Looking back at 2011, one the biggest areas of change has been sharing cars (sharing the ownership of cars rather than the equally important lift sharing). Cars represent a huge opportunity for sharing because of the number of very expensive assets which spend the vast proportion of their time unused. Shared ownership of cars used to be relatively difficult to manage. Until recently most shared cars were in private syndicates, predominantly set up to own sports, classic or super cars.
Often the owners had found each other through car owners’ clubs. Because the cars are used infrequently, it is relatively easy to work out when the owners can use the car. The owners are also usually relatively wealthy and relieved simply to reduce the costs and responsibilities of ownership, so apportioning costs is fairly straightforward.

Car clubs like Zipcar and City Car Club have been gathering momentum for some time in the UK, USA and across Europe: the recession has definitely helped them. Car clubs bring people together around a car and manage all aspects of the shared ownership. But they generally operate in cities and suburbs. There are small car clubs in towns and rural areas, but few survive long.

A different model was required if car sharing was to hit the mainstream and I believe this has recently emerged with peer-to-peer rental. This allows people to advertise their car for hire by the hour, day or month. Like ebay, Couchsurfing and many collaborative consumption services, these systems depend upon reviews to develop the necessary trust systems. The owner reviews how well the renter looks after the car: cleanliness, tidiness, petrol as agreed, timeliness of return. Similarly the renter reviews the owner: was the car as advertised, clean, tidy, available etc.

RelayRides in the USA and WhipCar in the UK have forged the peer-to-peer car sharing way forward. In the USA, RelayRides led a change in the law in California to enable peer-to-peer rental: previous laws classified it as normal car hire and effectively made it impossible. HiGear is also pioneering peer-to-peer rental of luxury cars in the USA.

Finally the major car manufacturers are now getting involved. They probably hoped they wouldn’t have to, but they realise that car sharing may become mainstream and if they aren’t part of it, they will suffer. They also know that a shared car is often a person’s first car and they will be looking to hook them to their brand for life. Daimler has a new electric car club called car2go; Ford supplies many cars to Zipcar; BMW and Sixt car rental have created DriveNow car club (German); and Renault supplies Hertz On Demand (a hybrid of car hire and car club).

For more about sharing cars.

This video about car sharing was the winner of the Liftshare member video competition - enjoy!

See yours2share for more information about car sharing, car shared ownership and lift sharing.

Following up from an earlier blog post about RelayRides, there is an interesting article in the Economist today about peer to peer car sharing.  As well as RelayRides in the US, there is another operator WhipCar operating a similar peer to peer car rental service.  I’ll have to try it out.  And I had to comment on the Economist’s website!

Most sharing arrangements quickly find they need some kind of reservation system so that people can easily see who and when partners are using the shared asset. If they have an arrangement where free time can be booked on a first come basis, then they need the system to enable them to make the reservation too. Ideally this should all be on-line so everyone can access it.

Over the last couple of months several on-line reservation systems have come to my attention, so I thought I’d let you know about the three that look the most interesting.

The first is My Reservations which has been created by Bill Hosie, a yours2share member. Bill has shares in both a light aircraft and a boat, so he has a good understanding of the requirements. The system can either be slotted into your own website (many syndicates have a website about their boat, plane etc) or can be a standalone system hosted by My Reservations. I’ve had a play with the demo and for £45 a year, this gives you all the basic functionality you need for a straightforward syndicate, and it’s very easy to use.

Then I stumbled upon Divvy which is free to use and appears to allow lots of flexibility and sophistication. You can manage reservations on multiple items, and can take payment with reservations. I’ve also had a play with Divvy and set up a reservation system for a client who wanted a system to handle booking at several cottages. Because it is so flexible, it is a bit harder to understand and for a straightforward syndicate, could be overkill, and a bit frustrating if your computer skills aren’t too great.

Finally I heard some good reports about Booking Bug so I had a look. This looks like the most sophisticated system of all and costs the most at £10/month for the basic package. This looks like it has all the functionality of Divvy and more, but has a simpler user interface. I haven’t played with the system, but what I could see of the website looked straightforward. As well as the basic package which would suit a private syndicate, there are business packages suitable for a whole range of booking and reservation requirements.

There are also several more booking systems designed specifically for sharing aircraft and I’m sure lots more for the hotel and bed and breakfast/holiday lettings market, but these three are some of the best I’ve seen that would work for a wide range of private syndicates sharing many asset types.

If you’ve used any other system and have views, good or bad, please let me know, by commenting below.

Here is another great article from shareable.net (would you share a car with a stranger?) outlines some of the ground breaking car sharing schemes being tried out in the US (astonishing really, as prising the average American out of his SUV isn’t something most of us would attempt, let alone ask him to let someone he didn’t know drive it.) This is a proper discussion of some really innovative and challenging new ideas to get people to make better use of these very expensive and totally underused resources, our cars.

I’ve always thought that informal car clubs, or private syndicates should work well and there is plenty of guidance about this on yours2share, but it takes a while for the groups to form and for word to get around that it can actually work well.  I also must admit that of all the private syndicate types, they are some of the more complex to negotiate and set up, although there are organisations that can help you to do this, look at CarClubs for ideas.  Furthermore the kind of people who are likely to do this, are often those that cannot afford any unexpected costs or pay for legal advice: potential partners in many boat,  property, or aircraft schemes can.

One of the options discussed is RelayRides, the first person-to-person car-sharing service, which will be launching soon in Baltimore.  What this means is that if your car is unused for much of the time, you can register it with RelayRides for other people to use in return for a fee.  You define the periods when it is available for use, and how much you want to charge.  RelayRides sorts out a smartcard which allows the renting person access.  There are ebay-like reviews of both renters and owners so that people are incentivised to look after the car, and make sure it is clean and well maintained.

It’s a great idea, but also extraordinary!  If it takes off, it will have created a shift in people’s mindsets equivalent to that created by ebay (how do I know that a complete stranger will send me the goods for which I’ve just paid them?) or house swapping (so I’m going to let a complete stranger stay in my house, and go and stay in their house?), both of which are now utterly mainstream.  I shall watch RelayRides with great interest and everything crossed.

I’ve blogged before about shared ownership of cars and car clubs, but saw these articles on shareable.net: How to share a car, part 1 and How to share a car part 2.  The articles are written by Janelle Orsi the author of a new book The Sharing Solution. The first part broadly covers car clubs, in the UK these are operated by companies like Zipcar, Connect by Hertz and CityCarClub.  The second part covers informal car clubs, where a small group (say two to six)  private individuals own a car.  I’m pleases that , wrote these articles cover this, because I think this is a great way forward, particularly for rural and small town commnities where the major car clubs are unlikely to operate, and where there are often severe transport issues.  However few people appear to even cosider owning a car with people who live nearby.  Part 2 also covers carpooling or liftsharing: in the UK the major operator is Liftshare.

Another great source of information about car sharing is Carplus and this recent report by Frost and Sullivan on the sustainable potential of carsharing is worth a read.

yours2share has some great guidance on car clubs and car sharing and here are the current car sharing listings

When I started yours2share, I didn’t realise that I was starting a social enterprise, I just wanted to help people share stuff. As the number of private syndicates that were helped by yours2share increased, I also became aware that if as the number of partners in a private syndicates increases substantially, it becomes a co-operative.

Over time yours2share has created a well established forum for people sharing property, boats and aircraft. It also enables people to share land, gardens and allotments, for food and vegetables as well as animals such as hens, goats, horses, and bees. We’ve also helped people to share cars as informal car clubs: buying a car between three and six people in a street or village. The principles of sharing, the issues that must be agreed to make a sharing arrangment work are basically the same, whether you are sharing a £1 million yacht or a vegetable plot at the end of the garden.

The last year I moved to a small town in south Norfolk, a rural corner of East Anglia and I’ve become immersed in a rural lifestyle and economy. Over the last few weeks, I’ve been using the social networks much more, particularly Twitter, and all of the strands of yours2share and my lives, seem to have come together in the guise of the Plunkett Foundation and various projects in which it is involved.

The Plunkett Foundation promotes and supports co-operatives and social enterprises in rural communities worldwide. One of the Plunkett Foundation’s projects is the lottery funded MakeLocalFoodWork, where it works with a range of other major partners including Co-operativesUK, the trade association for all types of co-operative enterprise throughout the UK, and the Soil Association which works to improve the public’s understanding of the impact of different methods of food production on health and the environment.

The MakeLocalFoodWork project is a collection of projects all designed to ‘reconnect people and land through local food increasing access to fresh, healthy, local food with clear, traceable origins’.

If you want to know more about supporting rural communities, do visit the Plunkett Foundation’s website, and if food issues interest you, have a look at the MakeLocalFoodWork website.

If you just want somewhere to “grow your own” or would like someone to help you to make use of your garden, here are yours2share’s landshare listings and landshare guidance.