The carsharing market employing electric vehicles (EVs) is growing globally as sustainable transportation is taking center stage in urban transportation strategies and will soon become the vehicle of choice in our current climate landscape. Our latest Electric Carsharing Whitepaper identifies the distinct advantages that electric vehicles bring to carsharing for the users, communities and operators.
Electric Carsharing Whitepaper: What does it take to electrify carsharing?
movmi’s new Electric Carsharing whitepaper has four main focus points:
1) User Experience: What role can carsharing play in changing user behaviour?
Cities are becoming increasingly aware of not just air, but also levels of noise pollution that excessive traffic causes. For example in cities like Geneva, Switzerland and Paris, they have imposed a speed limit of 30km/h on most streets in an effort to improve safety, reduce noise pollution and help the city adapt to climate change. With EVs, both drivers and non-drivers benefit from not only zero tailpipe emissions but also zero noise levels. Studies also show that carsharing users are favoring EVs over gas vehicles and are also more likely to forgo the purchasing of a privately owned car in the future after using EV carsharing.
Source: A study from the BeMobility field trial in Berlin
As carsharing contributes to the overall reduction of congestion levels in the city, users get easier access to EVs and all their benefits through carsharing platforms – minus the charging anxiety, including access to areas within cities, such as low emission zones (LEZs) and ultra low emission zones (ULEZs), that their ICEV counterparts can not.
2) Electric Vehicles Policy: What’s being discussed and how do they impact EVs in carsharing?
Cities worldwide have announced ambitious initiatives as a part of their climate action plans and increasing EV adoption remains a key strategy. With transportation being one of the primary contributors (up to 40%) to GHG emissions, electrification of one of the most common modes – cars – will have a big impact.
A single carsharing vehicle has been evidenced to replace 7-13 privately owned cars. Typically, a carshare vehicle – with a higher utilization of 30% versus a private car’s utilization of 3-5% stands to serve more members of the public than the latter, which serves just the private car owner. Through carsharing, EVs can therefore be accessible and affordable in an equitable manner.
In our Electric carsharing whitepaper, we analyzed 10 cities covering Europe, Asia and North America to understand their climate action goals, how they favor shared mobility and their EV policies.
3) Operational Feasibility: What do operators stand to gain from electrification?
Operators can tap into the ‘EV’ advantage across four major areas:
- Fleet maintenance and repair costs
- EV depreciation costs
- EV charging cost
- Vehicle relocation costs
In this whitepaper, we take a deep dive into the numbers to show how electric carsharing can be financially beneficial to the operators. For example, EVs stand to save 60% of costs as compared to their ICEV counterparts in the vehicle’s life cycle because of lower maintenance and fueling costs. These savings are directly related to the fact that an EV motor has approximately a third fewer parts than an ICEV. Also, because of decreasing battery pricing, the upfront cost of an electric vehicle will be on par with an ICEV equivalent around the year 2025, and it is projected to keep decreasing.
4) Charging Infrastructure: How does it impact electrification efforts?
On average, carsharing vehicles (similar to private cars) are driven no more than 50km per day. With continuing advances in battery technology and range, EVs do not need to charge as frequently, thus the latest generation of EVs pose fewer challenges to a carshare operator compared to their predecessors.
How do cities get there? What has proven attractive for carsharing in some cities to electrify their fleet? We have identified that strong policies are required to support a large-scale shift towards electric carshare and explored the best practices from around the world to make this happen, including:
- A charging network presence
- Easy access to charging stations
- A reliable charging infrastructure
Charging station density not only needs to be increased, but their reliability needs to be standardized. It is essential for charging stations to alway be in good repair, but public authorities also need to define the ‘uptime’ for chargers so that they are operational in real-time for drivers and infrastructure funding is best utilized.
The EV industry is maturing at a fast rate to improve vehicle and charging technology. Conservative and overly restrictive policies only prove to hinder innovation. Policies that easily adapt to and foster innovation can help bridge the operational gaps that can ultimately make the mass transition to EVs more feasible.
Currently EVs require a greater initial investment and supporting infrastructure to be introduced into carsharing. However, there are a few levers that cities and operators can pull to minimize the difference in costs in an effort to bring clean transportation alternatives to a much larger portion (members) in the city, which we explore in our latest electric carsharing whitepaper.
Interested in learning more about shared mobility? Check out our other numerous whitepapers here.
