Define: car sharing

Over the last couple of months I’ve been trying to work out how to develop the yours2share category for cars, van, bikes and indeed anything automotive. When I first started yours2share, I assumed this would mainly be classic cars, sports cars and supercars. These are often shared, but most people find their partners through the specialist owners clubs.

Then I began to consider other car fractional ownership possibilities when a friend mentioned in passing that she sometimes wished she could find someone to use her car at weekends. She has two small children and she has a car to run around in during the week, but at the weekend they always use her husband’s bigger car. Which means her car takes up valuable space in the drive at the weekends. She lives in a village with good rail links to London, so there are commuters living all around her, who only need a car at weekends. It could be a perfect match. She just didn’t know how to find someone.

I started to investigate and stumbled into the world of lift sharing and car clubs. The terminology is most confusing because in the UK, what the rest of the world call lift sharing, is commonly known as car sharing. Car sharing simply means sharing a ride in someone else’s car. Whereas for all other assets, “something sharing” means shared ownership of that “something”, ie boat sharing, property sharing etc. Carplus is a good place to start if you want to know more about everything to do with sharing cars, Liftshare is one of the leading lift sharing companies.

Further investigation of car shared ownership lead me to the car clubs, which is the general term for all forms of shared car ownership, from the car clubs for supercars to the city car clubs run in many cities. If two or more people own a car, then it is a car club.

The supercar clubs usually operate using a points system. You buy points and using the vehicle on differing days and times requires different amounts of points. City car clubs usually operate on a cost per mile basis, they are an excellent idea, but only work when there are lots of people, and therefore cars, in a relatively small area. This is because the car clubs have to maintain the cars and need to be maintaining several in an area for it to be economically viable.  It is also easier to promote car clubs in an area where are alternative means of transport.

If a small group of people get together to buy a car, then they are forming an “informal car club”. I’ve recently added a new page explaining how to form and run an informal car club, with help from the City Car Club. Running an informal car club isn’t difficult. As with sharing anything, the key to success is investing time at the beginning making sure that your partners are like-minded and that your requirements are compatible, (it will not work if you all want to use the car every Saturday morning. ) Also invest time setting up the system for recording use and mileage, payments and all the other housekeeping items. Once this is done, it should work well.

After talking to lots of people, particularly at Carplus, Liftshare and City Car Clubs who were very helpful, I can now see how yours2share can contribute. At the moment there are few, if any, ways for people to find partners for informal car clubs in towns and villages where commercially operated car clubs would be uneconomic. yours2share is designed to exactly this.

Now I’ve just got to promote this idea! I suspect this will be more difficult. But having come this far, I think I’ll continue.