fixed answer format is given and theinterview partners’ readiness to answer and their openness is enhanced. All interviewswere fully transcribed and analysed along the main topics of the interview guide.

∞ We carried out personal interviews with people who influenced the development of the

carsharing organisations or who were affected by this development (the "network" bywhich the carsharing organisations are surrounded). A list of our interview partners isalso given below. Currently a Swiss research project on carsharing is carried out whichbesides other aspects interviews institutions in the environment of carsharing. We willbe able to complement our work by the results of this study, which will be finished byMarch 1998. We restricted our data gathering process mainly on the Swiss carsharing

1 More details on the research context of the report are given in Appendix A.


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network. For analysing the situation in Germany and in the Netherlands we rely onrespective statements given by the carsharing organisations themselves. Again weheld non-standardised in-depth interviews led along an interview guide. First, ourinterview partners were asked to describe the structures of their own organisation andthe activities they were busy with. Then they were asked how much they knew aboutcarsharing, how long they already followed the development of carsharing inSwitzerland, how they assessed those developments and, if applicable, which activitiesthey had undertaken in order to support carsharing. Finally they should give theiropinion on political support measures for carsharing, their preferences about theorganisation of such support measures and their expectations about the futuredevelopment of carsharing.

• We carried out qualitative interviews and group discussions with carsharing membersin Switzerland (40 members in total). The procedure of this survey is described inchapter 5. With respect to the carsharing members we also relied on quantitativesurveys either carried out by the carsharing organisations of their own accord or byindependent researchers who worked on behalf of national ministries. The latterstudies aimed at finding out if carsharing is indeed an environmentally benignalternative to private car ownership and at estimating its future market potential.

ATG:

• Conrad Wagner (founder and president, 2 interviews)• Christian Vonarburg (managing director)• Peter Muheim (member of the board and researcher)• Christoph Bucher (branch leader)• Heiner Zweifel (former active member, car-operator)

ShareCom:

• Charles Nufer (founder and president until the end of 1996)• Lorenzo Martinoni (managing director, 2 interviews)• Monika Tschannen (managing director of sister-organisation CSC)• Marcel Gehrig (regional coordinator)• Alois Murer (co-founder and former active member, car-operator)• Lukas Neff (former active member, car-operator)

Mobility:

• Discussion workshop with members of the Mobility board (Conrad Wagner, MonikaTschannen, Peter Muheim, Michel Flamm)

ProShare:

• Charles Nufer (founder, same interview as above)• Lukas Neff (founder, same interview as above)

European carsharing

• Carsten Petersen, StattAuto Berlin (managing director)• Joachim Schwarz, StattAuto Bremen and ECS/European CarSharing (managing

director ECS)


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• Roger Theunissen, „Stichting voor Gedeeld Autogebruik“ (managing director of theDutch foundation for carsharing)

Swiss carsharing network:

• Ernst Reinhardt, BEW/Bundesamt für Energiewirtschaft (2 interviews)• Monika Tschannen, VCS/Verkehrsclub der Schweiz (same interview as above)• Mr. Riedwyl, TCS/Touring Club Schweiz (interview by Felix Davatz, see above)• Hans Hüflinger, Opel Switzerland• Hans-Peter Schick, VSAI/Verband Schweizerischer Automobilimporteure• Regula Hanimann, VBZ/Verkehrsbetriebe Zürich (interview by Felix Davatz)• Mr. Gürtler, Hertz (interview by Felix Davatz)

The report starts by describing the “technology” of organised carsharing in Europe. In thesecond chapter the history of the emergence and professionalisation of the two formercarsharing co-operatives in Switzerland is reconstructed. This story is especiallyinteresting because of the strongly oppositional managerial philosophies which guided thetwo co-operatives and which eventually led to the merger into a nation-wide co-operative.The third chapter compares the developments in Switzerland with the experiences inGermany and the Netherlands. In the context of Strategic Niche Management, the role ofactors who support the innovation, their networks and learning processes are especiallyimportant. In the case of carsharing in Switzerland, policy programs and carsharing usersplayed a major role. The fourth chapter, therefore, analyses the role of political supportmeasures within the different national experiences. The following chapter concentrates onthe role of users in the development of the innovation and on the user’s learning processesat the level of mobility behaviour. Finally, the potential of carsharing to lead to a moresustainable mobility system is discussed in the sixth chapter.


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1. Carsharing in Europe: The situation before the experiments

1.1 The niche of organised carsharing

Carsharing means the common use of vehicles by various users in succession andindependent of each other. The duration and target of individual car trips is self-determinedby the respective car users. If various persons make use of the same car at the same time(e.g. several people going to the same workplace in the same car) one speaks of car-pooling (Muheim 1996). While sharing cars with others, a spontaneous use of cars is moredifficult, because the most important feature of carsharing is an uncoupling of theownership and use of cars: The individual right of disposal is substituted by a collectiveone (Baum & Pesch 1994). Almost every country knows private (informal) forms of carsharing, i.e., neighbours, friendsor family members share a car. The ownership can be arranged in different ways: Eitherone person owns the car and others may also use it (which is often the case if familymembers share a car) or several people together own the car and make arrangementsabout the rights and duties of each owner (the preferred form if different families or friendsshare a car). The degree of formality of sharing cars can also vary: Some people onlymake informal arrangements about the use of the cars, others sign detailed formalcontracts. Since the most problematic threshold for sharing cars with others areassurances (covering themselves in the event of a claim), national associations (e.g. theGerman traffic association VCD, “Verkehrsclub Deutschland“, see VCD 1996, or the Dutchfoundation for carsharing, „Stichting voor Gedeeld Autogebruik“) support such privateforms of carsharing by distributing specimen contracts to interested persons. Additionally,they negotiate with assurances in order to facilitate carsharing. It is difficult to estimate the total number of private carsharers, since no formal registrationis needed. In most countries many more people own a driving license than a car. In 1990,e.g., there were 36 million owners of a driving license in Germany (West-Germany only,Der Bundesminister für Verkehr 1993, see Baum & Pesch 1994), but only 26 million cars.So there must be a number of cars which are not used by one person only, but which arealso lent to others. The estimated number of carsharers in the Netherlands is about50,000. This certainly is a conservative estimation, since currently there are 6 million cars,but 9 million owners of a driving license. The number is given by the Dutch foundation forcarsharing and it is based on the number of inquiries they get from private persons whoseek for help in organising carsharing (the foundation runs a public telephone line whichcan be contacted by interested people). For the purposes of the SNM project, a niche is defined as a specific domain for theapplication of a new technology in which producers and users form an alliance to protectnew technologies against too harsh market selection. A technology niche is characterisedby: a) the technology under development


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b) a specific network of actors/partners c) a specific application “Organised carsharing” is the niche towards which the experiments we have analysed isdirected. It is posited somewhere in between traditional forms of “private carsharing” andcar rental. “The private car” is often a resource which is shared within a restricted circle ofusers, normally located in or around a specific household and encompassing relatives andfriends. The ownership-right and therefore the responsibility for maintaining the car is oftenheld by a specific member of this household (typically the male “head” of the household).Therefore all the use conflicts which may generate may be handled with a purely privatemode of conflict resolution. Organised forms of car sharing challenge this conception bycreating a new use-and-ownership paradigm for transport which expands the circle ofusers which may have access to a specific car and professionalises the duties which areassociated with the ownership of a car. By this they bridge the currently still deepeningdivision between “public” and “private” forms of transport and plant the seed for a radicaltransformation of the prevailing transport regime2. Table 1 classifies different forms of non-purely private use of cars.

Table 1: Different forms of a common use of cars (Baum&Pesch 1994) informal formal

Car-Pooling informal car pools agency for arranging lifts, agency for job commuters

Car-Sharing carsharing within households, withfriends/family members

organised carsharing, „neighbour cars“ car renting, taxi

Organised carsharing creates a new use-and-ownership paradigm, by offering anavailability of cars which is almost as reliable, comfortable and flexible as possessing acar, but at the same time it liberates the customer from all the negative implications ofactual ownership. The development of such a system has only been possible in the lastdecade and has to be seen as a product innovation in its own right. This innovation seems,at a first look, to have had mainly organisational and marketing components. However, thehuge success of some of these experiments was crucially dependent on the existence,diffusion and maturity of new information and telecommunication technologies. Thesetechnologies enhanced the comfort for the reservation of cars and increased the flexibilityof attributing a pool of cars to a multitude of users. In the near future, automatic tracking ofvehicles and automatic billing of trips with the help of on-board computers will play an evenmore important role in the further diffusion of the innovation. The innovation we refer toconstitutes, therefore, a fully fledged example of a technological niche, in which users andtechnology and their mutual shaping may be analysed. The comparison between theSwiss experiments and the developments in Germany and the Netherlands shows thatthere has been ample room for variation of the concepts and that they carry the potentialto transform fundamental building blocks of the prevailing transport regime.

2 A technological regime is defined as ”the whole complex of scientific knowledge, engineering practices,production process technologies, product characteristics, skills and procedures, and institutions andinfrastructures that make up the totality of a technology.” (Kemp et al, 1997)


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1.2 The Swiss carsharing co-operatives

In Switzerland, two carsharing organisations developed out of a number of privatecarsharing initiatives since 1987 - ShareCom, mainly located in the German-speakingparts of Switzerland with a focus in and around Zurich and ATG ("AutoTeiletGenossenschaft"), spread all over Switzerland. They both had the form of a co-operative.Their members purchased a certain share before joining the system, which they got backwhen they left the organisation. In May 1997 both co-operatives merged. The newlyfounded organisation, still a co-operative, is named "Mobility, CarSharing Switzerland" andis based on a professionally organised system mainly orientated along the former ATG-rules.

1.2.1 ShareCom

Fees: In 1996, ShareCom-members purchased a share of 1000 SFR, paid a fee of 60 SFRper year and a combined charge of km driven and time for renting the car. This chargewas dependent on the car type (e.g. for a family car 0,55 SFR per km and 1,25 SFR perhour). Included in the price were all costs, ranging from gasoline to assurances. All userswere assigned to a regional "user-group", i.e., to a certain location of the car(s) in theirimmediate vicinity. If people were interested in founding a new user-group, at least 5households had to bring in at least 10,000 SFR, in total, into the co-operative so that anew car could be bought. User groups: For each user-group there was one central group leader("Benutzungsgruppenleiter") and a number of "car-operators" ("Wagenchefs") who wereresponsible for a car each and who on an unpaid basis took care for the technical state ofthe cars (i.e., bring cars into car repair shops if necessary). The group leader also workedon an voluntary basis. S/he was the person to be contacted when problems with the carsor with the organisation occurred and thus represented the communication interfacebetween the users and the organisation. The responsibility of being a car operator was ayearly alternating job among the members of a user-group. Additionally, all membersshould take care of the car wash in alternation. User-groups met annually and determineda delegate for meetings of the whole organisation (see fig. 1). Co-operative organs: The central decision making organ for decisions concerning generalprinciples of the co-operative was the totality of all members. General decisions weremade by ballots. On the organisational side there was a central office ("Geschäftsstelle")who carried out the financial and other administrative duties. It was subjected to agoverning board ("Verwaltungsrat") who was in overall control of the businessresponsibilities of the co-operative. Delegate meetings were the platform for informationexchange and information dissemination between members and organisation. Memberswere also informed about new developments by a member journal published twice a year.Additionally, an "ethical board" ("Ethischer Rat") was created in order to give advice in allecologically relevant questions of the co-operative (see fig.1).


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Fig. 1: Organisation of ShareCom

Reservation and use system: At the end of 1996, ShareCom had 5400 members who intotal ran 286 cars, mostly in the German-speaking parts of Switzerland (with a focus in andaround Zurich). Reservations for a car could be made by audiotex (telephone computer) orby PC. ShareCom members could make use of all ShareCom-cars. However, mostreservations were made for cars in vicinity to the own house. 69% of all ShareCom-userslived at a distance of less than 10 minutes to the closest ShareCom-car. Only 6% hadtravelled more than 20 min (ShareCom 1995). Dependent on the number of users in acertain region, an all-purpose car or a number of different car-types were available at onelocation. All members disposed of a special key which could be used for opening a metalbox at the location of the car in which the car keys were deposited. A journey book for theregistration of the driven km and of special occurrences was located in the car (see fig.2).

1.2.2 ATG•AutoTeilet Genossenschaft

Fees: ATG did not differ much from ShareCom in its structure. Members either purchaseda share of 1000 SFR and paid an entrance fee of 200 SFR and no further annual fees, orthey did not buy any share but paid an annual fee of 100 SFR instead. ATG's drivingcharge per hour was higher than ShareCom’s and somewhat lower per km driven (e.g., in

group leader

car-operator

Totality of all members: Ballots & delegate meetings

central office

governing board

ethical board

user groups

group leader

car-operator

group leader

car-operator car-operator

group leader


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1996 users had to pay 0.50 SFR per km for a family car (up to 100 km driven), 0.40 SFRfrom 100 km onwards and 2.35 SFR per hour, all costs included). Branches: Members were not gathered in "user-groups", but in "branches" ("Filialen") whoannually met and also determined delegates who had to represent the group in meetingsof the co-operative. Like ShareCom, ATG knew "branch leaders" ("Filialleiter") and caroperators. In contrast to ShareCom the users themselves did not have to take care of thecars (car wash etc.). Instead, the branch leader and car operators looked after them andwere financially compensated for their work by a flat rate. Co-operative organs: With the exception of an "ethical board" (which was substituted by anauditing commission) the organisational structure and means of information dissemination(a member journal) were the same. Reservation and use system: Reservations for the cars were made by telephone via a 24-hours attended telephone-line. The key-and-box-technology was the same as forShareCom, and users also had to register the km driven in a journey book located in thecars (see fig. 2). ATG was spread all over Switzerland and counted 6800 users and 350 cars at the end of1996. ATG-members could make use of all ATG-cars, but like in ShareCom the car mostoften used was the car of the branch a person belonged to.

Fig.2: Carsharing (ATG & ShareCom): Reservation and usage system (Autoteilen Österreich 1997)

4. write down drivenhours and kilometers

2. go to car locationwith personal key

1. make a reservation(by telephone or PC)

3. drive during reservedtime, bring car back tooriginal location


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1.3 Carsharing in Germany and in the Netherlands

1.3.1. Germany

Currently there are more than 60 carsharing organisations in Germany with about 20,000carsharing members (Bröer 1997b). A number of carsharing organisations is only presentin one city or a smaller area, some others are branches of a greater umbrella organisation,the „Carsharing Germany o-operative“ („Car-Sharing Deutschland Genossenschaft e.G.“),founded by the „green“ German traffic club VCD („Verkehrsclub Deutschland“) in order tospread carsharing in smaller towns or even rural areas, too (see 3.1). Organisational forms: In Germany, carsharing is not bound to a specific legalorganisational form. There are currently three different forms chosen by the organisations:Registered societies („eingetragener Verein“/e.V.), registered co-operatives („eingetrageneGenossenschaft“/e.G.) and limited companies („Gesellschaft mit beschränkterHaftung“/GmbH). More than half of the carsharing-organisations opted for the form of a registered society,because joining and withdrawal can easily be organised and the members dispose of anumber of rights of participation. Registered societies can, however, only follow idealisticaims, i.e., if they strive for mere economic aims, they have to be organised in a differentmanner (e.g. in the form of a limited company, Baum & Pesch 1994). Because of the easeto found a registered society, this form is especially suitable when an organisation is newlyfounded. By time, a transition to other organisational forms can be made, e.g. to a limitedcompany. The advantage of a limited company is the possibility of unhindered economic activity. It isa favourable form for bigger organisations who understand themselves as businessenterprises. In this case, they offer the service of a common use of vehicles to externalclients who have no right to a say in a matter. Disadvantages are a number of formalregulations and foundation costs. In order to nevertheless integrate the carsharing members/clients into organisationaldiscussions, mixed forms are also possible. E.g. the members found a registered societywhich is independent of the limited company and which represents their interests withregard to the organisation. By this measure, a profit-oriented enterprise policy chargeableto its members is avoided (loc.cit.). One organisation who introduced such a mixed form isStattAuto Berlin. As Carsten Petersen, managing director, puts it: „ ...the other reason (forchoosing the form of a limited company) were a bit egocentric reasons, that we said, wewant to have this thing in our hands and we want to decide. That we said, we want thisflexibility. (...) No enterprise without risk. Co-operatives are not inclined to take risks,because the members of the co-operative (...) would say: Why then? We are fine. Whyshould we do something of which we do not know the exact result? (...) (On the otherhand) we are very dependent on this right to a say of our users. (...) (Carsharing) is a verycomplex system that everybody has to go along with, and therefore one has to try tocreate a certain identification of the clients with the organisation, and there has to happen


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more between consumer and organisation. (...) This way, it is possible to strongly reducethe damages, res. if a damage happens, that people indeed report it to the centre.“ 20% of all German carsharing-organisations are organised as a registered co-operative.The aim of a co-operative is self-help of its members by mutual support. The membersbring in the necessary capital and, as a countermove, participation, in-house democracy,self-administration and transparency are guaranteed. Due to legal reglementations, thefoundation of a co-operative in Germany is, however, a time-intensive and costlyendeavour. The same holds for corporations, („Aktiengesellschaften“/AGs), too (statementof Carsten Petersen). In Switzerland, it is just the opposite, and therefore a high number ofco-operatives and corporations exist here in different societal areas. The choice of anorganisational form for carsharing is thus not only dependent on the aims followed by theorganisation (i.e. if it stronger focuses on idealistic aims or if it wants to become a businessenterprise), but it also depends on legal reglementations. Reservation and use system: The carsharing-system equals the Swiss one: Interestedpersons become members of the organisation, pay an annual or monthly fee (or a uniquedeposit/share without further administrative fees), get a key or a chipcard for a box that isinstalled at the car location and can take the car if they made a reservation in advance(mainly by telephone. Often the organisations do not run an own reservation line, but theyare connected to a taxi enterprise or a similar organisation which can be reached during24 hours of the day). Reservations can be made a very short time in advance, and theminimum reservation time is 1-2 hours. After having used the car, users have to writedown the kilometres and time they have driven, or their chipcard automatically registersthe driving data and transfers them to a central office. Driving charges have to be paidmonthly. Labour input of the members: The organisational philosophies differ among the differentcarsharing organisations. Whereas own labour input of the members is forced by someorganisations (especially in co-operatives), others understand themselves as serviceenterprises and offer a full car service to their members. They pay car-operators who areresponsible for such duties (e.g. StattAuto Berlin, see Petersen 1994).

1.3.2 The Netherlands

The structure of carsharing in the Netherlands largely differs from Germany andSwitzerland, not only with respect to its organisational forms, but also with respect to itsreservation and usage system. Organisational forms: There are about 30 different carsharing-organisations in theNetherlands with up to date more than 25,000 members (Autodate 1997a). On the onehand, some carsharing-organisations were founded in a bottom-up manner like inGermany and in Switzerland (see 3.2). The cars of those organisations are located invicinity to their member households. However, in contrast to the other two countries, theirorganisational form is a mere service enterprise without the right to a say of the membersin organisational matters. On the other hand, already existent mobility providers like carrenters, the automobile industry and the national traffic club introduced innovative forms of


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car renting which are also subsumed under the label of carsharing. The definition ofcarsharing is thus broader than in Germany and in Switzerland (which might explain theabove mentioned high number of carsharing members). This broader definition also findsits expression in the fact that only two of the Dutch carsharing-organisations are allowed tobe a member of the European umbrella organisation for carsharing, ECS („European CarSharing“, see 2.4.8). The distinctive criterion between car renting and carsharing is seen ina „long-lasting contact (...) between the provider and the consumer“ which should bepresent in order to speak of carsharing (statement of Roger Theunissen). Reservation and use system: Three (four) different carsharing schemes can bedistinguished in the Netherlands (Autodate 1997a, van Roessel 1996b, informationbrochures of different carsharing providers):

• Neighbourhood-carsharing: The cars are located in vicinity to the households of thecarsharing members. This system resembles the Swiss and the German system.Members pay a monthly or an annual fee for their participation, plus a unique depositor share which they get back when they leave the organisation. They get a personalchipcard with which they can open a box which contains the car keys and which isinstalled at the car locations. Most often, a board computer directly transfers the drivingdata to a central office. The minimum reservation time is one hour. There is a time-,kilometre- and car-dependent tariff for driving. The cars have to be brought back to thesame location where they were taken. Organisations who introduced this system aree.g. Greenwheels or Autodelen.

• Carsharing per coupon: The users purchase a „chequebook“ with a number of couponsfor using the cars of a car rental fleet. When renting a car, those cheques can becashed in. The cars should be reserved some days before actually using them. Thissystem is mainly offered by the car rental firms, e.g. by Europcar („Go Green“programme) or Budget („Snel Weg Plan“). Reservations can be made during theopening hours of the rental firms, and the cars are centrally located at the firms’ sites.In contrast to normal car renting, the reservation of the cars is facilitated (by telephonevia a member number) and payment is done in advance via the chequebooks. Therenting prices are somewhat lower than in normal car renting. Still, when renting thecars a driving license has to be shown every time, and a deposit has to be left. Thecars have to be brought back to the same location where they were rented. Theminimal reservation time is half a day.

• Carsharing on subscription: The users of this system decide in advance how manydays per year they would like to rent a car and which kind of car they would like tohave. Then they purchase a special car rental subscription. If the car is needed onmore days than originally planned or if a different kind of car is needed, a change iseasily possible by paying an extra fee. A small administrative fee is paid per year, butno deposit has to be left. The cars are available at the (mainly centrally located) officesof the organisation, and there is the possibility to give back the car at other locations.Reservations can be made during the opening hours of the organisation. The carsshould be reserved at least some hours in advance. The minimal reservation time is 24hours (and in total at least 10 days per year), and it can be done by telephone via a


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personal member number. Reservation and payment are thus easier than in normal carrenting, and additionally some extra offers are given to the users (e.g. a reduced tarifffor using a taxi to the firm’s office). Organisations who introduced this system are e.g.the Dutch traffic club ANWB („Algemene Nederlandse Wegenbond“) or garagists whoare organised in the national automobile association BOVAG („Bond vangaragehouders“).

• Business carsharing: A firms buys a number of cars and organises an internalcarsharing-system for its members. This internal firm carsharing can be considered asa part of the carsharing niche, but it shall be left out of consideration here.

Labour input of the members: None of the Dutch carsharing organisations knows anvolunteer labour input of its members. All understand themselves as service enterprises.The Dutch carsharing foundation („Stichting voor Gedeeld Autogebruik“, see 3.2) supportssuch an attitude: „We say: Leave the service of your cars over to the professionals! In theNetherlands, we are used to rent everything, except the car. And everything that we do,we have it done by professionals.“ (statement Roger Theunissen).

2. Development of the niche in Switzerland

2.1 The beginning: Two organisational philosophies and growth mechanisms

2.1.1 ShareCom

Organisational philosophy: The activities of ShareCom were not restricted to carsharingalthough the common use of cars took the greatest share. ShareCom’s official slogan was"using instead of owning", which means that they aimed at an energy-, resources- andenvironmentally benign use of consumption goods as well as at the common ownership,use and maintenance of those goods (ShareCom Statuten 1994). ShareCom understooditself as a non-profit enterprise. Honorary, non-paid co-operative work played a centralrole: It guaranteed for a maximum identification of the members with the co-operativesystem and allowed for low use fees. As this system reached its growth limits, a purecarsharing-sister-organisation was founded in 1995, the "Car Sharing Company" (CSC,see 2.3). CSC gave up the principle of volunteer work and was explicitly set up as aservice enterprise. Growth mechanism: With respect to organisational growth ShareCom understood itself asan "organism that divides into more and more cells in the course of time" (statement of theShareCom-management). Thus, they strove for organic, bottom-up growth of theirorganisation. The system should convince by itself and ideally no publicity should benecessary for growth. The administrative system should be as small as necessary in ordernot to create too many hierarchies and to remain cheap.


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2.1.2 ATG

Organisational philosophy: ATG started as a pure carsharing-organisation from the verybeginning. It aimed at a well-considered and economical use of individual means oflocomotion in order to protect the environment. The costs for this sort of use should bekept at a reasonable minimum (ATG Statuten 1992). Carsharing was considered as onlyone means of reducing the negative environmental effects of individual transport. In thelong run ATG strove for establishing new, integrated mobility products in co-ordination withpublic transport. Though explicitly organised and named as a co-operative ("AutoTeiletGenossenschaft") ATG underwent a development into the direction of a service enterpriseby determining and financially compensating (though not really paying) people responsiblefor the maintenance of the cars and administrative tasks. Additionally, the word "co-operative" disappeared from official publications, and the organisation very soon nameditself "carsharing Switzerland" ("AutoTeilet Schweiz"). Growth mechanism: Contrary to ShareCom ATG did not want to passively wait for bottom-up-movements in order to grow but actively tried to force their growth top-down byestablishing a net of car locations all over Switzerland. When having placed a car in a newlocation they actively ran advertisements in order to acquire the needed number of usersfor this car. In the way ATG strove towards becoming a service enterprise theirmanagement had to be more labour-intensive.

2.2 Strategies in technological innovation

From the very beginning, ATG and ShareCom both faced enormous growth rates betweensome hundred percent in the first years and 50-75% from 1991 onwards. Interestinglyenough both grew with the same pace up to 1995, and only from 1996 onwards ATGscored higher growth rates than ShareCom (see 2.3). The technological strategies of coping with growth differed in both organisations due todiffering organisational philosophies.

2.2.1 ShareCom

Based on its philosophy of little organisational hierarchies and cheap driving charges,ShareCom sought technologies that demanded little labour input. Therefore they relied ona broad net of volunteering members and decentralised all administrative and technicaltasks as long as possible. Only in 1992 they were forced to found a central office takingover the main activities. For guaranteeing low intensity of formal labour also in the longrun, ShareCom invested in the development of an electronic reservation system. With theirtelephone keyboard, members could make reservations by choosing the location wherethey needed a car, state their preferred time of use, cancel and change reservations andalso give in information when they brought back their car at an earlier point in time. Inorder to facilitate administrative tasks, an electronic data processing (EDP)-system foraccounting and charging was developed and installed. Furthermore, ShareCom developeda board computer to be installed in the cars which should automatically register drivingdata and transfer them to a central accounting computer.


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2.2.2 ATG

Though also relying on a co-operative structure, ATG started centralising functions moreearly. Single responsibilities as car operators and branch leaders were handed over tospecific persons who were financially compensated for their work. As ATG understooditself as a service enterprise, they did not invest in an electronic reservation system but ina personally attended telephone line. For the facilitation of administrative tasks they alsoinvented and installed an EDP-system. In the medium term, the development of a boardcomputer would have also been necessary for ATG, not only in order to save labour costs,but also to avoid reservation errors and to avoid abuse of their cars. This is especially truein times of ongoing growth rates and an increasing anonymity among members. However,in the beginnings of the 90ies the technology seemed not to be mature enough for theneeds of ATG.

2.3 Development of the two carsharing-organisations

Though pursuing different organisational philosophies and growth mechanisms and thoughrelying on different innovation strategies, both organisations up to 1995 grew with thesame pace. Both scored growth rates between some hundred percent in the first yearsand 50-75% from 1991 onwards. In 1996 ATG sped up and counted a higher increase inmembers than ShareCom (see fig. 3).

Fig. 3: Growth in members

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were better utilised (see fig. 4). The history of this growth success of both organisationswill be described in the next chapters.

Fig.4: Growth in cars

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2.3.1 Development phases: Pre-phase (before 1987)

The two carsharing organisations were both based on private initiatives and developedindependently of each other.


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ShareCom: In Zurich, two young families who knew each other began sharing a car in thebeginning of the 80s and were inspired with this idea by a third person, the later founderand president of ShareCom who lived in an other part of the city. They all consideredthemselves as idealists, showing somewhat "green tendencies" and also liked the ideabecause it proved, besides having environmental effects, to be much cheaper than drivingan own car. They all were infrequent car users but nevertheless had a need for individualmobility. From the very beginning the families had clear reglementations about how to usethe car, and they mutually signed user contracts. The later founder of the ShareCom aswell as the two families tried to convince friends and acquaintances of the idea ofcommonly owning a car, and when a number of 16 interested persons was reached, theydecided to give this idea a more structured form. A co-operative was founded in June1987. As some of the interested persons not only shared a car, but also a video camera,the co-operative was not restricted to carsharing, but was generalised to common use ofconsumer goods (statements of the ShareCom-founders). Some of those early membersseemingly were not only environmentally motivated but they also aimed to face thesocietal problems of excessive individual consumption (see also Zierhofer 1991). ATG: At the same time two young people in a small city near Lucerne developed the sameidea of commonly using a car. They were inspired by an environmentally more benign aswell as more cost-effective mode of individual transport. Soon four other persons wereconvinced of the idea of a common use of cars, so that also here the need for a morestructured form of carsharing rose (statement of the ATG-founder). Again a co-operativewas founded in 1987. The official foundation took place some months before thefoundation of ShareCom (Petersen 1995).

2.3.2 Foundation phase (1987-89)

Mutual ignorance: Until the beginning of 1989 both co-operatives lived in almost totalignorance of each other. First the presidents of the organisations got to know each otherand stayed in mutual contact. Both thus had developed a similar concept of carsharing(concerning the organisational form) independently of each other. Private carsharingproved to be popular at that time, and a transition from private to organised carsharingseemingly "was in the air" (statement VCS). The mutual ignorance between the membersof both co-operatives during that time led to a comfortable "island position" of bothorganisations. ShareCom stayed a small group of 16 people until the beginning of 1989and did not actively promote their co-operative. ATG seems to have been somewhat moreactive on the communication side as they in the first two years grew much more rapidlythan ShareCom. At the end of 1989 ATG already counted 124 members, whereasShareCom only attracted 55 people. Growth mechanisms: The growth mechanisms of both organisations were similar in bothorganisations. As soon as a member moved to an other part of the city or a totally differentregion of Switzerland, it became difficult for this person still to share a car with the samegroup. Thus, the moving person actively looked for people interested in carsharing in thenew living place. As soon as enough people were found in order to finance a new car (or,alternatively, as soon as a person was found who already owned a car but did not use itthat extensively so that he or she agreed to share it with others) those people were taken


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up in the co-operative. The system of "user-groups" was born. Also ATG formed "user-groups" at that time (and also called them that), and like ShareCom their system relied onvoluntary work. Reservation and use systems: The reservation and use systems were rudimentary in bothorganisations at that time, though more sophisticated within ATG than within ShareCom.ShareCom-members had to call the car-operator, make a reservation, get the car at thelast user's house and write down the km driven in a book located in the car. Alternatively, ifa member had brought in a private car into the organisation, other members had to callthis person and had to make arrangements about when to use the car and how to get thecar keys. ATG developed a "reservation board" at a fixed car location which soon wassubstituted by a metal box. All users owned a key for this box which not only comprised areservation book but also the car keys. I.e., if somebody wanted to make use of the car, heor she had to go to the car location some time in advance, had to check if the car would befree at the time s/he wished to drive and had to make a reservation. After the ride, thedriven km had to be written down. Accounting and charging in both organisations wasdone on evenings and weekends by member households on an honorary basis. In thisearly phase, both organisations merely knew a km-tariff, but no time-dependent tariff.

2.3.3 Beginning growth phase and first attempts for a fusion (1989-92)

Professionalisation tendencies within ATG: ATG soon noticed (by growing numbers ofmembers) that there could be a market for carsharing, and they slowly began following aprofessionalisation strategy. This strategy was pushed by ATG's president and supportedby the governing board. The early users had different opinions about this step, and at leastsome of them feared that the organisation would lose its co-operative character into acommercial enterprise with a hierarchical organisation structure. ATG decided to activelyspread their network of car locations over the whole of Switzerland, in the long run, andthey were thus forced to advertise their co-operative. Within ATG there were someopponents to this course as it was feared that such a strategy would exceed the financialpower of the co-operative. This opponents, however, never proposed a formal counterproposal. First contacts and conflicts between both organisations: In 1989, members of bothorganisations slowly got aware of the respective other organisation. As long as eachorganisation had stayed in its own region (ShareCom in Zurich, ATG in the region ofLucerne), this double existence was accepted by the members. They however got inconflict in regions where both organisations got active. In cities with car locations of both organisations, ATG and ShareCom users soon startedrequiring cross-usership agreements from their respective organisations since this wouldenhance their own flexibility. But the governing boards of both organisations were stuck incommunication problems at that time. This was mostly due to differing organisationalphilosophies and little willingness to compromise. "Everyone wanted to keep his ownchild", a child that was not allowed to change in character (statement of ATG- andShareCom-management). These differences grew so big that in the end (1992) ATG andShareCom stopped their official communication.


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Cross memberships and agreement on use technologies: Nevertheless, in the meantime aso-called "cross membership" ("Quermitgliedschaft") had been invented in 1991. Users ofboth organisations could purchase an extra share of the other organisation (of 100 SFRinstead of 1000 SFR) and thus consider themselves as members of both organisations.This cross membership, however, was only rarely used because due to the precedingcommunication problems members of both organisations were massively uncertain aboutactual use conditions and possible follow-up costs of such a membership. Crossmemberships were created in the time of massive growth rates of both organisations. In1991 both organisations already counted more than 500 members each. ShareCom'sprivate reservation system already before this time had reached its limits. In 1990 theydecided to take over the key-and-box-technology from ATG. Conditions of use for later"cross members" were thus clearly facilitated. The emergence of two distinct management philosophies: With respect to theorganisational philosophy it seems as if ShareCom for a long time stuck to its originalphilosophy of a co-operative with its members commonly sharing consumption goodswhereas ATG soon began to flexibly react to the market and submit their organisationalstructure to market laws by introducing official "branch-leaders" (though still keeping its co-operative structure). But this dispersion of philosophies seemed to be launched by thegoverning boards of both organisations alone. On the side of the members, there wereopponents and supporters for both strategies independent of the organisation theybelonged to. At ATG, a number of "co-operative fundamentalists" still performed honorarywork or disappointedly withdrew to passive memberships when financial compensation ofbranch leaders was introduced (a flat rate of about 500 SFR per year). The "normal users"who had not identified with this co-operative self-help system were strengthened by theofficial ATG-strategy. A similar situation occurred on the ShareCom-side: A number of "fundamentalists" stronglysupported the co-operative self-help system, whereas others considered themselves merecar users and sometimes didn't even know that they actively had to sustain the system or,if so, only reluctantly took care of the cars. On both sides, most users did not see anydistinctions in the kind of members each organisation attracted, mostly even nodistinctions in the organisational structure, but they were aware of the diverging officialslogans. The decision which organisation to join was made by the pure availability of thecars in a certain region or it was determined by chance, i.e. which organisation they firsthad heard of. In 1992, the meetings of all members of both organisations ("Generalversammlungen")instructed their governing boards to work out a merger of both organisations - an attemptthat failed because of "non-suitable moderation, different development aims and personaldifferences" between the governing boards of the two organisations (statement of theShareCom management). The influence of major external actors: At the beginning of the first growth phase in 1989an external actor got in contact with both carsharing organisations - the VCS("Verkehrsclub der Schweiz"), the most "green" of the three Swiss traffic clubs. It supports


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environmentally more benign modes of transport and thus differs from its moreautomobile-orientated counterparts (TCS "Touringclub Schweiz" and ACS "Automobilclubder Schweiz"). In1989, the VCS published a "manual for carsharing" and advertised theidea of carsharing among its more than 100’000 members. This initiative was pushed by aperson who shared a car with some other families and who was enthusiastic about thisorganised form of carsharing. Within the VCS this initiative was a matter of dispute: TheVCS did not intend to support an automobile technology but rather public transport orbicycles. Nevertheless the support was carried through. In 1991 the Swiss Department of Energy (BEW, "Bundesamt für Energiewirtschaft")launched a program called "Energy 2000". This program aims at promoting voluntarymeasures for a stabilisation of the consumption of fossil energies (and output of CO2-emissions) as well as the support of renewable energy resources until the year 2000(Energieforum Schweiz 1995). This program being accepted, several promotion programswere founded, and the program leaders made a call for project contributions. The VCStook this chance and proposed the support of carsharing in Switzerland. Theycommunicated with the BEW ("promotion program fuels"/"Ressort Treibstoffe") as well aswith the two carsharing organisations. Subsequently a two and a half-years-projectapplication formulated by both co-operatives on the technological and organisational side.As the VCS wanted to support the idea of carsharing and not the single organisations, itactively co-ordinated the interaction between both organisations and the BEW. Influences on ongoing growth: Growth rates were massive in both organisations in thisphase. At the end of 1991 ShareCom already counted 538 members with 32 cars in 14communities. ATG had 529 members with 35 cars in 22 communities. This surely is due tothe input of the VCS (63% of all ShareCom-members are also members of the VCS,ShareCom 1995) and the honorary work of a lot of carsharing members. A network ofsupporters from different sides and the beginning appearance of carsharing in the mediaalso contributed to growth (see 2.4). Technological adaptations to growth: As ATG had grown faster than ShareCom until 1989,they sooner had a need for centralised structures. They commissioned an external officewith administrative duties already in 1989. In 1991 they founded the first own managementcharged with accounting, charging and the purchase of new cars. Though ShareComlevelled out in number of members in 1990, they managed without a central office until1992 and spread all accounting, billing and purchase activities over the respective regionalcar-operators and the governing board. In 1992 both organisations counted about 1000members each, and the work done on an honorary basis grew too big at ShareCom.Nevertheless, ShareCom's management still was less personnel intensive than ATG's.Both organisations additionally introduced a delegate system for information exchange in1991 since it was not possible to assemble all users for common meetings anymore.

2.3.4 Consolidation phase and political support measures (1992-95)

In order to maintain the steady growth of the organisation, it was necessary not only torethink organisational structures but also to adjust reservation and accounting systems.


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Energy 2000 started its support for the two carsharing organisations just in this time of atransition from small co-operatives to organisations with a remarkable market share. Project activities within the frame of Energy 2000: With their support program, Energy2000 aimed at initiating a broader diffusion of the carsharing technology. In their viewcarsharing could in the long run lead to a substantial reduction of energy consumption inprivate car traffic (BEW 1995). This view was supported by a study commissioned earlier(Muheim & Inderbitzin 1992). The members of the "promotion program fuels" within theEnergy 2000 program came from very different organisational and ideologicalbackgrounds (the automobile- and traffic associations, automobile- and oil-industry,representatives of different political parties). This made it difficult for them to agree onmeasures to be taken. However, there was no formal opposition against the support ofcarsharing in the committee. Their common denominator lay on a financial support forspecific projects which the carsharing organisations had to propose. The VCS acted as the project leader and as the interface between the co-operatives andEnergy2000. Each co-operative choose five modules it wanted to work on, although theyset different project focuses. ATG mainly developed strategies for the motivation andtraining courses of their employees (e.g. by preparing a manual for the foundation ofbranches) as well as for communication and marketing strategies, whereas ShareComfocused on the development of an EDP- and an electronic reservation system. ATG wasthus more strongly motivated by a market perspective whereas ShareCom searched fortechnological means in order to facilitate the carsharing administration. Both organisationsstarted working on the development of a board computer for automatic registration oftravel data and for avoiding non-authorised use of their cars - a means to guarantee aperfect functioning of the carsharing system also in times of huge growth rates. Due todivergent opinions about the board computer system, ATG decided to postpone thosedevelopments. ShareCom continued its developmental work. It was, however, notsupported by Energy 2000. Both organisations underwent an organisation developmentphase and looked for efficient organisational strategies and long-term goals. Energy 2000 ran both projects in three phases: First both organisations were given half ayear’s of time for developing concepts (September 92 to February 93), which then couldbe worked out and tested during another year (February 93 to June 94). Finally, subsidieswere given for another year of translating the new concepts into practice (June 94 to June95). New organisations in the French- and Italian-speaking parts of Switzerland: Besides thesupport of the two already existing co-operatives, Energy 2000 aimed at founding neworganisations in the French- and Italian-speaking parts of Switzerland. In 1993 Copautowas founded in Geneva. Copauto took up concepts of both organisations: As it wasanticipated that a co-operative structure would not hold for the French-speaking part ofSwitzerland an explicit service enterprise was founded (which comes near to the ATG-philosophy). On the other hand, the electronic reservation system developed at ShareComwas taken over by Copauto. Initially, Copauto was also dependent on the ShareComadministration, but in time they developed an own EDP-system. Additionally, they investedin the development of an own board computer.


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In the Italian-speaking parts of Switzerland no market for carsharing could be determined.Therefore, no independent organisation was founded here, but only a supportingassociation which acted as an agent for ATG and ShareCom offers. Technological adaptations to growth: The introduction of new reservation systems (theelectronic reservation system at ShareCom which worked by telephone or computer frommid 1993 onwards and an attended telephone-line at ATG installed in 1993, externalisedin 1994 to a taxi enterprise and internalised again in 1996) hugely facilitated the use of thecarsharing system. Users could now make a call, get information about the availability ofthe car they wanted to use and could also be given alternatives (different times, cars atother locations). This allowed for a rather spontaneous use of the cars. In bigger cities witha number of different locations it was no problem anymore to make a reservation an hourbefore a car was needed.

2.3.5 A phase of events and changes (1995-96)

Testing of technological innovations: In the middle of 1995 the Energy 2000 projectsfinished and the most important technical adaptations had been made, though not totallyfinished at that time. ATG introduced its new attended telephone reservation system andaccounting software in March 1996. ATG's technical systems proved to meet allrequirements necessary for ongoing growth. "ATG underwent the most incisive phases ofrestructuring. New developments are not going to bring about many new restructuringmeasures." (statement of ATG-management). ShareCom's electronic reservation systemalso worked perfectly and was very well accepted by its members. But the EDP-systemturned out to be much more costly than planned and additionally it was feared that it wouldpossibly not stand the run of new members. A board computer was invented and alreadyinstalled in some cars, but its development was also more expensive than planned. New membership structure and professionalisation course of ATG: At the end of 1995ATG started to introduce "test memberships" (testing the carsharing system for 6 weekswithout paying an entrance fee or taking over a share of the co-operative) and "mereusers" / “passive members” (members can decide if they want to purchase a share of theco-operative or merely pay an annual fee, see chapter 1.1). Additionally, they launchedmassive advertisement campaigns. In summer 1996 ATG engaged a marketing specialistin their central office (who already had been an ATG-member for a long time) and by thisalso officially communicated their professionalisation course. Financial collapse of Copauto: In autumn 1995 Copauto was financially highly endangeredbecause it proved to be too demanding, because too many different technologicalparticularities should be realised at the same time, while members were only slowlyattracted. Within a month's time Copauto was running into severe financial troubles. Theirreservation infrastructure was comparable to ShareCom, and in the beginning big parts oftheir administration were dependent on ShareCom. Thus they tried to build up their ownEDP-system, and they also invested into developing a board computer on their own. Thissurmounted their financial capacities. Copauto's financial situation being critical, ATG sawmarket advantages when taking over the organisation. Besides, they were afraid of


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negative news about carsharing in the media if Copauto had totally collapsed. This alsocould have meant a drawback for their own organisation. Thus in 1995 they took overCopauto. The technological system was changed (reservation of cars was now made viaATG's telephone line). With this take-over of Copauto, ATG became the "market leader"on the carsharing market and had made the first step into the French-speaking Swissmarket. Discussion about the organisational philosophy within ShareCom: At the same timeShareCom realised that its philosophy of an honorarily working co-operative reached itslimits. Externally, ShareCom had difficulties in competing with ATG. But, more importantly,the system was also internally strongly discussed. With 3500 members at the end of 1995the organisation had become more and more anonymous so that a lot of members haddifficulties in still identifying with the philosophy of "sharing instead of owning", and theywere reluctant to take over car-wash-, car-operator- or administrative tasks. Some of thosemembers still taking over tasks began to feel exploited. In order to give a sign, themanagement decided (based on a survey among all group leaders) to pay a "recognitionfee" of some SFR per month to group leaders in highly frequented locations. Some groupleaders gratefully accepted this fee, others refused it because they were afraid of comingdemands from the other ShareCom-members ("if we are paid, people think that we have todo a much better job than before and the own commitment decreases", statement of agroup leader). The motivational profile of ShareCom- (and also ATG-) members had changed over time:While in the beginning mainly ecologically and socially motivated persons were attractedby the co-operatives, economic motivations slowly started to dominate (see chapter 7).ShareCom had to take a decision whether to go on as before or to give up the co-operative spirit and change into a service enterprise. Foundation of CSC: As opponents and supporters for both positions were evenly divided,ShareCom in summer 1995 decided to keep its original form and to found a sister-organisation, the CarSharingCompany (CSC), as a pure service enterprise. This doublestrategy enabled them to keep their co-operative spirit, and at the same time get access tonew user-segments up to date not yet aimed at - individual "passive members", firms andpublic transport services. As a service enterprise, CSC should actively run advertisements,of which also ShareCom would profit. Although persons interested in joining the systemshould always be asked if they wanted to join a co-operative asking for own commitment(for lower driving fees) or a service enterprise (for higher fees), the car pools of both sister-organisations were separated in the beginning. I.e., CSC had to start as a totally neworganisation and set up its own net of locations. The idea behind this separation mainlywas a protection of the still honorarily working ShareCom-members from being over-run bynew CSC-member who did not actively contribute to the system. The same person who had actively pushed carsharing within the VCS from the verybeginning became CSC's president. As the VCS always wanted to support the idea ofcarsharing and not one of the two carsharing organisations (see above) it was in acomfortable position here: CSC belonged to ShareCom but had a similar philosophy as


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ATG. It can be contributed to this VCS person's influence that CSC actively sought for newmobility products that went beyond mere carsharing. CSC managed to start co-operations with public transport in different small cities inSwitzerland and also got in contact with a big firm who was interested in making use ofcarsharing. At the end of 1996 CSC counted about 100 members. In the eyes of the CSC-promoters, the division of ShareCom and CSC thus proved to be sensible and promisingfor the future. But not all ShareCom-members counted this number as a success. Drawbacks for CSC and ShareCom: CSC faced two severe problems: First of all, thefoundation of CSC was heavily criticised within ShareCom by the "co-operativefundamentalists", especially by the founder of ShareCom. Though this section that activelyfought against CSC was rather small, internal decision processes were slowed down. Secondly, the net of locations was still too small to really be able to compete with ATG,especially when trying to fix co-operations with public transport. In summer 1996 Zurich'spublic transport services (VBZ, "Verkehrsbetriebe Zürich") wanted to co-operate with acarsharing organisation. Also within the frame of Energy 2000, they had launched aproduct called züri mobil (a ticket for public transport which also allowed for making use ofcars from car rental firms) a year before, but not many members were attracted by it,because car rental locations were too strongly centralised and the system was mostattractive for long-term rentals. The gap between public transport and this long-termindividual rental possibilities should be bridged by carsharing. After discussions with both carsharing organisations züri mobil decided to co-operate withATG. ATG was in the favourable situation of offering a net of locations all over Switzerlandwhereas CSC had only begun its existence. After tedious negotiations, CSC andShareCom decided to unify their fleets and make the cars of both organisations availableto all ShareCom and CSC-members. This decision being taken, CSC/ShareCom shouldhave been in a much more favourable negotiating position: ShareCom/CSC disposed ofmore than 60 cars in the city of Zurich and about 100 cars in the whole canton, whereasATG merely disposed of 6 cars in the city and 5 cars in the canton and could only promiseto found a number of new locations within a short time. The official reason for taking adecision in favour of ATG was ATG's attended telephone-line for making reservations.ShareCom suspected that the true reason for this decision was the fact that ATG in theeyes of VBZ was perceived as a service enterprise disposing of professionally attendedcars whereas ShareCom/CSC was perceived as an organisation with few professionallyand lots of amateurishly attended cars (statement of ShareCom management).Interestingly enough, our own surveys showed that the general satisfaction with thetidiness and the technical state of the shared cars was very high in both organisations. The loss of the co-operation with the public transport services in Zurich played a crucialrole for ShareCom. The VBZ are connected to the cantonal transport services and also tothe Swiss federal railway. Thus the market for carsharing within the region whereShareCom was mainly present was highly endangered. Additionally, also in other placesATG started co-operations with public transport services and was a severe competitor toCSC.


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New contacts between ShareCom and ATG: Initiated by the VCS, the governing boards ofShareCom and ATG started getting in contact again in 1995. Until the autumn of 1996those contacts did not show any results as the governing boards of both organisations didnot trust each other and stayed in a confrontational position. Additionally, internal tensionswithin ShareCom were high. They grew so big that in autumn 1996 the founder ofShareCom (who was the major opponent to the new developments) left the governingboard. Opposition in ShareCom's governing board ceased which opened the way tointensify contacts.

2.3.6 Merger and foundation of the Mobility co-operative (1997)

On the way to a fusion of both organisations: From November 1996 onwards a workinggroup of members of the governing boards of ATG, ShareCom and CSC prepared aproposal for a fusion of the two organisations. After a certain period of trust building, bothorganisations noticed that they in principle pursue the same goals and that it is very costlyto run the same idea by two organisations. As both organisations had decided not only tooffer carsharing but also to launch new mobility products, both could only profit fromsynergy. The network of locations would be much more dense, different reservationtechnologies could be offered and the development of new electronic devices like anaccess and safety control system for the cars (as already started being developed byShareCom) would be much cheaper. Additionally, the number of competitors in the field ofcarsharing in the future is likely to grow (organisations in other countries, automobileindustry, car rental firms), so that both organisations agreed that they will be strongertogether than when fighting alone. All of the three governing boards agreed to seriously strive for a merger. An organisationaldevelopment consultant was asked to accompany the preparations of the fusion process.Within a month's time, small working groups worked out concepts for future organisationalforms and strategies as well as financial and juridical reglementations. At the end ofJanuary 1997 the conception phase was finished, and all organisations started internalinformation campaigns. In their member journals they announced their willingness for amerger of the three organisations and organised meetings for their group/branch leaders,delegates and also for interested members. In March 1997 the group/branch leaders ofATG and ShareCom agreed with the merger plans. In April, the delegates of bothorganisations accepted the carrying out of a ballot. In May, all members were asked tovote. Within ATG a two thirds majority of positive votes was necessary. ShareCom had totake a higher hurdle: 50% of all members had to vote, and at least 75% had to be in favourof the fusion. The new co-operative is named Mobility (see fig. 6). This name leaves open the possibilityof offering different mobility products and not only carsharing. Mobility also has the right tooffer mobility services in other countries. They want to provide different means oflocomotion for use as an ecological and economic alternative to private ownership(Mobility Statuten 1997). As was already the case at ATG, Mobility introduced two sorts ofmembership and cost structures: Either persons are considered as "members" whopurchase a share of the organisation, bring in honorary work and profit from lower driving


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fees or they are considered as "users" who pay an annual fee, do not have to commit tothe organisation and therefore pay higher driving fees. As the cost structures differedbetween ShareCom and ATG, Mobility members could opt for one of two cost models. Inthe long run, they will be adapted to the former ATG-tariff. The organisation still knows thetotality of all members as their decision making organ, has introduced a delegate system,kept their structures of a governing board and a central office, and on the regional basisthey are busy creating "regional bureaux" as an interface between local "sections" (withtheir car responsible) and the central office.

Fig.6: Logo of the new carsharing co-operative „Mobility“ (Mobility 1997)

Reactions of the members: Most members hardly identify with the official organisationalphilosophies and consider themselves users of the system. They were thus lookingforward to a unification of both organisations as carsharing would become much morecomfortable and flexible. However, since a growing number of carsharers are economicallymotivated, at least some of the ShareCom members voted against a merger as theyfeared that in the long run driving fees might be enhanced. A small group of "fundamental co-operatists" started an offensive against the merger plansof their governing board in the beginnings of 1997. They considered some fundamental co-operative rules ignored as no ballot or delegate meeting had taken place before thegoverning boards started negotiating with each other and because they did not feel fullyinformed about the ongoing negotiations. ShareCom already for a long time was stuck in adiscussion about whether it is necessary to keep the co-operative spirit upright or if thegoal of ShareCom should be to gain as many people for carsharing as possible (seeabove). The opponent group referred to just this question again: Whereas they believedthat by promoting the co-operative spirit carsharing would broadly gain acceptance, thegoverning board followed a professionalisation strategy by market laws and left the old co-operative path. Notwithstanding this criticism, 90% of the members of the two co-operatives finally voted infavour of the merger. Within ATG the support was extremely strong (97%). WithinShareCom, the internal dispute initiated by some of the founders had shown its effect. Inthe end some 79% of the voting members of ShareCom were in favour of the merger. Theminimum participation rate of 50% of the members was thus achieved. New developments: In June, the merger was realised at the organisational level. Thenewly created management of Mobility described the first months as a period of chaosand difficulties (Mobility 1998). The two organisational cultures had to be brought in line. Ahuge amount of data had to be combined into one EDP-system. Reservation of cars andsupport of the users had to work without interruption. This period of transition put a high


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demand on all the involved people. However, by the end of August, the managementstated that they had passed the most turbulent waters and that “a new culture haddeveloped out of the two old ones, a true Mobility-culture” (Mobility 1998). Meanwhile, Mobility is able to deliver the same service quality as the former co-operatives.Furthermore, new projects had been started: Reservation shall be possible through theinternet in the course of this year. A new board computer will be installed in a number ofMobility-cars in 1998. Finally, Mobility continues to develop new products and co-operations with public transport organisations, the post and others. One of the great successes associated with the merger is associated with the collaborationof Mobility with VBZ in the framework of züri mobil. In 1997, the number of participantsrose from 200 to 3000. Today, there are 200 car locations with 300 cars covering thewhole urban region of Zürich. But also the membership figures of Mobility continued ontheir growth path. By the end of the year, Mobility counted some 17,400 users (allcategories included). They had approximately 760 cars. The growth rate was about 54% inmembers and 32% in cars in 1997 (personal communication of Mobility). Therefore, themerger did not have any negative impact on the success of organised carsharing inSwitzerland.

2.3.7 Pro Share, a spinn-off of the merger

The original founders and supporters of ShareCom who were advocates of a moreegalitarian kind of organisation got strongly frustrated by the quick pace of the mergernegotiations between the two governing boards. As they saw that with high probability themembers would vote in favour of the unification, they begun to set up a counter project.They called it “ProShare”. ProShare tries to revive the original ideas of ShareCom in whichthe sharing of long lasting consumer goods is the main goal. First ideas for establishingsuch a counter project were discussed in May 1997. In June, the first user groups werefounded. In October, there were three user groups in ProShare and about 50 members inthree locations. Until then, they had only one car actually running, but were busy to get toa total of six cars by the end of the year. Organisation of ProShare: The main organisational unit of ProShare should be formed bythe “user group”, about a dozen families in a neighbourhood who want to use a car andare ready to share maintenance and cost. In the view of the initiators, most of themembers of ShareCom only rarely used a car outside their local user group. Problems withfree riders and bad maintenance were certainly existing. However, these problems wererestricted to central locations in inner city areas, where many external users came in andmembers of the user group did not get to know each other. For the majority, the situationwas exactly the opposite. They knew with whom they normally shared their car and weretherefore willing to take their share of the responsibilities. The tidiness of the automobileswas of a very high standard and this would only be threatened if parts of the system wouldbe delegated to professionals. This was the conviction of ProShare. Furthermore, theyfeared that a strong and professionalised central office — which Mobility was clearlyheading for — would create a heavy financial burden which did not really serve the trueneeds of the co-operative members.


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The user groups should receive a maximum of autonomy. The totality of the user groupsshall be organised as an association. This association has to define a model contract(statutes) and the duties of the different organs of the association. The individual usergroup may determine which form suits its specific local needs best. A central office shouldtake over some responsibilities which would have to be compensated at “fair prices”.However, its duties should be kept at an absolute minimum. The central office would onlyhave limited power. For all important questions, the totality of the members should have itssay. ProShare headed, therefore, for an organisational form with optimum democraticdecision structures and maximally decentralised decision power. As a founder of ProSharetold us, they were strongly influenced by the ideal of the old Swiss communities wherecommunal work played an important role for social cohesion. With regard to tariffs two models should operate in parallel. For a member of a specificuser group the price of his car should be determined by the user group and would be afunction of the amount of volunteer labour they were willing to invest. External usersshould pay a fixed rate for this service. This rate would be clearly higher than the internaltariff. At the time of our interviews (October 1997) the model contracts were not yetestablished. Apparently, ProShare wants to build up its system as carefully as possibleand they do not want to repeat the failures of the ShareCom statutes. However, they werenot very quick in their endeavours as they had to work, like in the old days of ShareCom,in their spare time. Future profile of ProShare: Their relationship to the Mobility co-operative was clearlystated by the ProShare initiators: They do not see themselves as a direct competitor to theprofessionalised carsharing system. They rather want to be perceived as a complement. Inparticular they want to catch those members which left Mobility because of bad service,lacking democracy and rising prices (as they said). Without the existence of ProShare,they feared that carsharing would only be provided by a monopolistic enterprise with aspecific and undifferentiated offer. This would force many members of former carsharingco-operatives to leave the system and to buy an own car. However, actual growth rates are not central for ProShare. Their measure of success iswhether their members get what they want and whether they are in control of whathappens in their local user group. ProShare did not foresee massive growth rates for theirassociation. In the preparation phase of the ballot, about 120 people had expressed theirinterest for a new kind of organisation. In case of stronger growth, ProShare speculatedabout potential co-operation forms with Mobility. They proposed, for instance, thatProShare user groups could become collective users of Mobility. However, these planswere not spelled out explicitly. In the long run, they could even imagine that a tighter co-operation with Mobility could take place. The quarrels of the pre-merger period had been settled by all the involved parties by thetime of our interviews. The result of the ballot was also accepted by the ProSharefounders. They also stated that their opposition was not one of principle but that the paceand opacity of the whole merger process had provoked perhaps an overreaction on theside of ProShare. However, ProShare said that they were not interested any more in the


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business of Mobility, as an essential part of their initial understanding of carsharing hadgone lost in the course of the events. One of the early founders of ShareCom even statedthat ShareCom had “died” already in the beginnings of the merger talks. Mobility was not areal car-”sharing” organisation any more, in his eyes. It had become a mere variant of acar rental firm.

2.4 The support network for carsharing in Switzerland

Besides the official promotion program for energy efficient technologies (see 4.1), anumber of other actors supported the carsharing activities in one way or another. Mobilityconsiders this network of persons and institutions very important for their own growthsuccess.

2.4.1 National traffic clubs

Most notably, the VCS („Verkehrsclub der Schweiz“, the most „green“ traffic club) made alot of publicity for carsharing in their own journal (see e.g. N.N. 1997b) and developed amanual for carsharing as early as 1989 (see 2.3.3). Furthermore, they helped to build uplocal user groups in several locations. Finally, and most importantly, they played the role ofa spokes-person or go-between for the carsharing organisations within the framework ofEnergy 2000. They initiated and co-ordinated the first promotional projects for carsharing(see 2.3.4). With the years, they became the main mediator between the carsharingmanagement and the policy makers.3

The TCS („Touringclub der Schweiz“) considers itself a „consumer organisation“ whichdiffers from the other two traffic clubs (VCS, ACS).They strive for giving themselves animage as neutral as possible, thus they do not actively promote a specific technology butonly give information on request. For this, they work out leaflets which weigh up the prosand cons of the respective technologies. In the case of carsharing, they developed such aleaflet for their regional offices. Like VCS, TCS also disposes of a member journal. Butonly as late as 1997 the first article on carsharing appeared in this medium (see Müller1997). It came to a positive evaluation of the carsharing system. Such a positive attitudehad not always been the case: Before the merger of the two carsharingco-operatives,TCS criticised the lacking professionality of the organisations and lacking transparencyregarding legal aspects (like possible follow-up costs when leaving the organisation).Additionally, a co-operation would strongly depend on the majority vote of its members,and due to this, a consistent long-term strategy of the organisation would not necessarilybe given. Today, however, TCS considers Mobility as a professional enterprise. Unlike

3 A similar role was taken in by the VCD („Verkehrsclub Deutschland“) in Germany. They developed amanual for carsharing, reached out contracts for private carsharers and frequently reported about carsharingin their member journals (see e.g. Bröer 1997a, 1997b). The VCD initiated the foundation of the „CarsharingGermany Co-operative“ ( „CarSharing Deutschland Genossenschaft e.G.“, see 1.3.1), an umbrellaorganisation for small local carsharing initiatives. Furthermore, they supported research activities oncarsharing (on political support measures, on employment effects etc., see e.g. VCD 1993a, 1993b, 1997)which gained national importance, also in the political domain.


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VCS, TCS sees no big market potential for carsharing. It could have a chance on thesecond car market res. as a substitute of an own car in households who cannot afford topurchase a car themselves. Otherwise, it would stay a mere niche product, being used forvery specific mobility purposes like e.g. the transport of bulky material. For the ACS („Automobilclub der Schweiz“), carsharing is up to date no topic. ACS is themost conservative traffic club and represents the „car enthusiasts“. A support of carsharingwould thus not be conform to the attitudes of their members.

2.4.2 Automobile industry

While growth rates in both organisations exploded, the automobile industry got attentive tocarsharing. In the beginning, the Swiss importer of Opel (the major car model used by bothco-operatives and now by Mobility, too) was very sceptical about this development andfeared that he would lose customers as soon as people share cars. In the meantime bothorganisations climbed into Opel's internal category of "major clients" (more than 50 cars).Mobility is thus treated equivalent to car rental firms or big enterprises. Since there is no own automobile industry in Switzerland, the association of Swissautomobile importers („Verband Schweizerischer Automobilimporteure“, VSAI) is thecentral representative of all automobile importers. With respect to carsharing, VSAI is notafraid of any competition for the automobile industry. In their eyes, carsharing is a systemwhich mainly attracts people who do not own a car themselves but who nevertheless needa car from time to time. Since the carsharing organisations make use of the conventionalautomobile technology, no automobile customers (and thus working places in theautomobile industry) go lost here. Additionally, the current 17,000 carsharing members inSwitzerland are an insignificant group if compared to the 3.2 million Swiss car owners(statements of Mr. Schick). Also in the long run, carsharing is considered as a mere nicheproduct: Growth will stop at about 50,000 members, because people are too stronglybound to their private car, and they couldn’t be hindered from this. VSAI puts the currenttraffic problems down to the inflexibility of the car users (they all want to drive at the sametime, e.g. in the morning rush hours) as well as to inadequate traffic engineering at certainlocations. They rely on a solution of those problems rather than on the introduction ofinnovative technologies like carsharing. In the eyes of VSAI, car renters could become acompetitor for the carsharing organisations: Their long-term rental schemes do not fit allmobility needs, thus a short-term rental scheme could enhance the degree of utilisation oftheir car fleet. Since some car renting firms are owned by certain car producers, theautomobile industry could indirectly profit from such an extension of car renting bycarsharing.

2.4.3 Car rental firms

With respect to its price structure, carsharing can currently not compete with car rentalfirms for long-term reservations, but they have a clear advantage in the short-term-reservation segment. Additionally, as soon as cars are reserved for several days, they arenot available for other users anymore. Thus, both carsharing organisations signed


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contracts with car rental firms (and so did Mobility), so that carsharing members can usethe cars of car rental firms for advantageous conditions. Mobility co-operates with differentcar rental firms. The most important one is Hertz, but in the context of züri mobil alsoEuropcar is a partner. In the eyes of Hertz, there is synergy between carsharing and car renting, not onlybecause of the different tariff structures for long-term and short-term renting, but also withrespect to the car locations (central locations of car renting cars, decentralised locations ofcarsharing cars) and the clients (business clients and tourists in the case of car renting,„normal“ car drivers in the case of carsharing (with up to date still a focus onenvironmentally conscious users and low income groups). Hertz sees a great growthpotential for carsharing. It will not stay a niche product, but be a central element withinsome sort of integrated mobility form, where a mobility centre would offer a number ofdifferent mobility alternatives to their clients. On a small scale, such integrated mobilityforms are already realised in the framework of local „travel passes“ („Fahrpässe“): Here,public transport providers work together with taxi enterprises, car renters and Mobility.Within those travel pass schemes everybody offers his own product, but the accessibilityto these products is facilitated for the client (e.g. in the case of züri mobil reservations canbe made via one common telephone line, in other regions car renting and carsharing areoffered under the same label and accessible with one single chipcard). In the eyes ofHertz, such regional systems could in the long run be expanded by a co-operation with thefederal national railway. The co-operation of Mobility with different car rental firms must not hide the fact that bothplayers consider themselves potential competitors: Everybody carefully observes what theother partner does and wants to prevent a take-over of the own renting scheme of theother partner.4

2.4.4 Local authorities and parties

Authorities at the cantonal and community level play a very important role in the politicallife in Switzerland, e.g. as promoters of innovative technologies. In the carsharing case,however, their role was somewhat less important. The cantons did not provide any help tothe co-operatives. Some communities, on the other hand, provided free parking lots ororganised special activities to publicise the experiments or helped to build up local usergroups. Local sections of parties, especially the social-democratic (SP) and green party(GPS), actively helped building up new user-groups (either by taking the initiativethemselves or by being informed by ShareCom-/ATG-members in advance) and madepublicity in their member journals. In one community even the liberal party (FDP) helped toset up a user group.

4 The situation in Switzerland thus differs from e.g. the Dutch situation: In the Netherlands, the car rentingfirms are one of the big providers of what they call „carsharing“ (though the renting schemes are much lessflexible than in the Swiss carsharing case, see 3.1.2). Looking at this Dutch situation a fear on the side ofMobility seems plausible. On the other hand, the more professionalised Mobility gets, the greater should bethe fear on the side of the car renters, too.


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2.4.5 Media

Additionally, from the very beginning carsharing was an interesting topic for the local andalso for the national media (newspapers and also television). As the co-operatives werenot considered as critical by any interest group in the country, the media reported verypositively about both organisations, either when interesting technological changes hadtaken place, when a new user group had been set up or when new products like a co-operation with public transport services were launched (see e.g. Vanoni 1995, N.N. 1996,N.N. 1997c). On their own accord, newspapers contacted both organisations again after acertain time in order to get to know the progress of a project. The management ofShareCom and ATG stated that "in the last ten years the media made free publicity forcarsharing in an amount of several million Swiss Franks". Most new members indeed gotto know about carsharing via the media (ShareCom 1995)5 or by word of mouth.

2.4.6 Other organisations

Environmental organisations like Greenpeace and especially the WWF (World WildlifeFund) also played an important role as promoters. They mainly made publicity in theirmember journals. Consumer organisations, too, reported very positively about carsharing(see e.g. Toberer 1996). Besides, the church proved to be an important supporter of thecarsharing activities. They provided free parking lots and some of the priests very activelyhelped building up local user groups. Also schools supported carsharing. A number of students analysed the activities of the twoco-operatives. In this context, marketing concepts and similar helpful tools were developedand discussed. Furthermore, there are several research projects at the national and EU-level which analyse the experiences of the carsharing organisations.6

At the level of public transport agencies in Switzerland, the federal railway providedparking lots at some of their railway stations (however at full price). The co-operation withthe VBZ in the context of züri mobil may not be counted as a direct support measure asthis is a project for mutual benefit. Mobility profited from the publicity run by VBZ, and VBZreceived an attractive supplement for their mobility offers.7

Additionally, other agencies supported the initiatives in a rather marginal way. Forinstance, the incineration department of the city of Zurich sponsored some exhibitionspace at a nationally known exhibition in Zurich.

5 Also in Germany, the media played a very important role for the diffusion of the carsharing idea (see 3.1).Here, also national newspapers took up the carsharing idea, explained the carsharing system and came to avery positive evaluation (see e.g. Marten 1996, Kaminski 1997). The „tageszeitung“, a left-wing dailynewspaper, also criticised the lacking political support of the carsharing system in a very open manner (seePötter 1997). 6 These research projects are summarised in a recent report, see Muheim (forthcoming). 7 Currently the running costs of ZüriMobil are covered. The project aims at full coverage of all costs by 1999(Mobility, 1998).


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2.4.7 Members

The decisive support for the development of carsharing in Switzerland, did not come fromthe official policy program nor from the above mentioned actors. Instead, the members ofthe co-operatives themselves contributed to the development in a huge amount (see5.1.2). According to the Mobility management, their input in the form of creativity, unpaidlabour, patience and subsidies largely outpaced all other forms of support.

2.4.8 ECS and BOA

In 1991, ATG and StattAuto Berlin founded the European Car Sharing organisation ECS(see 3.1), an umbrella organisation for all European car sharing initiatives. Four mainmotivations underlay this foundation (Wendt-Reese 1997):• Support of carsharing on a European level.• Reduction of the number of cars and car traffic.• Reduction of the negative environmental impact due to individual mobility.• Support of the integration of carsharing and public transport. Today, two main aims are the focus of interest (statements Joachim Schwarz):• To facilitate the foundation of carsharing organisations in Europe (by passing on

gathered knowledge to interested people)• To standardise the different carsharing systems in order to facilitate cross

memberships as well as the communication about the system. Members of ECS must fulfil a number of economical and service criteria (e.g. economiesof scale must be sufficient, carsharing must be oriented along the needs of the users bylocating cars in vicinity to member households, enabling short-term renting possibilitiesetc.). ECS also favours right of say of the carsharing members and set up a number ofcriteria which an organisation should fulfil in an environmental respect (see ECS 1996).Currently ECS has 40 member organisations with in total 36,000 carsharers in 8countries8. ShareCom had joined the ECS in the beginning and left it in between times because it feltthat ATG had gained too much influence within the organisation. Later on, CSC joined theECS again. However, ShareCom never had such a strong European focus as ATG. Itrather kept to its national market and relied on an autonomous growth process. Since1997, Mobility is a member of ECS. Through ECS international contacts with othercarsharing organisations are established or maintained. The ECS organises a number ofactivities. Those are:

• Seminars on carsharing• Help in all business-related and administrative questions

8 Out of the Dutch carsharing organisations, only two providers („Greenwheels“, „Autodelen“) are membersof ECS. The other organisations are not allowed to join, mainly because of a lacking environmentalmotivation and too rigid carsharing schemes which are not adjusted to the needs of the users.


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• Contacts to important players (automobile industry, policy makers, car renters etc.)• ECS-journal• Gathering of members• Workshops between carsharing organisations and public transport providers• Development of a hall mark of quality for carsharing (and others, see Wendt-Reese 1997) Another (mainly German) umbrella organisation for carsharing is the „association fororganised carsharing“ („Bundesverband für organisiertes Autoteilen“, BOA). Currently, itcounts 30 member organisations with in total 5,000 carsharers in Germany (plus Mobilitywith its 17,000 members). BOA understands itself as the representative for the small, localcarsharing initiatives. In contrast to ECS, they want to give their member organisations asmuch individuality as possible. „There is no recipe on how carsharing works well. We stillhave to do experiments.“ (Stutzbach 1997). Their main activities lie in an pool ofinformation on carsharing as well as a pool for facilitating cross memberships. They alsoseek for an integration with public transport providers and have a strong environmentalfocus. The differences between ECS and BOA are, however, marginal. In the eyes of ECSit might be possible that both organisations will merge in the long run (statement ofJoachim Schwarz). Mobility’s contact with BOA seems less important than the contact toECS.


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2.4.9 Network graph

The following graph summarises the main relationships which Swiss carsharingorganisations entertained with other institutions and actor groups before the merger.

Pioneers'segment

Normalcar drivers'segment

spatial market penetration

Market for private car-km's

Market potential of org. carsharing

ECS

Media

niche: Org. CS in EuropeOrg. CS in CH

Communities

Env. Orgs.

StattAuto

Pol. parties

Churches

Copauto

ZüriMobil

VBZCar rentalfirms

Taxis

Market of shareCom, resp. ATG

Founding members of co-operations

Cooperation, aquisition

Influence, support, coordination

Observation, recognition

Antagonism, conflict

CSC

ShareCom

VCS

SBBCar industry

Importers

Schools

ATG

Energy 2000

Fig.7: Network graph for the Swiss carsharing organisations before the merger


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3. Other carsharing experiments in Europe Organised carsharing is no totally new invention. Already in 1948, some dozen membersof a housing co-operative in Zürich founded the SEFAGE („Selbstfahrgemeinschaft“/selfriding community“), which still exists today. This early foundation of a carsharingorganisation was mainly economically motivated: People who could not afford to purchasean own car decided to share one. In the 1970s/80s there were a few attempts to set upcarsharing systems in Europe and the US (e.g. PROCOTIP in Montpellier, STAR in SanFrancisco, see Petersen 1995), but they all failed shortly after their foundation due toorganisational or technical problems. Later, the first successful examples were indeed thefoundation of ShareCom and ATG in 1987. But only short time later, in 1988, carsharingbegan to rise in Germany, too. The first organisation which was set up was StattAutoBerlin, initiated by Markus Petersen who wanted to prove in his PhD thesis that thepresent environmental problems caused by individual mobility (a field which is dominatedby private car ownership) would in the long run lead to new, common rights of disposaland thus would open the way for carsharing (see 3.1). The Swiss carsharing organisationswere not known in Germany at that time, thus a totally new kind of experiment was startedhere. Only in 1989 the organisers of both countries got into contact with each other, afterhaving read a short note in a newspaper. Later on, this exchange was strengthened(especially between StattAuto and ATG), and the organisations mutually inspiredthemselves. Again some years later (1994) carsharing was started in the Netherlands.Already before, a number of different parties had gathered in workshops initiated by theDutch ministry of transport and a preparatory-study was lanced in order to prove thatcarsharing is a feasible concept in the Netherlands, too (see 3.2). In this context, studygroups also got in contact with StattAuto and ATG and wanted to learn from theirexperiences. The schemes that were set up in the Netherlands, however, strongly differedfrom the German and Swiss schemes (see 1.3.2)

3.1 StattAuto Berlin: The scientific approach

Basis for the foundation of StattAuto: The development of organised carsharing inGermany began with the foundation of StattAuto Berlin in 1988. It was based on twoinitiatives: A first, practical aspect, was the dissolution of the housing community where theinitiators (three brothers of the Petersen family) lived. In their community, they hadcommonly owned one car, and everybody could make use of it. They were all students atthat time and lacked money to purchase an own car. Additionally, they all came from asomewhat „green corner“ and saw the environmental problems arising with massiveprivate car use. When beginning to live apart, they still liked the idea of commonly sharinga car. However, an adequate information system for knowing if the car would be free or notwas missing. So they began developing ideas how to create an organisation around thiscar without having to live together. The second aspect was the PhD-thesis of Markus Petersen. For proving his theoreticalideas, he started a field test and founded a small carsharing organisation, StattAuto in


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1988. With this foundation he wanted to show that such a system works financially andorganisationally and tested two competing theories about the rights of disposal againsteach other. The idea is the following: If a community or an economy is faced withresources which are becoming more and more scarce, rights of disposal might betransferred into rights of ownership or alternatively rather into common property. In ourmodern mobility system, the most important scarce resource is, in the eyes of Petersen,space. The car is a means of transport with a high range, a high transport capacity andhigh rights of disposal. It can, however, not be considered as a single, independent object,since it is bound to a street system of a limited character. So it would be wiser to speak ofthe „system car“, which encompasses the technical object as well as the streets. As soonas traffic jams and problems with parking places accumulate, it might be interesting to askif people will accept „weaker“ rights of disposal in order to solve those problems (i.e., usepublic transport or the railway instead of the car) or if they will just favour the opposite (i.e.,streets will be privatised and users will have to pay for using the streets). Petersen’shypothesis (which could be proved in the thesis) was that the first case, a weakening ofthe rights of disposal, seems much more plausible. Carsharing fits into this scheme sincethe rights of disposal are weakened for every user, but the individual advantages of usinga car are still given (statements of Carsten Petersen, and Petersen 1995). The media - a stimulation for the market: In 1990, the media got attentive to thedevelopments in Berlin. One of the most influential magazines in Germany, the Spiegel,reported about the carsharing experiment in a positive way and described how the systemworked (N.N. 1990). At that time, StattAuto disposed of 7 cars in 3 locations and had 65members. Some days after the publication of this Spiegel article, „all daily newspaperscame“ to StattAuto (statement Carsten Petersen) in order to report about the system, too.This way, carsharing got known to a wider public, at least to those people who attentivelyfollowed environmental and transport topics (Petersen 1994). The articles were positivewithout exception. Consequently, the Petersen brothers were invited to a number of citieswhere interested people were planning to found own carsharing organisations, and theyorganised workshops on how to organise a good carsharing system. At the end of 1990 the field test was transformed into an organisation, the StattAuto limitedcompany „... with somewhat more money and somewhat more manpower - though wenaturally did not earn any money at that time. We had other sources of money. I drove taxiand so on, but we understood ourselves as working for StattAuto, and we did not want tolook for other jobs. During the field test, this was not clear for Markus. He could have alsogone working somewhere else in the economic sector. But at that time we said toourselves, o.k., we rely on this, it is right from the perspective of ecological politics andtraffic politics, it corresponds to our wishes...“ (statement Carsten Petersen, see fig. 8 forthe logo of the company9). From 1991 onwards the carsharing market began to explode inGermany. A number of new carsharing organisations were founded in different cities,mostly small organisations operating within certain city areas. An exception is the Germantraffic club VCD who founded a national carsharing co-operative („Car-SharingDeutschland Genossenschaft e.G.“), an umbrella organisation for a number of regional

9 The name „StattAuto“ is an interesting play on words: „Statt Auto“ means: „In place of a car“. „Statt“ ishowever pronounced in the same way as „Stadt“, the „city“.


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carsharing activities (see 1.3.1, VCD 1993). At the end of 1992, already 36 organisationsexisted (Petersen 1995).

Fig. 8: Logo of StattAuto (StattAuto 1997)

In 1991, StattAuto, ATG and ShareCom founded the European carsharing OrganisationECS as a society according to Swiss law (see 2.4.8). The headquarters of ECS waslocated in Lucerne, the central office in Berlin. (In 1995, the head quarters were moved toBremen and the ECS became an association according to German law). As a number ofdifferent technological systems exist and as there is a need of the members to also usecars of organisations in other cities (statement of Joachim Schwarz), ECS is a goodmeans to push forward a unification of the different systems (Wendt-Reese 1997) and tofacilitate cross memberships. BOA supports such endeavours too, though it strives for amaximum of independence of its members (Stutzbach 1997). Growth and growth problems: StattAuto continuously grew until 1996. Then, they disposedof 150 cars in 46 locations and had 3500 members. It was, and still is, the biggestcarsharing organisation in Germany. Today, 10 full-time workers and 35 part-time workersare employed (StattAuto 1997a). Attempts to found car locations outside the city of Berlinfailed since no good public transport system - a necessary complementary technology tocarsharing (see 6.1) - is available there. Though still about 1000 new members wereadmitted in 1997, growth stagnated. Carsten Petersen mentions three reasons for this: (i)Since a few years, a lot of Berlin citizens (especially in the carsharing segment, i.e. highlyeducated people with a high income) move from the inner city to the surroundingcountryside. Public transport is much worse res. non-existent here, so that those peopleare forced to buy an own car. (ii) An important group of people only very rarely needs acar, so that carsharing gets too expensive an alternative. Currently, StattAuto memberspay an annual fee of 170 DM, and if somebody does not drive for more than 200 DM peryear, he/she decides to leave the organisation and to fall back upon normal car renting(see also Petersen 1997b). (iii) A third, somewhat smaller group are people who are sofrequently in need of a car (often due to professional reasons) that the effort of alwaysmaking reservations in advance becomes unbearable so that they decide to purchase anown car again. Problem solutions: For the first group of members who cancel their membership, nosolutions can be found. For the other two groups StattAuto started initiatives in order toregain their former clients res. to gain new clients in the respective segments. First, a co-operation with the public transport enterprise of Berlin („BerlinerVerkehrsbetriebe“/BVG) was initiated which guarantees StattAuto members a reduction ontheir monthly tickets for public transport. By this, people who seldom need a car shall bekept as members: The reduction on the public transport ticket is equal to the monthly feefor a carsharing membership. Second, a new system called Cash Car was introduced.


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Cash Car is a reversal of carsharing: People with a high need for individual mobility leasea car which fits into the already existent carsharing fleet, and StattAuto takes over the fullservice of the car. When the car is not needed, the owners can let it over to StattAuto. Assoon as it is rented by any of the StattAuto members, the car owners receive a certainshare of the charge. By this, their monthly leasing rates can be reduced (if everythingworks fine, even up to 100%). StattAuto hopes that with time a sort of stock market willdevelop where the Cash cars will have a certain, daily changing, stock market price,dependent on how often they are rented. For influencing the market (e.g. giving incentivesthat the cars are more often let in the weekend than during the week, because in theweekend the demand for carsharing cars is highest), recharging tariffs to the car ownerswill vary. Cash Car will start in spring 1998 with 15 „test clients“, and will be scientificallyevaluated during a test phase. Besides a scientific co-operation with theWissenschaftzentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung, Audi was integrated into the projectoffering the Cash cars under special conditions (StattAuto 1997b, N.N. 1997a, Petersen1997c). Besides regaining clients who have a high need for individual mobility, StattAutohopes to establish a carsharing model that might also be attractive for firms as carsharingclients. A small car fleet could then be left to a firm within the week, and the firm could givethe cars back whenever it doesn’t need them anymore (in the evenings, in the weekends). Future profile: In the long run, StattAuto wants to enlarge its offers and become acomprehensive mobility-provider. Already today, StattAuto sells train tickets and hands outa mobility card to its members with which they can open the car key box at the carlocations, cashlessly drive taxi and use it as a ticket for public transport. Via a specialtelephone number, carsharing members can also profit from StattKauf, an organisationwho sells bio-food in a home-delivery service. In the future they want to understandthemselves as a „mobility corporation“, standing in between mobility demanders anddifferent mobility providers. Every member of the corporation will be able to individuallyorganise his/her mobility via a central mobility office. He/she will not be interested in acertain mobility technology anymore, but will ask instead if his/her mobility is guaranteedand if the service is good. StattAuto also started an experiment with integrating electricvehicles into their carsharing fleet (already in 1991, subsidised by the European Union),and though they faced a number of technical and organisational problems with them, theywould like to extend their EV-fleet because of their specific vehicle characteristics(Petersen 1997a). A name for such a mobility corporation is already invented: „Choice:Company for Highly Organized & Integrated City Traffic Elements“ (Weinand 1997).

3.2 „Stichting voor Gedeeld Autogebruik“: The market-led approach

In the beginning of the 1990s, the Dutch government as well as different actors in theenvironmental and traffic domain noticed that the Netherlands face a severe problem intheir transport system: A national transport policy had been carried out in the 1970s underthe motto of „I am happy to ride“ („Blij dat ik rij“) and „an own car to everybody“ („Iedereenzijn eigen auto“). The number of private cars increased from 2 million to almost 6 milliontoday. It is estimated that in 2010 8 million cars will be run on Dutch streets, which wouldmean an increase of 70% between 1986 and 2010 (Bakker 1995).


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In order to face this problem, the Dutch government wanted to take a number of measureswhich are laid down in the Second Transport Structure Plan. This plan „calls for a moreintensive parking and business location policy as well as improvements to public transportand cycling facilities. It also contains measures to reduce car use with a view to improvinghabitability and accessibility. Some of these measures are aimed at specific target groupswho make trips for particular purposes. For example, transport management andcarpooling are mainly directed at commuters. Other measures are directed at commercialtraffic and freight transport.“ The long-term aim is to stabilise the total number of privatecars at a level of 6.5 million at most (loc.cit.). In this respect, the government consideredcarsharing as an ecologically interesting alternative to private car ownership. They saw adirect coupling between car ownership and usership: „Car ownership is also a reason forneedless car use like using the car for short distance trips. So if we are able to reduce carownership it might also be possible to reduce the car use. Car sharing „Call-a-Car“ may bea concept to reduce car ownership.“ (loc.cit.) Influence of different market forces: The idea to establish a carsharing system was alreadyaround among a number of different actors at that time (since about 1991, 92). The bigautomobile club ANWB („Algemene Nederlandse Wegenbond“) as well as BOVAG („Bondvan garagenhouders“), the national automobile organisation representing garages and carrenting firms, had developed plans to establish short-term car renting schemes in order tobind their clients to their organisation more strongly. On the scientific side, RogerTheunissen had written a PhD-thesis on „Call-a-Car: The car as an alternative“ whichanalysed the feasibility to set up carsharing organisations on a local level, and later on healso actively initiated a number of local carsharing projects. The influence of Theunissen’sstudy on the carsharing development in the Netherlands is, however, less clear than in theBerlin case. Theunissen thinks that „(...) time must have come for such things. I think thatthere must be a very broad societal support (for such endeavours). Certainly such a story(as I wrote it) has an influence, but there are so many other things that also have aninfluence. (...) (You have to) link the pieces of a puzzle. And naturally, it depends on whois working on it - do you have a good support, do you have good people? The interplay (ofdifferent forces), that is (important)“. In a broad sense, the Netherlands already disposed of some experience with carsharing intheir country. In 1973, a project called Witkar was run in Amsterdam. Here, a number ofopen electric vehicles could be rented within the city in a self-service system. People hadto own a special user card, and the single car stations were connected to a centralcomputer who finally did the billing. The project ended in 1981 because of too highfinancial losses (Petersen 1995). A feasibility study on carsharing: In late 1993, the Ministry of Transport („Ministerie vanVerkeer en Waterstaat“) commissioned a feasibility study on carsharing. In order to know ifit would be worth while supporting carsharing, they wanted to get an answer on thefollowing questions (Bakker 1995):• What kind of carsharing concept is interesting for the Netherlands?• Are there commercial possibilities for this kind of concept?• What are the opinions and expectations of the potential users of this concept?


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• What is the effect on car use and car ownership? In part, the study fell back upon experiences made in other European countries. Dutchstudy-groups visited Berlin (StattAuto) and Lucerne (ATG) and wanted to learn from thesecarsharing initiatives. The most important impact came with respect to the environmentalbenefits of carsharing: Both organisations had already gathered a number of experienceswith their customers, and they both had initiated studies to analyse their users’ mobilitybehaviour. But the idea to start carsharing in the Netherlands and the precise shape ofsuch a carsharing scheme was developed independently of the Swiss and the Germanexperiences. As Roger Theunissen puts it: „The idea emerged independently of whathappened in Germany and in Switzerland. When we started, we heard some rumours thatthere is something going on in Germany and in Switzerland. Then we got into contact withthem, and we still have contacts, especially with Germany. (...) But we did not profit muchfrom the experiences accumulated in Germany and in Switzerland, i.e., we couldn’t copytheir tricks. I think, this is a pity. I would favour a much more open exchange.“ The Dutch preparatory-study showed that carsharing is a commercially viable systemwhich should lead to a massive reduction in car use. Additionally, it pointed at a potentialof about 2 million carsharing clients up to the year 2010. This high number includes carsharers who are members of an organised carsharing scheme as well as private carsharers. Normal car renters are not counted here. Two main target groups should beaimed at in order to reach this potential: „Motorists who have bought a car for social andrecreational purposes and do not drive more than 10.000 km per year“, a group of about 1million people in 1991 (Bakker 1995), as well as people who own a driving license, but nocar of their own(statement Theunissen). It is expected that the motivation to purchase anown car is very high in this last group, especially when people can financially afford to buya car. First contacts between the different parties: In order to encourage the different parties whowere interested in participating in a carsharing scheme, the ministry began mutualconsultations in 1993. Then, the first steps were made: In October 1993 BOVAG publisheda brochure about carsharing (Call-a-car) in co-operation with the ministry which especiallyaimed at car rental firms. At the same time, they started the development of a Call-a-Carconcept for car rental firms which was brought into being in autumn 1994. Another bigplayer, the ANWB started its Auto-op-Afroep („Car-on-Call“)-system in summer 1994(subscription system, see 1.3.2). At the same time, a number of local organisations wereinitiated, the first ones in Leiden, Haarlem and Amsterdam. In spring 1994, the different parties were gathered in a workshop. It built the first platformfor a mutual exchange where the participants could learn from each other, communicateand search for co-ordinations. Very soon, other workshops followed. „The idea was to letthe people who offer something on this field take a look at their cards, under the motto: ‘Donot copy from each other, but learn from each other’. Those were informal afternoons orwhole days that we met, and somebody told about his work, and another person told aboutsomething else. Or, once we had invited a psychologist who could tell us more about thebackgrounds (of mobility behaviour), so that everything was set into motion. (...) We seeproviders in a broad sense. We do not only talk of providers if they really put wheels on


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street, but we also see communities as providers, because they can facilitate a number ofthings for such a system. Thus, they are also included in this platform. So this is a bubblingwhole.“ (statement Theunissen). Foundation of the „Stichting van Gedeeld Autogebruik“: Very soon, the participating partiesfelt a need for establishing a permanent structure for carsharing. They sought a platformfor regular meetings and an umbrella organisation who could facilitate consultation andcommunication. Therefore, in late 1995 the „foundation for carsharing“ („Stichting voorGedeeld Autogebruik“) was set up, at an explicit demand of the market sector. It fulfils 5main tasks:• Information and communication (under a common logo and name)• Facilitation of private carsharing (contracts, assurances etc.)• Linking private and business carsharing (setting up carsharing schemes for firms)• Development planning (e.g. establish carsharing in new residential areas)• Quality protection (scientific research on acceptance and behaviour on the side of the

consumers, research on new technologies, anticipation of societal trends etc.)

The foundation understands itself as an umbrella organisation for all initiatives in theNetherlands. It can act independently of its members and thus take decisions very quickly.They mediate between authorities, market and consumers. The contact to (especiallylocal) authorities is of special importance, because they can give financial andinfrastructure support to the system (see above), and they can help to set up a densenetwork of carsharing all over the Netherlands. Such a network can be achieved byestablishing a number of distribution places in all city areas, independent of who is thecarsharing supplier in the respective areas. This means a constant mediation processbetween suppliers and authorities. Due to a much less dense public transport system inrural areas, organised carsharing today is and in the future will be an urban phenomenon.However, private carsharing initiatives could offer a lot of possibilities here. The foundationthus sees one of its main tasks in supporting such initiatives.

Currently, the foundation is paid by the Dutch Ministry of Transport. In the long run, afinancial mix shall be achieved where not only the state pays a certain amount, but alsothe carsharing providers themselves bring in a certain share.

Identity of the foundation: In order to facilitate communication and to reach a high numberof people, the foundation aims at unifying the diverse carsharing systems. For this, itdeveloped a number of criteria which a carsharing organisation should fulfil in order tocount as a „carsharing provider“. Those criteria are, however, not very strict. They functionas a sort of guideline for the single providers:• The system must be flexible and should fulfil all mobility needs (short-term and long-

term trips).• The cars must be easily available through a simple reservation system. Ideally, they

should be located in vicinity to their users.• There must be a long-term relationship between client and carsharing organisation.

(Traditional car renting schemes do thus not count as carsharing.)


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For the foundation, it is important not to get a stigma of whatever kind (like „a car forenvironmentalists“, „a car for the poor“). So it tried to develop a name and a logo whichcomes close to the regular car marketing: „Autodate. All makes at home.“ (see fig. 9). AsTheunissen puts it: „This is something, where we really pay attention, that not the ideacomes up that it is only thought for one specific corner, but really for everybody who has aneed to solve its mobility problems. And this under the name of ‘Autodate’, a name whichpromises a bit of fun, a bit of ‘have a good time’ and such things. A car is sold in the sameway. A car is sold as fun, too. And we do not sell it as a rational product.“ All carsharingorganisations can make use of this logo. The foundation thus does not want to support aspecial organisation, but carsharing in general.

Fig.9: Official carsharing logo for the Netherlands (Autodate 1997b)

Future profile: Though a unification of different carsharing systems seems attractive, thefoundation lets the market play and does not force the different parties to facilitate crossmemberships. Up to date, no organisations co-operate. Instead of signing contracts withpartners in other areas, all try to expand nationally. Theunissen does not consider thisdevelopment problematic: In his eyes, there is no need for cross memberships. Mostcustomers use the cars in vicinity to their households and do not take cars in other cities.On the other hand, a co-operation with public transport providers seems much moreinteresting and important, because it enables a great flexibility to the users and enhancesthe number of decision alternatives for the users. For a good combination of differentmobility alternatives, mobility centres and a unified chip card technology for the users areneeded.

3.3 Introduction of carsharing in Switzerland, Germany and the Netherlands

The three countries differ with respect to the way in which carsharing was introduced. TheSwiss and German developments were started in a bottom-up manner, by the consumersthemselves. First, small regional experiments were made before the system was enlargedand spread over a wider area. The strategy in the Netherlands, on the other hand,resembles a top-down strategy. Here, the Ministry of Transport gathered several(interested and in part already active) partners around them and initiated a commonplatform for carsharing. The first partners were big national organisations already active inother fields (car renting, mobility information etc.) But still the Dutch carsharing foundationconsiders it a „bottom-up“-development, because of its reaction to an already existing(small) market: „If you look at other governmental measures, then they are indeed oftenprescribed from above. But here it is indeed the market who takes it up, and thus theconsumer, because, if the market would have no sales potential, then it wouldn’t work.Therefore, we really consider it as a bottom-up-movement.“ (statement Theunissen). Dueto this open platform, co-operations among the big partners were strengthened. Policymakers, on the other hand, lost a great deal of their influence: They have to let the market


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play and must accept a number of different schemes. In the end, it is not clear whichscheme will bring the greatest reduction in car use (Bakker 1995).


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4. The role of political support measures within the differentexperiments

4.1 Political support measures in Switzerland

4.1.1 Support activities

Governmental support program in the framework of Energy 2000: The VCS proposed thepromotion of the carsharing co-operatives in the context of Energy 2000 already in 1991(see 2.3.3, 2.3.4). This program was the main source of governmental support forcarsharing in Switzerland. The “promotion program fuels” has three main goals:1. To professionalise the two co-operatives and to give support in the development of

technological tools,2. to build up new carsharing co-operatives in the French- and Italian-speaking parts of

Switzerland, and3. to develop specific communication tools in order to make carsharing known to a wider

public (VCS and Energy 2000, 1995).

Both carsharing organisations were supported in three project phases from 1992 to 1995(see 2.3.4). But technological developments went on after this political support phase.Between 1992 and 1996, ShareCom developed an automatic reservation system, a on-board computer (this development was not supported by Energy 2000), an EDP-system(office software) and a handbook for regional user groups. ATG invested in theorganisational restructuring of their office. They developed a “motivation and educationsystem” for local branch leaders and reorganised their regional branch system. In theirmain office, they analysed and improved their organisational structures, developed amarketing and communication strategy and developed a specific office software.

After the completion of these projects a number of other activities have been initiated andfunded. Most recently, the co-operation of carsharing organisations with the publictransport authority of the city of Zurich (VBZ) and Europcar/Interrent is one of the mostnotable activities (see chapter 2.3.5). Mobility is part of this truly “integrated mobilitypackage” between public and private forms of transport since February 1997 (seeBEW/Energie 2000 1997, Departement der industriellen Betriebe der Stadt Zürich 1997,N.N. 1997d, N.N. 1997e).

Support philosophy of Energy 2000: The promotion program works on the principle thatinitiatives may only be funded in the context of specific projects. No subsidies are paid forthe maintenance of an organisation. Furthermore, projects are only funded up to amaximum share of the costs. The rest has to be brought in by the organisationsthemselves, or additional sponsors have to be found. Regarding the support of carsharing,Energy 2000 sees its major task in promotional activities with respect to theprofessionalisation of the co-operatives and in getting rid of bottle-necks in the growthphase.


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Other forms of governmental support: Another form of more indirect governmental supportwas given in the form of funding research projects on the environmental benefit and marketpotential for carsharing. An early example was a study on „the energy saving potential of acommon use of motor cars as an alternative to the ownership of an own car“ (Muheim andInderbitzin 1992). More recently, an extensive study on user profiles and the perception ofcarsharing was financed by Mobility, VBZ, Europcar and Energy 2000 (Mobility 1998).These research projects were important in several respects: They help to diffuseinformation in specific actor fields. They build up legitimacy for the experiments by showing(by rather “independent” experts) in what respect the experiment might be interesting forother actors. Furthermore, some of the promoters of carsharing made their living asconsultants and researchers on transport issues. Therefore, some of the research projectsguaranteed that these people could continue working on the innovation (statements of theMobility-management).

4.1.2 Lessons learned in the context of the promotional program

Overall evaluation of different parties: When we asked our interviewees about theimportance of different kinds of external support measures and specific policy programs,the overall judgement was quite contradictory. In general, commentators out of thecarsharing organisations tend to have the opinion that carsharing would have grownindependently of any governmental support. Growth would then only have been somewhatslower and transition periods would have been more difficult. But, in their eyes, theessential resources for the development had come from the organisations and theirmembers directly.

As the professionalisation phase was accompanied by specific policy projects in both co-operatives, a neutral overall assessment is difficult to make. Many „external“ commentators(not directly involved in the organisations) just take an opposite point of view. In theiropinion, professionalisation of the carsharing organisations would not have beenthoroughly pursued without „external” pressure.

Since we were not doing any formal evaluation of the promotional activities, we are notable to draw firm conclusions on this matter. For our purpose it is, however, relevant toknow which kind of promotion measures seem to be well adapted to such a rapidly growingbottom-up initiative and which measures are evaluated rather critically.

Policy making as an ongoing learning process: One of the remarkable things of the officialsupport measures — and which makes a clear assessment of their effects even moredifficult — is that all the involved parties described the relationship between promoter andpromoted as a process of ongoing learning and building of trust. There was a period inwhich experiences with the co-operatives taught about the mechanics of the promotionprogram. On the other hand, the management of both co-operatives had to learn how toefficiently organise the projects.

The crucial task for all involved parties was the professionalisation of the organisations.This problem was tackled differently by ATG and ShareCom. Whereas ShareCom had anegalitarian and democratic organisational and product philosophy, they nevertheless were


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eager to substitute a considerable amount of communication (like reservation calls) withthe co-operative members by a machine (computer). ATG which was more stronglyoriented towards “business”, concentrated on direct contact with the customers andfocused on organisational development. In the beginning, it had to be found out which formwould be better adapted to a rapidly growing carsharing system. Though the ShareCommembers were highly satisfied with their organisation and with the automatic reservationsystem, ATG’s strategy seemed to show more tangible results. ShareCom soon faced anumber of technical problems, especially with their software.

The policy makers, on the other hand, were eager to bring a professional attitude andapproach into the co-operatives. As they sai, they wanted to get rid of “ideologies” and toforce the management to focus on “cost structures” and “pay-back periods”. In thebeginning, these different approaches created some communication problems.Furthermore, the actual needs of the organisations only became clear with experience.After the first contacts had been established and experience with concrete projects hadbeen gained, mutual trust and understanding of the respective positions (of the co-operatives res. policy makers) led to a point where the flexibility of the exchange wasgreatly enhanced. Meanwhile, the majority of members of the Mobility management ishighly satisfied with the kind of exchange and contact they maintain with the responsiblesfor the promotion program.

However, it was also stated that policy programs cannot do everything. For instance, themanagement stated that it was not up to policy makers to prevent the management frompainful learning processes. These processes have to happen and policy makers may onlyplay a supportive role here. The policy makers on the other hand said that they were onlyable to help getting rid of bottle-necks. Here, the crucial role of the VCS has to bementioned. VCS built up legitimacy and constructed a “translation interface” between thetwo co-operatives on the one hand and between the co-operatives and the policy makerson the other. They could fulfil this role as they always wanted to promote the “idea” ofcarsharing and not one of the individual co-operatives (see 2.3.3) and thus could look atthe situation beyond any specific ideological standpoint. Very probably, the two co-operatives would have been at pains dealing with the support infrastructure without theVCS as an intermediary partner.10

Evaluation of single support measures - financial support: Surprisingly, there was unanimitybetween promoters and promoted that direct money input was either unnecessary orharmful. One important argument which was brought forward by the carsharingmanagement was, that carsharing still represents a predominantly private form of transportbased on the technology of the motor car. The carsharing co-operatives did not want topromote additional automobile use. Each customer should, thus, carry the full costs ofhis/her consumption act individually. A direct subsidy of the carsharing organisations couldperhaps make the use of cars too cheap and by this it would induce people to drive morethan absolutely necessary.

10 This role was especially important in the beginnings of the process. With time, however, the contact couldbe established directly without any major problem.


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The role of money, was also attributed a destructive role in the motivation to contribute tothe system, especially by some ShareCom founders. One member of the formermanagement of ShareCom even went a step further and said that money was destroyingthe very basis of the idea of carsharing. Therefore, policy makers should abstain fromputting additional money into the system. The following cite is quite illustrative for this kindof reasoning. One interviewee stated: „In my normal life, I work as an architect. In thecontext of carsharing, for me, a «little bit of money» is much less than «no money».” Lateron he added: “I am personally willing to work for free for a project which I judge assensible, but I am not willing to work for it for a ridiculously small pay. I am not willing towork as a car cleaner!”

Financial support, however, was accepted in the context of specific projects by the majorityof the interviewees inside and outside the carsharing co-operatives. But even here,participants of our workshop said that large sums in the context of promotional projectscould represent considerable threats for a rapidly growing organisation like theirs. Onesaid: “We coined the term «subsidising to death» with regard to governmental supportprojects. The problem with these clearly defined projects which run over a period of two tothree years is that they are only in part financed by the confederation. The rest had to bebrought up by ourselves. This induced us to undertake much more risky endeavours thanwhat we would have done otherwise. (...) Sometimes, we feared that our decision to startsuch a project could break our neck.” An other person stated: “The bigger the partner andthe project, the more expensive it is for our organisation and the lesser is the return. Thebig projects increase the pressure for professionalisation, but they bind resources whichare lacking later on when they should be available for the resolution of more pressingproblems”. Many of the commentators said that it was key to have a flexible scheme ofpromotional activities as the problems changed extremely quickly in an innovative sectorwith annual growth rates of more than 50%.

In contradistinction to the rather sceptical assessment of the role of financial support, oneshould note that the promotion activities in total were received very favourably. As alreadymentioned, the two co-operatives followed quite different strategies. However, both profiteda great deal from the development of new software and management strategies they couldrealise in the context and with the support of these programs. In our workshop with theMobility management it was stated that the early difficulties with the promotion were moredue to the incompatibilities between the two carsharing organisations than due to thecharacteristics of the promotion program. Furthermore, they said that flexibility alsodepended on the kind of project which was followed. Technological innovations veryquickly created inflexibility because of the material requirements of the technologies. In thesupport of “processes”, like the reorganisation of the branches, flexibility proved to be noreal problem. The criticisms against financial support, therefore, mean that if governmentalmoney is not very well targeted to the quickly changing needs of the innovation process, itmay even have adverse effects. This targeting depends on a mutual understandingbetween policy makers and management of the co-operatives. In the course of the time,such an understanding was achieved.

Legitimacy and networking: The members of the carsharing co-operatives said that one ofthe most important positive returns was the legitimacy they received through the promotion.


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The fact that they received money from the government was a signal to many other actorsthat they had to be taken seriously. This role was of a symbolic kind with regard to mostactors. With regard to federal ministries and with the national railway company it proved tobe of direct relevance. The promotion program worked as a “gate keeper” in manyrespects. In the eyes of the carsharing management, these open gates finally contributedmore to the success of the experiment than the direct financial means. More specifically,this legitimacy was instrumental for building up Co-operations with the public transportagencies, e.g. in the context of züri mobil . Without this connection the co-operation wouldhardly have taken place. For Energy 2000, the production of legitimacy was in part difficultbecause it was quite a new kind of policy program in Switzerland, and experiences andlegitimacy had first to be built up for the program itself. However, in time Energy 2000 gotwidely known in Switzerland and may today serve as a label for future oriented projectspromoting energy efficiency.

The promotion program was not only indirectly important in facilitating contacts betweencarsharing co-operatives and other institutions. It also helped to build up, from scratch,carsharing experiments in the French and Italian speaking parts of the country. The Frenchorganisation Copauto was later taken over by ATG (see 2.3.4, 2.3.5). ShareCom and ATGwould have had difficulties to start such projects on their own.

General assessment: The actual impact and importance of the promotional activities aredifficult to assess. Of key importance is the input of concrete individuals, their willingness totake risks and their flexibility in embarking on learning processes. Furthermore, what isapparently needed is time. From the first ideas to merge the two co-operatives until theactual merger, about 4 years passed. The success of this merger finally depended on therole of go-betweens like the VCS. By their work and political position, they were able totranslate between the different worlds of the egalitarian management style of ShareCom,the business-like philosophy of ATG and the “policy makers”. To fulfil such a role theconcerned actors have to be able to adapt to the emerging circumstances. This versatilityof individual people is also reflected in the changing roles some people had in the course ofthe development of the carsharing co-operatives. The key person at VCS, for instance, leftthe traffic club in order to become head of CSC. Today, she is a member of the governingboard of Mobility. A collaborator of Energy 2000 who was in contact with the carsharers istoday working in the project züri mobil. Another transport researcher who was among thefounders of ATG now works for Mobility.

Furthermore, networking and the creation of legitimacy was mentioned as crucial by mostof the promoted. Bottom-up experiences, in general, have to fight against a negative imageassociated with ideology and low levels of professionality, independently of their actualmotivations and capabilities. It is therefore crucial that these experiments receive someprotection in order to be able to acquire the needed capabilities. This protection has to becomplemented by a pressure to learn quickly enough to follow the developments.

The role of financial inputs had been downplayed by most of our interviewees. However,the concrete projects had played an important role. The problem was perhaps less themoney that was spent, but much more a question of the flexible and adaptive use of thesefunds. In this context, small and short-term projects with a commitment to continuation


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seem to be superior to huge long-term projects. A „step-by-step“-promotion necessitates aclose interaction between the management and policy makers. Trust and understandingare the most important ingredients for an efficient promotion program.

The support of the professionalisation process is certainly the key issue in the developmentof the Swiss cases. However, a mere rational cost effective calculus would havethreatened the input of the original supporters, and the whole system would have hadmuch more difficulties to grow in the initial periods. Once, however, the rapid growth pathwas taken, speed of learning became the critical factor, and here professionalisation waskey.

4.2 Political support measures in other countries

Germany: As Carsten Petersen said, carsharing never got any support from thegovernment at least in Berlin. The only, but quite decisive input from a governmental bodywas a cost-benefit study on carsharing financed by the ministry of transport (Baum andPesch 1994). The authors of the study, who are known for their rather conservativestandpoints in transport policy, came to a largely positive assessment of the societalbenefits of carsharing. This study proved to be a rich source for arguments for promotingcarsharing and opened the doors to a wide range of actors for the carsharingorganisations. Besides, some communities put cheap parking lots at the disposal ofcarsharing organisations.

Petersen stated that they were not really interested in getting money from government.The solution of the traffic problems could not lie in subsidising new forms of transport butrather in the application of the full-cost principle to transport technologies, in general.Currently, the private car profits most from non-internalised external costs. This should becorrected in a first step. An important element in the calculation of costs is associated withthe free availability of public land for transport purposes. If this was priced by marketmechanisms, an efficient allocation of land to cars could be established. By realising thesegeneral legal conditions for traffic, carsharing would automatically gain in competitiveness.

Besides this general regulatory reform, political promotion of carsharing could be handledin a more direct way. As the founders of StattAuto see it, the most important measurewould be preferential access to parking lots on public land. Carsharing automobiles shouldhave the right to park in specifically marked public areas, in the same way as taxis. Thiswould create a huge advantage for the users of the system. The main argument for suchpreferential treatment comes from the semi-public form of transport which carsharing (liketaxis) represents. In order to gain experiences with such a system, test areas should bedefined. Other parking lots on public land should be subsidised by communities.Additionally, integration between public transport and carsharing is of key importance for amore environmentally benign mode of transport. As many transport authorities still arerather reluctant to cooperate, policy makers could help to persuade these organisations.

The Netherlands: As was already stated in chapter 3. carsharing is organised in theNetherlands in a wide variety of forms, too. Government, however, identified carsharing asa strategically important innovation for the reduction of car traffic on Dutch roads and


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therefore supported it substantially. The Dutch Ministry for Transport and Public Worksplayed a role as a network builder and a promoter for carsharing. In a first step feasibilitystudies were carried out. Later on platforms were organised in order to reap synergy andto achieve a mutual learning process. Finally, the Stichting was founded. It should work asa service centre for the promotion of carsharing in the Netherlands. This Stichting is, forthe time being, fully financed from public funds. In the medium term, it aims at a moremixed financial basis of its activities. The high involvement of the state is rationalised bythe representatives of the Stichting by the public interest of reducing the growth rate ofautomobiles on Dutch roads.

Important public partners for the Stichting are, besides the Ministry of Transport and PublicWorks, local communities which aim at enlarging their residential areas. In such newly builtareas, carsharing should be incorporated already in the planning stage. At a political level,the Stichting, as carsharing in general, is not very controversial. Therefore, there are anumber of other societal actors which supported carsharing through advertisement andcommunication, like environmental organisations, but none had a very important role toplay besides government (according to Theunissen).

ECS: At the European level, the ECS is one of the most important representatives ofcarsharing (see 2.4.8). ECS is fully financed by the member organisations and does notget any money from individual member states of the European Union. Currently a projecton standardisation of carsharing is financed in the realm of the EU-Thermie project. Noother activities exist at the moment.

Are there national styles in the promotion activities? In our interviews, many commentatorssaid that the success of the Swiss case was due, among other factors, to a specific Swisspolicy style in the promotion of technological innovations. As in Switzerland there are nobig economic sectors in private transport which swallow huge amounts of money for“prestige projects” like in Germany and France, the solutions which are developed have,therefore, to be much more pragmatic and market orientated. This implies that intimateknowledge about the needs of the experiments and trust become crucial resources for thesuccess of the promotion projects and this is seen as very positive by most of thecommentators.

Trust formation is also an element of the Dutch approach in promoting carsharing.However, in Switzerland, the “good relationship” between policy makers and experimentsis complemented by a determination towards professionalisation of the respectiveorganisations in order to reap economies of scale. Therefore, there is a strong incentive forthe different initiatives to cooperate. In our workshop, the management of Mobility arguedthat the somewhat disparate situation in the Dutch carsharing sector was perhaps due to a“too democratic” attitude of the promoting bodies. If no-one was determined to takedecisions about where to go, economies of scale are very difficult to reap. The Swissorganisation, therefore, advocates a somewhat ambiguous approach in the promotion ofbottom-up experiments which consists of (a relatively tight) involvement of policy makers inthe development of the innovation and in the same time a clear commitment to efficiencygoals.


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5. The carsharing-users: Is carsharing a „sustainable transportationsystem“?

5.1 The carsharing-users in Switzerland

5.1.1 Data base

This chapter relies on qualitative interviews and group discussions with ShareCom- andATG-members which we ran from January to March 1997. First, we interviewed 6ShareCom-members living in and around Zurich and 6 ATG-members living in Lucerneand some small communities in the German-speaking part of Switzerland. Members wereasked about their mobility patterns, their motivations to join a carsharing organisation, theexperiences they made with the system, their identification with the system and theirattitudes about present and future mobility. Furthermore, we held five group discussions(three groups in Zurich with ShareCom and ATG-members living in the city of Zurich andsmaller places in the canton, and two groups in Lucerne, again with members of bothorganisations living in the city of Lucerne or some smaller communities in its vicinity).

The aim of this mixed procedure was first to find out central topics in mobility patterns,attitudes and experiences by personal interviews. Additionally, interviews give thepossibility of capturing a biographical dimension, i.e. people report changes in decisions,mobility patterns and attitudes by time. In order to get a broader overview over thosecentral topics we additionally ran group discussions. In group discussions a highinformation density is given within a short time, and decisions and experiences can becaptured in a situation resembling a real-life setting (Lamnek 1995).

ATG and ShareCom had already carried out a number of quantitative studies before (seee.g. Muheim & Inderbitzin 1992, ShareCom 1995). Also in other European Countries,quantitative studies on the mobility behaviour of the carsharing consumers and theenvironmental impacts of massive use of carsharing were done (see e.g. Baum & Pesch1994, Universität Bremen, KUA 1993, 1995, Meijkamp & Theunissen 1997). For ourpurposes we considered qualitative research a good complement to those already existingquantitative studies as they may give a better insight in learning and change processes onthe side of the users and thus an empirical proof of what a number of carsharingorganisers mean when they speak of a „learning curve“ of their carsharing members.

5.1.2 Bottom-up experimentation and learning from the users

In the very beginning providers and users of carsharing were identical. A number of youngpeople, fascinated by the idea of commonly using consumption goods in general or cars inparticular started their own experiment - the set-up of a carsharing co-operative - out ofdozens of private initiatives in this field. Every member purchased a share of the co-operative and thus brought in the needed starting capital. Everybody took over specifictasks, identified with the system and was a potential multiplier of the system. Besides high


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identification, all members profited from this task-sharing as it guaranteed low costs forcar-use.

Steady contacts between management and users: The motivation to contribute on a non-paid basis is only possible as long as the user-group stays small. With an increasingnumber of users the need for centralisation and bundling of activities rises. ATGunderwent this centralisation step faster than ShareCom who longer relied on honorarywork and decentralised user-group structures. Nevertheless in both organisations a directcoupling between the users and the management res. persons taking over administrativeand technical tasks (from the car operators to the central office) always proved to be a keyelement. In the beginning all users gathered for common meetings. In time, a delegatesystem was introduced as a platform for mutual information exchange. Users determinedthe delegates of their user-group in user-group-meetings. The final decision powernevertheless stayed in the users' hands in the form of ballots. A journal informed all usersabout the latest developments of the co-operative and about future decisions to be taken.Users at any point in time had the possibility to get information, to complain about amalfunctioning of the system or to make proposals for changes by either contacting caroperators or group leaders of their user group or by phoning the central office. The mostoften frequented person for this information exchange was and still is the car operator.Additionally, still most of the persons active in the central office are users of the carsharingsystem themselves so that they directly learn about difficulties and easily can take over theusers' perspective.

ConstContinuous organisational learning: In the starting phase it was necessary that first asmall number of people could gather experiences with carsharing in an organised formbefore integrating more people. The initiators carefully had to observe attitudes andpreferences of their early users, learn about changes of those preferences in the course oftime and also learn about how to adapt the co-operative structures to those changes aswell as to growth demands. This was done by personal communication and in meetings ofall users. At a certain point in time it was, however, not possible anymore to get anoverview over all motivations and wishes within the co-operatives as they grew more andmore anonymous and not all users made use of the personal communication interface.Therefore ATG soon began sending extensive questionnaires to their members in 1990and 1993 (a follow-up for Mobility as a whole was done in 1997, see Muheim(forthcoming)), and also ShareCom did so in 1995. In the same year ShareCom also madea survey among their group leaders and asked them for their opinion on honorary work. Asa high number of group leaders started feeling exploited by the commitment system andwished to get a financial recognition for their work, the required changes were translatedinto practice and ShareCom started paying a small financial compensation of some SFRper month to group leaders in highly frequented locations (see 2.3.5).

Organisational advantages of a co-operative structure: Though the co-operative spiritweakened by massive growth rates, and direct contacts among users more and morelessened, both co-operatives refrained from simply transforming into a service enterpriseand from cutting the link between management and basis. First of all, co-operativemembers ensure the necessary capital basis for car purchase and future projects. Thislowers capital costs. Secondly, co-operatives guarantee an identification with the system


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so that the risk of abuse or damages is held to a minimum. Unpaid res. low-paid workguarantees low administrative costs, and, as a side effect, by actively contributing to thesystem expectations of the users and their confidence into the system are enhanced. StillMobility was founded as a co-operative, though much more professionalised than before.11

By integrating the possibility of either being a co-operative member or a passive members,Mobility reacts to the needs of their users as well as to an organisational need: In centralplaces and big cities the anonymity among users already grew so big that it is very difficultstill to find group leaders who take over tasks on an honorary basis. Users in those regionsdo not know for whom they carry out those tasks and feel exploited. In smallercommunities, on the other hand, users still know each other and carsharing also has asocial quality. In order to keep their motivation to actively contribute to the co-operativeupright, it is necessary not to financially compensate administrative or technical tasks.Those two systems thus guarantee optimum functioning of the system.

Tariff structures: Tariffs are adapted to this double system. Committing members paylower fees. Passive members pay higher fees and do not have to take over administrativetasks. For future users a double system brings the freedom to choose the degree ofcommitment they prefer. For the organisations it additionally leaves open manypossibilities of reaching new market segments. In order to adapt organisational structuresbefore again being over-run by new members, test-memberships will be abolished in thenearer future. The new Mobility management nevertheless hopes to attract new membersby introducing passive membership (without purchasing a share of the co-operative). Inthe near future, the differentiation between users and members should give way to a moremarket oriented tariff structure, e.g. based on the number of kilometers driven per year(frequent drivers tariffs).

5.1.3 Mobility patterns and motivations

The ecological benefits of carsharing can only be evaluated if the user profile and themobility patterns of the carsharers are taken into consideration. Who is attracted bycarsharing and why?

Former car-owners vs. non-owners: The present carsharers can roughly be divided intotwo sub-groups: Persons who did not own a car before joining a carsharing organisationand former car owners. This last group is slightly over-represented (Muheim & Inderbitzin1992: 64%, ShareCom 1995: 59%). Out of this group, the number of persons who despiteusing the carsharing system still own a car is small and can up to date be neglected(ShareCom 1995: 3%). The differentiation criteria between former car-owners and non-

11 A system which StattAuto in Berlin also follows, though it does not have the form of the co-operative (see1.3.1 for a comparison of different organisational forms. In Germany, it is much more complicated to found aco-operative than in Switzerland). Even the ECS recommends to its member organisations the right of a sayof the carsharing members. In the Netherlands, an integration of the members is no topic: All carsharinginitiatives understand themselves as mere service enterprises. The price for this is higher service and controlcosts.


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owners are, however, not always clear: Most carsharers had sold their car already sometime before entering the organisation (Muheim & Inderbitzin 1992: 39%, ShareCom 1995:49%) and passed a certain time without owning a car. The duration of this non-ownershipvaries a lot, and the sale of the own car is mostly due to changes in external life conditionsor accumulating latent experiences (see below). Additionally, also the former non-ownersof cars were often individually mobile and had the possibility of borrowing a car fromfriends or family members or occasionally rented a car.

Internal motivations for carsharing: When ShareCom and ATG started, mainly ecologicallymotivated people were attracted, and the idea of a common use of consumption goodsplayed a central role. „We said that we do not want to more and more damage ourenvironment, but we want to limit ourselves to a sensible degree.“ (ShareCom-member,entrance date 1987). As most carsharers in the beginning knew each other, carsharingalso had a social value. But user profiles changed over time and also in the future theymight be subjected to changes. Environmental consciousness is still an important criteriumtoday, but it lost in importance in favour of financial and pragmatic considerations:Carsharing is considered as a cheap alternative to car ownership (according to Muheim1997), and the service of the car is done by the organisation. Additionally, members feelindependent of other persons, a motivation which is mainly valid for people who did notown a car before and who depended on friends or family members if they wanted to use acar.

When the organisations grew more and more anonymous, the social character ofcommonly sharing goods permanently decreased. Most users who only recently joinedone of the two carsharing organisations do not know any other carsharers personally(apart from the car operator). They have a very pragmatic attitude towards carsharing. Thecar is considered as a means of locomotion that enables its users to reach specific goals.Out of all mobility alternatives it best serves their mobility needs. Mobility is no central lifetopic for most of the users, and thus no need to get in contact with other members. Despiteof different organisational philosophies between ATG and ShareCom no differences inuser profiles and user types become apparent (see Harms 1997).

Besides, a certain need for individual mobility is given. Some of the environmentally highlyconscious users do not consider carsharing eco-friendly as it still relies on automobiletechnology. Though they consider it more environmentally benign than private carownership, they regret not being able to manage all trips by public transport. Economicallymotivated carsharers are mainly attracted by a financially attractive system of individualmobility, but they also regard the carsharing system as eco-friendly.

External motivations for carsharing: The motivations for giving up old mobility patterns andbecoming a member of a carsharing organisation are diverse. For former car-owners anecessary condition for carsharing is a break-through of habitualised mobility patterns.Such a break-through can hardly be reached spontaneously (by advertisements orinformation spreading), but it is mostly either forced by changing life conditions (e.g.moving to another town with different conditions in private and public transport, getting anew job in a different place or with different working conditions, a changing incomesituation), by a breakdown of the car (here at least a decision has to be taken whether to


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purchase a new car or not) or by the accumulation of latent experiences that at a certainpoint in time reached a critical threshold value and asked for a change (e.g. increasingdifficulties with parking lots, increasing duration of car trips due to traffic jams, increasingcosts for repairs of the car). Those latent experiences can also be of a more indirectcharacter, e.g. people get more and more aware of the ecological problems with car-useand notice a gap between their knowledge, attitudes and behaviour (and for this,information spreading surely contributes to an accumulation of critical knowledge that inthe long run could reach a certain threshold and urge for a change).

For former non-owners of a car, changing life conditions or the accumulation of latentexperiences can make the purchase of an own car inevitable (also e.g. due to moving toanother town or a change of the workplace as critical life events or an increasingdiscomfort with borrowing a car from others as an accumulating latent experience). Thus,also in this group there are critical phases in which former (public-transport-oriented)mobility patterns are broken through and ask for changes. As many of the former car-owners already sold their car before joining a carsharing organisation those critical phaseshave to be taken into consideration very carefully. Carsharing here could be a means ofstabilising public transport-oriented mobility patterns (see below).

External conditions and the importance of information spreading: Summed up, changinglife conditions and latent experiences can make a car unnecessary or, on the contrary,they can make it necessary. One critical external condition for considering the sale of theold or the purchase of a new car is the (perceived) availability of public transport means inthe living- and workplace. As soon as a good public transport ntework is given, alternativesto the ownership of an own car can realistically be taken into consideration. This conditionbeing given, the knowledge of the carsharing system and confidence in its functioning iscrucial. Thus the informal and formal spreading of information is necessary. People shouldhear about the system from independent, trustworthy sources and ideally also know otherpeople who already made good experiences with the system.

Market potential for carsharing: All costs included, carsharing is a system which iseconomically attractive up to an average of about 10,000 km driven by car per year. Morefrequent drivers better buy an own car. Combined with an annual ticket for all Swiss publictransport ("Generalabonnement") the break-even point between carsharing (plus publictransport) and driving an own car lies at 5000 km per year (ShareCom 1996). Someauthors mention much higher break-even-points (Muheim & Inderbitzin 1992: 11,000 km,Forschungsgesellschaft Mobilität FGM 1996: 15,000 km for Austria, Petersen 1995:18,000 km for Germany). As Mobility not only knows a kilometre-, but also a time-dependent driving tariff, carsharing is not suitable for regular trips like commuting (as thecar will be parked all day and charged for the reserved time) or long journeys. Consideringthose restrictions, Muheim & Inderbitzin (1992) calculated a market potential of about800,000 carsharers in Switzerland (28% of all persons owning a driving license), 600,000of them current car-owners.12

12 Baum & Pesch (1994) make out a potential of 2.45 million carsharers in Germany which corresponds to ashare of 5,8% of all owners of a driving license. This is a very conservative estimate as it only takes intoaccount those people who do not very often make use of a car (up to 12 times per year). Seen from an


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Reduction of mobility: Carsharers drive much less than normal car drivers. Former carowners were less frequent car drivers already before they joined the system and in meandrove about 9000 km per year, compared to a Swiss mean of 13.000 km (Muheim &Inderbitzin 1992). When joining the system, the total number of km driven per yeardecreases (down to on average 4000 km). Some of the less driven km are now made bypublic transport (about 2000 km), but mobility in total is reduced. Non-car owners do notdrive more than before, as they had the possibility of using a car from time to time (about1500 km before and after joining a carsharing organisation). More than half of allcarsharers drive less than 1000 km per year with the carsharing car (60% in 1995,ShareCom) and only few more km with other (own, borrowed or rented) cars.

5.1.4 The emergence of new mobility forms

Carsharing can be considered as a means for initiating a transition to public transport-oriented mobility forms res. as a means for stabilising such mobility forms. Former car-owners undergo substantial learning processes with respect to mobility behaviour andattitudes. Former non-owners are stabilised in their low individually motorised mobilitypatterns.

Learning and change processes: When making use of carsharing former car-owners learnabout the true costs of car driving. As all costs are included in driving fees, they regularlyget a feedback about the costs of their driving, and they slowly adapt to those driving costsby planning routes and trying to avoid cost-intensive car trips. In total they drive much lessthan before entering into the carsharing organisation (see above).

Secondly, the habitualised fixation on the car cannot be (re-)established. Before making atrip by car carsharers are forced to consciously decide about which means of transport totake. As no own car is immediately available, people have to plan their trips, make areservation in advance and keep to their reservation times. Due to these conditions theybegin to consciously take up other means of transport as mobility alternatives. By havingno own car standing in front of the own house, car and public transport are suddenlyequalised with respect to their availability. It gets attractive to test and more frequentlymake use of public transport. By this, users learn about the strengths and weaknesses ofeach means of transport and use the car only in cases where public transport does nothold anymore. As a carsharing member puts it: „By time, I had to say: It is not bad, drivingby train. Due to one thing or the other I had to say: You learn to value driving by train. Youcome to a natural relation to the car.“ (ATG-member)

The most interesting phenomenon, however, is that carsharers do not feel restricted intheir mobility. Instead, they report an increase in life quality. They more and moreexperience car driving as stressful, whereas the use of public transport is considered as aluxury (without actively contributing to locomotion you can do whatever you like). The

attitudinal perspective (which types of car drivers are there and which could be easiest convinced to join acarsharing organisation), much higher numbers result.


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renunciation on "unnecessary" car-trips is sometimes accompanied by a reorientation onlocal offers (shopping, leisure time activities).

Also former non car-owners undergo an increase in life quality. They already for longpractised a public transport-orientated mobility life style and principally enjoy making useof public transport. When their external life conditions change or the use of cars from otherpersons is not possible anymore or gets difficult, life quality suffers and the need for thepurchase of an own car grows. For them, carsharing is a good means to stabilise public-transport dominated mobility life styles. (Clearly it is uncertain if people out of this groupindeed would purchase an own car or if they still would go on using public transport andonly feel less comfortable.)

Critical conditions for learning processes: Learning and stabilisation processes can onlytake place if a carsharing system perfectly works. Mobility already has reached a degree ofprofessionalisation that leads to high satisfaction rates with the system. Most users haveno difficulties with spontaneously reserving a car, and mostly they even can make areservation for the car they prefer. Up to date, spontaneous reservations (less than onehour in advance) are mainly possible in places with a dense network of locations (bigcities). But nevertheless also for smaller communities reservation times are fullyacceptable for the members. Use errors (members taking a wrong car, members taking acar at an other than the reserved time) or abuse of the system did up to date onlymarginally occur. But projecting the actual growth rates into the future, it is important todevelop good control mechanisms for avoiding errors and abuse. The development of aboard computer can be seen as an effective means for guaranteeing the functioning of thesystem.

5.2 The carsharing-users in Germany and in the Netherlands

5.2.1 Bottom-up experimentation and learning from the users

In Germany, like in Switzerland, in the beginning, providers and users of carsharing wereidentical. The Petersen family, e.g., commonly used a car in their housing communitybefore the idea rose to set up a professional organisation (see 3.1). Though differentlyorganised (in the form of a limited company), the carsharing members also brought in theneeded starting capital by putting a bail at disposal, of a similar height as in Switzerland.The system also relied on labour input of its members (e.g., a number of car-operatorswere appointed), but this input was not honorarily done, but minimally paid from the verybeginning. In order to learn about the needs of their members and their satisfaction withthe carsharing system, a registered society was founded in which the members gatheredand had the possibility to bring in suggestions for improvement. The final exertion power,however, lay in the hands of the company, i.e., the StattAuto management. Also in otherplaces, small organisations (societies or co-operatives) rose in a bottom-up manner,started as small experiments and grew in time in a constant learning process.


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Seen from the perspective of the carsharing users, carsharing in the Netherlands wasinitiated in a top-down manner. The Dutch Ministry of Transport reacted to ideas that werearound among the future carsharing providers - local and national organisations (see 3.2).Learning from the users takes place by regular scientific investigations about thesatisfaction with the system and the user profile, and by a telephone line which thefoundation for carsharing runs. This line is mainly used by private carsharers who want toget information about how the system works and about the possibilities of help that thefoundation puts at disposal, but also members of carsharing organisations may call here.The different carsharing providers also dispose of telephone lines for their members, butas they understand themselves as service enterprises, members are considered as clientsand not as partners with equal rights who should have a say in organisational matters.

5.2.2 Mobility patterns, motivations and new mobility forms

Independent of the carsharing organisation, researchers in Germany and in theNetherlands come to the same conclusion as in Switzerland: Carsharing is a means oftransport which reduces the number of driven car-km. This is due to the limited availabilityof the cars (the cars do not stand in front of the own house, and they always have to bereserved in advance) as well as to new transparency about the costs of driving (Baum &Pesch 1994). In Germany, the most comprehensive study on carsharing was done byBaum & Pesch in 1994. It comprises data of more than 600 carsharing users of 6 differentcities and as well as data of 300 people interested in carsharing in Köln. In theNetherlands, a recent study was done on behalf of the foundation for carsharing(Meijkamp & Theunissen 1997). Here, 340 users out of four different carsharing schemeswere asked about their satisfaction with the system as well as their mobility patterns.Additionally, data of 800 persons interested in those schemes was gathered.13

Mobility patterns: In Germany, 87% of the carsharers owned a car at one time or the otherbefore they joined a carsharing organisation. 30% had already sold their car long timebefore (thus independent of carsharing), another 23% sold their car due to carsharing.31% reflected on purchasing a new car and renounced it because of the carsharing offer.Only 3% of the carsharers can be counted as people who started to drive a car due tocarsharing. Based on those figures, one carsharing car substitutes 4 private cars inGermany (Baum & Pesch 1994). If the total market potential of 2.45 million carsharerscould be reached (see 5.1.3), there would be 1.2 million cars less on German streets.14

Also in the Netherlands, a reduction of the proportion of car-ownership can be stated.Before joining a carsharing organisation, 37% of all carsharers owned a car. After joining,this percentage decreased to 20%. An additional 5% of the carsharing users refrainedfrom purchasing an own car. One carsharing car in the Netherlands therefore does, in

13 For other user data see e.g. Petersen 1995, Brand 1995 and Universität Bremen, KUA, 1993 and 1995.14 The German market potential for carsharing is less than in Switzerland, because carsharing in Germany isup to date mainly an urban phenomenon. In Switzerland, 63% of all carsharing locations are situated inplaces with less than 10,000 inhabitants. The market potential computed by Muheim (see 5.1.3) takes allplaces with more than 500 inhabitants into account. In Switzerland, this different carsharing structure iscertainly due to a much denser network of public transport throughout the country.


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contrast to Germany and Switzerland, only substitute 2 private cars (Meijkamp &Theunissen 1997).

When joining the carsharing organisation, the annual number of car-km driven in Germanydecreased from on average 7000 to 4050 km. By this, 7 billion car kilometre could besaved if the total market potential was reached. Like in Switzerland, this change in mobilitybehaviour is certainly no discrete change, but a slow adaptation to the new system.Additionally, when asked how many kilometres somebody drove with his/her car before,people often have problems in giving this number: Most of them had times where theyused their car very often, and due to external changes they more and more reduced theircar use. The figure they give is the number of kilometres they made at the end (eitherbefore selling the car or before joining the carsharing organisation, see Harms 1997).Carsharing cars are used much less frequently than private cars (1-3 times per month), butif they are used, they are used for longer trips which is due to a better combination of trips.The change in modal split due to carsharing (in % of the annual kilometres made withmotorised means of transport) is given in table 2.

Tab.2: Change in modal split (% of annual kilometres, Baum & Pesch 1994)means of transport without carsharing with carsharing

own car or car from friends,family

60.5% 13.4%

carsharing - 24.9%car rental 2.9% 3.1%taxi 0.8% 1.3%public transport 35.8% 57.3%

100% 100%

The total share of annually made car-km is reduced, public transport is more frequentlyused than before joining a carsharing organisation. Likewise, a study in Munich shows thatcarsharing members spend more money on public transport than on carsharing(Krietemeyer 1997). It also impressively shows that most carsharers are more stronglylocally orientated: 87% more often stay in their own living quarter than before for doingshopping, for recreational purposes. The use of non-motorised means of transport (bike,on foot) is slightly enhanced (from 18 to 20 ways per week, Baum & Pesch 1994).

In the Netherlands, a reduction in car use can be stated, too. The total number of annuallydriven km decreases from 8500 to 5700 km. This number is much higher than in Germanyand in Switzerland which can possibly be attributed to different carsharing schemes in therespective countries (more long-term renting schemes in the Netherlands seem to attractpeople with higher mobility needs than in Germany and in Switzerland. The total number ofdriven km before and after joining the carsharing organisation is thus higher). There is,however, a huge difference between former car owners and former non-car owners:Former car owners annually drove 15,900 km and now reduce to 10,100 km (-37%),whereas former non-owners drove 5,400 km and now make 3,800 km in mean (-29%).These numbers are merged for all four carsharing schemes under investigation. There are,however, big differences among the single carsharing schemes: Schemes with fixedrenting conditions attract people with a higher need for individual mobility than schemes


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which offer the possibility for short-term renting. The proportion of reduction in car use is,however, comparable for all schemes. After having joined a carsharing organisation, thebicycle and train are more frequently used by members of all organisations (Meijkamp &Theunissen 1997).

In Germany as well as in the Netherlands, one of the most important criteria for thesatisfaction of the carsharing users with the system is the availability of the cars in vicinityto the household. In Germany, the main reasons for leaving the organisation again aremoving to an other town (see below and also 5.1.3, „external motivations for carsharing“)and too little need for a car (see the problems of StattAuto, 3.1). In the Netherlands, oneimportant factor which hinders interested people in joining one of the carsharingorganisations are the costs which are perceived as too high (especially among non-carowners). People who still own a car consider this ownership a threshold for joining(because of the costs of the car which should pay for itself, and maybe because of toostrong car use habits, too, see below).

Internal motivations for carsharing: The majority of the German carsharing participants(70%) names environmental reasons as the main motivation for participation. Also a greatnumber of people considers carsharing a good complement to public transport (43%) ormentions financial reasons (own car is too expensive, 38%) and a too little need for a car(27%). In the Netherlands, no data is available here. The typical carsharer in Germany aswell as in the Netherlands is of a medium age (31-40 years), lives in a small household (1-2 persons), is well educated and disposes of a medium income (the carsharers are herespread over the whole range of income groups: In Germany, e.g. 20% belong to a lowincome-group and can thus not afford to purchase own car, 18% belong to a very highincome-group).

External motivations for carsharing: Like in the Swiss case, a necessary condition forbecoming a member of a carsharing organisation is a break-through of habitualisedmobility patterns. In a qualitative study among carsharers in Berlin, three possibilities forsuch a break-through are made out (Franke 1997):• Habits do not take effect anymore: An availability of means of public transport is not

given anymore (e.g. due to a breakdown of the own car) or locations of personalactivities change (start or end of a trip, like moving, new workplace, new activities in theleisure time). Here, a sudden event stimulates people to look for an alternative.

• Objective possibilities change: Public transport offers are changed, the possibilities ofdriving through town by car change etc. In this case, an acceptance level is surpassedand people begin to seek alternatives.

• Changes in the own life situation: A slow change in interests and needs occurs, e.g.due to the birth of a child, a new social environment etc.

On the basis of the Dutch (quantitative) data, similar external motivations are found:People only get interested in carsharing when they are not habitually fixed to their own car.The attitude towards this innovative technology itself (and thus the „internal“ motivation forcarsharing) is no good predictor for a person to become a carsharer (Meijkamp &Theunissen 1996, Meijkamp & Aarts 1997).


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New mobility forms: If people have joined a carsharing organisation, all means of transportsuddenly get equally available (in all cases, people have to make a short way by foot inorder to reach the next means of transport, and they have to stick to specific timetablesres. reservation times). By this, car use is reduced and public transport gets moreattractive (Meijkamp & Aarts 1997). And: „If we would make an accurate environmentalanalysis of the carsharing system, we would come to the conclusion that not the higherfunctional efficiency brings the largest environmental benefits, but the changed needs ofthe consumers. This is where sufficiency - and not in a moral sense! - plays its role.“(Meijkamp 1996).


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6. Discussion and evaluation

The development of organised forms of carsharing in several European countries is a niceexample of a bottom-up initiative which aimed at promoting more environmentally benignmodes of individual transport. Meanwhile it has gained a degree of diffusion andprofessionalisation which allows to offer this mobility form commercially to a broad rangeof customers. It has, therefore, been largely a success story which has not yet reached itsfull market potential. This case may, therefore, serve as a good example to be analysedwithin the context of strategic niche management.

6.1 Technology, niche, variation and selection

The innovation of sharing cars in social group which transcends the private environment ofa couple of households could only successfully develop since the second half of theeighties. Several attempts existed before, but never diffused beyond a critical number ofparticipants. Private forms of carsharing existed, however, a much longer time before andstill are an important form to guarantee access to a car for a broad range of people.However, the experiences of these individual experiments were never synthesised to starta broader diffusion process and so, every new experiment had to start more or less fromscratch. It was only with experiments of organised forms of carsharing that exponentialgrowth could be realised in the past couple of years.

Organised carsharing originally developed in a sphere of protection, a “technologicalniche”. This niche was build up by environmentally and socially concerned pioneer userswho wanted to develop new mobility forms. They grew out of a couple of households whopractised private carsharing and wanted to persuade more people of the convenience ofthis mobility form. The protection these users applied to the technology was essentiallyunpaid labour which was invested into the maintenance and growth of the system. Thislabour input was of a very diverse kind and ranged from simple car wash to thedevelopment of new computer software or the development of communication andmarketing strategies. These different jobs were often executed by the same people, i.e.there was a very low division of labour in the system, at least in the beginnings. Organisedcarsharing, at least in Switzerland and perhaps Germany, was much more than a simplemarket niche, because the users were at the same time the developers and promoters ofthe innovation.

Interestingly enough, the technology of organised carsharing developed quiteindependently in several places in Switzerland, Germany and Holland. These paralleldevelopments prove an impressive range for variation for a product whose technologicalrequirements are rather simple. Today, still many “variations” of organised carsharingexist. However, the majority of the experts, especially in Germany and Switzerland, believethat there will be an ongoing concentration and standardisation process in this field overthe next years. The story of the merger process in Switzerland illustrates this kind of asocial, or managerial “selection process” quite impressively. In the meantime, carsharing


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grows at a pace of more than 50% per year (at least in Switzerland) and its utilityincreases in proportion with the density of the car locations. An end of the developments isstill not in view.

6.2 Success factors

The ultimate reason for the sudden success of organised carsharing is very difficult toassess. However, some elements may be listed which worked in favour of a broaderdiffusion of this mobility form. The first factor was the utility carsharing brings to a certainsegment of car users. The current regime of individual transport is marked by a largelynon-rational connection between use and ownership of cars. Car drivers often do not basethe decision which means of transport they use for which kind of mobility need on thebasis of a full-cost calculus. Instead they compare running costs and therefore, the car isoften perceived as the cheapest and most convenient means of transport even if this is nottrue from a more “objective” point of view. Organised forms of carsharing confront carusers with full cost prices and therefore, provide a more objective basis for decision. Forthe segment of users who drive their car less than 10’000 km a year carsharing brings adefinite cost advantage over the private ownership of a car. This comparison of costs hasto be weighed by measures of convenience. The additional transaction costs users areconfronted with, for instance in the form of reservation and walking to the car location, is,however, balanced by getting rid of maintenance and repair problems with the vehicle.Therefore, it is individually rational for a wide range of car users to participate in thesystem.

However, this argument of individual rationality was not sufficient for the system to growinitially. The cost advantages may only be perceived, if the system works reliably and if the(full) costs of the use of carsharing may be predicted with some accuracy. Availability andcosts are dependent on the managerial capabilities of the organisation which offerscarsharing and on the density of car locations. The first aspect could develop on the back-cloth of the many volunteers who helped to build up the system. They provided anenvironment in which many uncertainties could be overcome. The uncertainties and theresolution of use conflicts could be better handled in rather small member groups basedon personal acquaintance than between a number of rather anonymous customers of acommercial service enterprise. This co-operative form of organisation of carsharing hadalso implications on costs of the provision of the service which made the system evenmore interesting for newcomers. (This point was especially mentioned by the“fundamentalist” counter movement of ProShare). These costs were especially lowered bythe careful handling and cleaning of the cars. Therefore, the “growth in cells”-approachwhich was chosen originally by ATG and ShareCom and in a certain sense also byStattAuto was important to create “space” for learning.

This space had however, to be used by the managers of the system to learn quicklyenough how to deal with the needs of a growing number of cars, locations and users. Thestory of the professionalisation of the two carsharing co-operatives which is extensivelytold in this case study illustrates this point quite well. Once this growth path was taken, thesecond critical factor could be overcome, namely a minimal density in the offer oflocations. By this, the system got known to a wide number of people, transaction costs for


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the users were lowered and reliability also for short term reservation was enhanced. Theovercoming of this initial barrier is perhaps the major input from the early members and itmight be a permanent competitive advantage of carsharing organisations over commercialcar renters.

A third factor for success of carsharing, especially in its initial expansion phase is theexistence of a sufficiently dense and attractive network of public transport. The majority ofthe experiments started in urban areas and the main field of expansion is related to theseregions. In Switzerland a quite dense offer of public transport exists both at a national anda more regional scale. Carsharing could establish itself as a complement for a largelypublic transport oriented mobility style. The recent stagnation in the growth of StattAutomay also have as one reason the limitations of the Berlin public transport offers. Finallythis may also be a reason, why organised carsharing is largely a phenomenon of“Germanic” countries as here public transport is in general better developed than inRomanic countries.

A fourth point has to be seen in the support organised carsharing got from surroundinginstitutions. Of special relevance were policy programs in Switzerland and theNetherlands. Here, policy was understood as a support of the carsharing initiatives ingetting rid of bottlenecks and in supplying services which are not provided by privateenterprises. Technology and organisation orientated projects played an important role inSwitzerland in the beginnings. They were not followed in other countries. However, whatall the managers of carsharing in Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland said, is thatsupport of government was important in the sense of attributing legitimacy, in building upnetworks and in opening doors to other actor groups. This requires a policy style which isquite near to the ideas of strategic niche management. However, carsharing is aninnovation which does not crucially depend on governmental support. Policy makers mayspeed up learning processes and may help give direction to the experiments. Policy mayhowever, not substitute the learning processes at the level of the experiments.

For the further growth of carsharing a number of macro-regulations (an indirect way of“technology forcing”) should be set in motion. Here, the internalisation of external costs forall means of transport would certainly promote carsharing. Furthermore, the generalpricing of streets and parking lots would have essentially the same effect. At the level ofthe use rights of public space, carsharers would like to have the same privileges as othersemi-public means of transport like taxis and busses. This would essentially be freeparking lots in public spaces, access to privileged lanes etc. Finally co-operations withpublic transport should be promoted by public officials. By this learning processes wouldgo from non-professional carsharers to all-to professional experts of public transportagencies.

Finally, one should not underestimate the role of technology for the success of organisedcarsharing in recent years. Carsharing is based on the conventional automobile and inprincipal nothing has to be changed in order to use a normal car in a carsharing fleet. Thetechnology which guarantees a secure and reliable access to the cars has, however,changed dramatically in the past ten years. Originally telephone computers and later onthe internet provide an increased flexibility to the system. More importantly, the


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development of a specific office software was important to handle the ever growing carpool flexibly and reliably. Technology will become even more important in the comingyears. With a further expansion of the system and growing anonymity among the users,tracking and monitoring of vehicles will be essential. For this reason a board computer willbe installed in carsharing cars in Switzerland in the course of this year. Attempts todevelop such a system only some years ago failed because of, among other problems,non-maturity of technological components.

Besides all these reasons for “success”, one may ask whether there is also another side ofthe coin and whether there are negative implications of carsharing which will be revealedwith expansion of the system? An often stated argument against carsharing, is that it willreduce the numbers of cars sold. Countries with an indigenous automobile industry will,therefore, not have a strong interest in promoting this innovation. However, in a recentstudy (VCD & Öko-Institut, 1997) the employment effects of carsharing have beencalculated to compensate the losses of workplaces in the automobile industry. Theseadditional workplaces will be available in software enterprises, in the central offices of thecarsharing organisations, in the maintenance of the cars. Furthermore, employment willincrease as an effect of the substitution of private car kilometres by public transport. Thiswill lead to a growth in public transport and therefore create new jobs.

6.3 Regime shift

Carsharing has proven to be largely a “success” up to now. The co-operatives have beenable to develop a product which fulfils the needs of a certain market segment better thanall the existing alternatives. But is this already all one may say about the potential benefitsof this innovation. Will carsharing provide a service to a clearly demarcated market niche?Or, could it go further and contribute to a fundamental transformation of the way weorganise our daily transport activities?

A first indication to see that carsharing is more than an isolated product innovation is that ithas given rise to a number of other innovations in the past few years. In the direction of carrenting and leasing, for instance, StattAuto is currently developing its “CashCar” product.This innovation builds on carsharing but extends it substantially to new market segments.For the realisation of CashCar, a host of new technologies and products must bedeveloped. Another example is the project züri mobil in Switzerland, which is one of themost successful offers of “integrated mobility services” in Europe. Before carsharing wasincluded into the project, züri mobil had only a very marginal success. Since the start ofthe co-operation membership has grown substantially. The combination between publicand private means of transport could easily be expanded to other regions and could be thenucleus around which future integrated mobility products could grow.

Here lies in our opinion one of the strong arguments for a more fundamental change inmobility forms which could be initiated by a large scale diffusion of carsharing. At the levelof the technology, it is largely a conservative innovation. It attacks the dominant regimebased on the private car however in one of its core pillars: the coupling of private use andprivate ownership of the artefact. As was already mentioned, the automobile as we know ittoday, is a highly efficient means of locomotion which covers a great part of the mobility


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needs in modern societies. However, the same is not true for the maintenance andmanagement of this artefact. The uncoupling of use and ownership carries a considerablepotential for transformation.

This opening up of the” black box” is furthermore showing signs of positive feedback whichcould lead to the stabilisation — and “lock-in” — of new mobility forms. Such positive feed-backs exist at the level of the provision of carsharing with regard to an increase in thedensity of car locations. But more importantly it exists also at the level of the consumer.Carsharing changes the perception of the different mobility alternatives and closes the“rationality-gap” which was mentioned above. An increased cost-consciousness leads to areduction of the perceived mobility needs and to the realisation of a different modal split.Therefore, carsharing leads to inverse learning effects compared to the acquisition of aprivate car. The latter leads to learning processes in which the mobility consumptionexpands and an entrenchment of mobility based life styles is established. Carsharingenables to redirect these learning processes and open the way for new mobility forms.

These learning processes could indirectly also have an impact on the innovation strategieswhich are more closely related to the automobile as an artefact. The breaking up of takenfor granted mobility forms could give way for new technologies which would profit from acombination with carsharing. Electric vehicles for instance would have a much greatermarket potential if a long range vehicle is at disposal for irregular use. Small and energyefficient vehicles, in general, could profit from the existence of a cheap and reliable systemof carsharing. “The car” would then be freed of the currently dominant paradigm of the“race and tourism vehicle” which integrates the provision of all potential mobility needs amodern citizen may experience during his life time. This could open up the way for a wholevariety of new car forms which are adapted to specific needs of specific car drivers. Theexperiences with the innovation of carsharing, furthermore, indicate that this newtechnological path could be substantially more energy efficient and less environmentallypolluting than the current transport regime.


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Appendix A: Background of this report

This case study report was written for the research project «Strategic Niche Managementas a Tool for Transition to a Sustainable Transportation System» (duration: May 1996 -October 1998). This project is supported by the European Commission, DG XII, within thearea "Human Dimensions of Environmental Change" of the RTD Programme "Environmentand Climate".The focus of this study is the underutilisation of more sustainable transport technologies.The project examines how niches for alternative transport technologies are created andmanaged by various actors, and how public policy can contribute to the wider diffusion anddevelopment of new transport technologies and systems by building upon these niches.

The aimThe aim of the project is to study experiments with new transport technologies and mobilityconcepts in different countries from the perspective of strategic niche management.Among other things, the following questions are addressed:How to improve experiments with alternative transport technologies and concepts (to makeexperiments a vehicle for market development and diffusion)?Which public policies would underpin such experiments?

Theoretical backgroundThe project will develop and apply the concept of strategic niche management to stimulatea transition to a more sustainable transportation system. Strategic niche management isdefined as: the creation, development and controlled phase-out of protected spaces fordevelopment and use of promising technologies by means of experimentation, with theaim of (1) learning about the desirability of the new technology and (2) enhancing the rateof application of the new technology. The approach differs from the “technology-push”approach that underlies most of today's transport policies, by bringing in knowledge andexpertise of users and other actors into the technology development process to generateinteractive learning processes and institutional adaptation.

Features of the projectProject development through an interactive process between researchers andpractitioners. The project is guided by a group of practitioners, who advised on researchset-up, case selection, results and especially the structure and contents of the workbook.Researchers and practitioners also co-operated in the case studies.Use of recent insights from innovation literature. The project focuses upon the concept ofstrategic niche management (see above).Analysis of 13 cases of actual experiments (see below for a complete overview).One of the final products is a workbook on the management of new technology in real-lifeexperimental settings.This workbook will be presented and developed further during the project's finalconference on 8-10 June 1998 in Seville. This conference is aimed at practitioners in the


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field of traffic and transport with a specific interest in experimentation with new transporttechnologies.The other final product is a book on strategic niche management and how it contributes toa transition to a sustainable transportation system.

The research teamThe research is carried out by a multi-disciplinary and international team of researcherswith backgrounds ranging from academia to industry and from natural sciences andengineering to economics and social sciences.

Project co-ordinators:Dr. Johan Schot and Remco Hoogma, Centre for Studies of Science, Technology andSociety, University of Twente, The NetherlandsDr. René Kemp, MERIT, Maastricht University, The Netherlands

Project partners:Dr. Kanehira Maruo, Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies of the Human Condition,University of Gothenburg, SwedenDr. Birgitta Schwartz, Department of the Environment, SwedenDr. Gerhard Prätorius and Dr.-Ing. Karl-Heinz Lehrach, reson (Regional DevelopmentAgency for Southeast Lower Saxony), GermanyDr. Bernhard Truffer and Sylvia Harms, EAWAG (Swiss Federal Institute for EnvironmentalScience), Technische Hochschule Zürich, SwitzerlandDr. Stephen Potter and Ben Lane, Design Innovation Group, The Open University, UnitedKingdomColin Black, Consultant, The Open University, United KingdomBenoît Simon, CIRED, France and MERIT, Maastricht University, The NetherlandsDr. Per Sørup and Dr. Matthias Weber, Institute for Prospective Technological Studies,Joint Research Centre, Seville, Spain

Case studies13 experiments with transport technologies in various European countries were selectedfor case studies. The case studies cover passenger and freight transport, new technolo-gies and existing technologies that are used in a novel way, technologies that are still inthe R&D phase and technologies that have for a longer time been ready for marketintroduction. The case study reports are available on the internet: http://www.jrc.es/snm/(Here one also finds addresses and telephone numbers to contact the authors directly.)

Stimulating the Market for Light Weight Electric Vehicles: The experience of the SwissMendrisio project by Sylvia Harms and Bernhard Truffer

The Emergence of a Nation-wide Carsharing Co-operative in Switzerland by Sylvia Harmsand Bernhard Truffer

Introduction of Automated Zone Access Control in Bologna, Italy by Remco HoogmaTowards Autonomous Railroad Trucks: Rail freight transport innovation in Southeast

Lower Saxony by Remco Hoogma


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Promoting Electric Vehicles in the United Kingdom: A study of the Coventry ElectricVehicle Project by Ben Lane

Greening Transport for Disabled People: A study of Camden Community Transport’s‘ASTI’ project by Stephen Potter

MOVE-INFOREGIO: Implementation of a road traffic information project in the Hanoverregion of Germany by Gerhard Prätorius and Karlheinz Lehrach

Operation of Electric Road Vehicles in Germany: Investigation of selected examples byGerhard Prätorius and Karlheinz Lehrach

Trucks on Trains: A comparison of two ‘Rolling Highway’ experiments in Sweden byBirgitta Schwartz

An Outsider Initiative in the Emerging EV Market: The PIVCO adventures in Norway andCalifornia by Birgitta Schwartz and Kanehira Maruo

Praxitèle: An experiment with self-service rented electric vehicles in France by BenoîtSimon

The La Rochelle Experiment with Electric Vehicles by Benoît Simon and Remco HoogmaThe Bikeabout Experience: An automated smart-card operated bike pool scheme by Colin

Black

ContactFor general information about this project and its products, contact:

Remco Hoogma or Johan SchotUniversity of TwenteCentre for Studies of Science, Technology and SocietyP.O. Box 2177500 AE EnschedeThe NetherlandsTel: +31 53 489 4132 / 3344Fax: +31 53 489 4775E-mail: [email protected]

WebsiteInformation about the project is available on a website: http://www.jrc.es/snm/

the emergence of a nation-wide carsharing co - communauto

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