Clarification in the jungle of terms of shared mobility

Car sharing, Carpooling, Ride sharing, Ride hailing — so many different terms for shared mobility are floating around these days and unfortunately are being attributed falsely in everyday conversation. That is why we from Zify want to bring clarity in the jungle of shared mobility terms and set some definitions straight.

The shared mobility industry has grown rapidly in the last decade due to mass adoption of smartphones and technology. The goal of it all is to use transportation vehicles more effectively and efficiently in order to reduce Co2 emissions and congestions while providing a cost-efficient way for users to arrive at their destination.

The most common and most known term is car sharing. When car-sharing, the user benefits from not having the responsibility of owning a car because the car sharing company is providing and maintaining them themselves. Again, three major subcategories exist: Stationary car-sharing where the car needs to be picked up and brought back at a predefined station. A key player of this kind is “Mobility” operating in Switzerland. The one-way/roundtrip type allows the user to pick up the car at a predefined station and bring it back at the destination at a predefined station. Autolib in France provides this services for the locals. Or the cars are free floating which means the car can be picked up and brought back anywhere within a certain area. Two major service providers of free floating cars are car2go and DriveNow.

While the car sharing cars are provided by companies, peer-to-peer car sharing vehicles are provided by private car owners. Platforms are run by other players to give an overview of the cars, handle transactions, offer insurance packages, and even provide devices for accessing the car. Big platforms for P2P car sharing are for example Getaround, Turo, carzapp, Koolicar or sharoo.

Now that one might have a car to drive around it is possible that the user still has free seats in the car and doesn’t want to waste the space. For this case, carpooling/ride sharing platforms come into play. Whenever an individual is driving around with a car, be it his/her own or from a company, the person can find people to invite to her/his ride and organize a carpool. For carpooling it is not important to whom the car belongs and whether somebody is making profit from it or not, but rather it is about offsetting costs such as fuel or maintenance and reducing congestion on the roads. Carpooling namely helps to increase the amount of passenger per car which again reduces vehicles on the road and carbon emissions. Key players in the carpooling market are Blablacar for long-distance carpooling and Zify with short-distance trips for daily commutes from home to office.

Another term in the jungle of shared mobility terms is ride hailing. While carpooling is about offsetting costs and reduce congestion, ride hailing has its focus on “on-demand” service. So whenever you need a ride, no matter where you are, you can order a ride and somebody will pick you up from the desired location. You might think: “Isn’t the taxi industry doing exactly this?” Well, yes, when you order a cap you are also hailing a ride, however in the taxi industry several issues arose with the service. It was inconsistent and slow to reserve a cab, expensive and sometimes slow on the way and paying options were limited. That is why Uber or Lyft entered the market and provided more available cars, seamless payment in advance through the app, transparency on where the driver currently is and ratings for the drivers and the passengers.

Having explained the most important terms of shared mobility it is up to us to actually use it and make a change. Yet, why is it so hard for us to make use of these various options we got offered every day at any time? The answer is simple. There are just too many options and players in the playground and we are overwhelmed. People just want to get from A to B no matter with whom or what. It has to be simple, seamless and out of one hand. That is when the Mobility-as-a-Service Projects pop up on our screening of terms. Read in our upcoming blogpost about what Mobility-as-a-Service means and what other mobility integration terms are floating around in the jungle of shared mobility :-).

Sources:

• movmi.net „A comprehensive Guide to shared mobility in 2018“
• Deloitte „Carsharing in Europe“

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