Car Sharing to Rival Car Hire

According to Scott Griffith, chief executive officer of Zip Car Inc “Car hire is so last-century.” Zip Car are perhaps the leaders in a new wave of ‘Car Sharing’ companies that take a different approach to car hire.

Car sharing is not a new idea. The concept had some success in the 80’s in built up cities in Switzerland, Sweden, Canada & America. What makes this idea different from car hire, is that instead of picking up and dropping off cars at the companies parking lots, you can drop them off anywhere, leaving them for the next person to pick up. You can pay a monthly fee to have access to the fleet of cars and use them whenever you like. You simply search online to find the nearest car too you, and use your card to access it, then just park it up anywhere when you are done.

It is more recent developments in technology, such as online booking, electronic locks and low-emission vehicles that has sent the business model into new highs. Zip Car confirmed this week that the 400,000 member car share operation has formally begun the process of going public. Shares of the rapidly growing company expected to go on sale later this year in a $70-million initial public offering.

In April the Wall Street Journal declared car-sharing to be “a hot area of the otherwise slow growth global car hire industry.” One market research report even predicted that European car share networks could have 5.5 million members by 2016.

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