There have been many remarkable developments so far in the 21st century, but undoubtedly one of the most disruptive and fascinating of these must surely be the emergence, and mass acceptance of the sharing economy – a socio-economic shift that is turning long-held views pertaining to ownership on their head. As we collectively strive to build greener, more environmentally sustainable economies, it is only natural that being more resource efficient and getting more bang for our buck is at the top of the agenda for both consumers and businesses.
The rise of the sharing economy – a flexible community-based system that allows participants to offer and receive goods and services via B2C or P2P platforms – fits hand in glove with this new world view, and its effect on traditional business models has, to say the least, been transformative. Certainly, the emergence of Airbnb and Uber, for example, have changed the rules of the game in their respective industries, arguably to the benefit of the consumer if not hoteliers and taxi drivers.
In a similar vein, the rising popularity of free-floating car share services, offered by companies like SHARE NOW, is having a similarly disruptive impact on our relationships with our cars, and indeed our entire attitude towards mobility as a whole. And for it is easy to see why for budgetary reasons alone: aside from taking on a mortgage, for most of us, buying a car is the most expensive purchase we will make in our lifetimes. Cars are expensive to buy initially, and once we’ve bought one the costs keep adding up. For those of us living in major cities, a car invariably sits idle on our driveways 95% of the time, and yet we still have to pay road tax and we have to keep it insured; we have to regularly service and maintain it. And on the rare occasion we do take our cars out for a drive, the cost of filling up the tank or keeping it charged on a long enough journey can be eye-watering.
And then there’s the environmental impact to consider: each of the millions of cars that are on the road day in, day out, emit noxious emissions that are harmful to both the planet and our own health, and contribute to the ever increasing congestion in our towns and cities.
The transport sector is ripe for positive disruptive change, and as Morten Jakobsen, Managing Director of SHARE NOW Denmark, has observed in Copenhagen, people are coming round to the idea of car sharing to the extent that even the metaphorical Mr and Mrs Hansen is increasingly amongst his customer portfolio:
“Transportation might be the one of the last places to get there, but what I would call the streaming mindset – where people don’t want to go and buy a CD or an album, they just want to play the song that they like, when and where they like it – we’re starting to get there now in the transport industry. We are selling kilometres on demand more and more. This is a turning point, though it probably differs from country to country whether you are in front or after the chasm. But anyhow, we are standing with the majority of the market behind us, definitely,” he explained.
“Today we are fleet is double the number in Copenhagen compared to when we started first started Share Now. In terms of customers, I think we have just over 160,000 sign ups and if you compare that to the size of Copenhagen, which has a population of around one million inhabitants, you can see we have a relatively big chunk of Copenhagen in our customer portfolio.”
In the Danish capital, as in many major cities across the developed world, the adoption of free-floating car sharing has exploded in popularity in recent years. As Morten acknowledges, car sharing is an industry still very much in its infancy, however the 50% year-on-year growth rates that SHARE NOW Denmark has achieved since it first opened its doors for business show clearly that it is an industry on the rise. Even Morten has been somewhat taken aback by the change in attitudes toward car sharing in recent years, and the pace at which they have changed:
“When we started out, nobody thought of car sharing. Car sharing was a new thing in Copenhagen, in Denmark in general. It had started to become a trend throughout Europe, of course, but at that point of time SHARE NOW was simply a very small, niche business and we needed to explain to customers why car sharing is a good thing, and are we actually reducing congestion with this, how we can add value et cetera. However, nowadays we don’t need to explain to customers what we do and why we’re here – we just need to make sure that whenever a customer is in need of a car, we can make sure that a car is available and accessible at an affordable price, and that there is choice in what car they use. There’s been a total change in mindset.”
As the leading car sharing brand in Europe, SHARE NOW – the product of a merger between DriveNow and car2go – is at the vanguard of this mobility revolution that is underway across the continent. With an 11,000-strong fleet of vehicles across eight countries, 500 of which make up Morten’s all-electric fleet in Denmark, SHARE NOW has made it simple, easy and affordable for customers in cities ranging from Copenhagen to Madrid; Paris to Milan, Vienna and Amsterdam to get from A to B at the touch of a smartphone, easily and affordably.
For any business to succeed, it’s all about getting the fundamentals right, and for SHARE NOW this means creating a service offering which is effortlessly convenient and reliable for customers, so as to ensure that whenever they need a vehicle, it is there. Humans are creatures of comfort and habit, there are few things in life more habitual and comfortable than driving our own cars to get from A to B. For all their expense and for all the harm they cause the environment, our cars are also ever present and available – something that SHARE NOW must strive to match.
Continental reduces downtime for Share Now thanks to data-driven predictive tire diagnostics.
The premium tire manufacturer and service provider Continental enables Share Now Denmark to monitor their fleet tires in real time. So far, over 600 vehicles, including a growing number of electric cars, have been equipped, in cooperation with Traffilog, a global leading expert for fleet-specific telematics and predictive diagnostics solutions, with sensors and on-board units that send data to the cloud. This data is then processed by Continental proprietary algorithms to provide actionable insights on tire health information such as pressure, temperature, and tread depth. Continental can predict tire tread depth of the Share Now fleet in real time with an accuracy of below one millimeter.
By connecting their tires to the cloud, Share Now gains additional benefits from efficient fleet operations and minimized downtime through just in time, need-based tire servicing. Furthermore, with knowledge about tire health and data-driven informed decision making, our customers ensure greater safety and reduce their overall cost due to the optimal utilization of tires.
Continental leverages both its tire expertise and its in-house know-how about sensor and vehicle architecture, provided by Continental’s automotive technologies business. Continental’s smart tire solutions are designed to serve a broad range of vehicles and applications, tailored to customer needs for passenger and commercial use.
To minimise customer churn and ensure that SHARE NOW is able to offer users seamless availability and an optimal customer experience, Morten has worked to build a highly digitalised operation so complex that cars can provide data key information such as when a door is unlocked and how much power a battery has left – they even provide information on the wear and tear of tires, and how much air pressure they have remaining. In effect, each of SHARE NOW’s vehicles acts as a mobile Internet of Things (IOT) device on wheels, equipped with an array of sensors that allow the company to better track, maintain, and manage their cars, wherever they might be.
So, the question is what next for car sharing and, by extension, SHARE NOW? It is clear beyond all reasonable doubt that free-floating car sharing is not only here to stay, but it will continue to grow in scale and capability over the years to come, in the view of Morten:
“Looking into the future, it is held that within the next 10 years in some European cities, up to 50% of all cars running around will be cars that are not owned by private owners. This will be made up of either car sharing fleets, or perhaps autonomous vehicles, etc, but certainly there is going to be a much larger number of those cars running around.”
In light of the pace of adoption over the past five years, this is an entirely imaginable future for the industry. And whilst new entrants will undoubtedly enter the market with new disruptive ideas that will see car sharing even further, it would be safe to assume that SHARE NOW will continue to be there at the top of the market, doing what it does: making cars available to its customers, reliably, conveniently and affordably.