Peer-to-peer carsharing

This article is about Peer-to-peer carsharing. For other uses, see Peer-to-peer (disambiguation).

Peer-to-peer carsharing (also known as person-to-person carsharing and peer-to-peer car rental) is the process whereby an existing car owner makes their vehicle available for others to rent for short periods of time.

Peer-to-peer carsharing is a form of person-to-person lending or collaborative consumption. The business model is closely aligned to traditional car clubs such as Streetcar or Zipcar, but replaces a typical fleet with a ‘virtual’ fleet made up of vehicles from participating owners. With peer-to-peer carsharing, participating car owners are able to make money by renting out their vehicle when they are not using it. Participating renters can access nearby and affordable vehicles and pay only for the time they need to use them.

Businesses within this sector typically apply some form of screening of participants (both owners and renters) and a technical solution, usually in the form of a website, that brings these parties together, manages rental bookings and collects payment. Increasingly, an automated form of insurance and breakdown coverage will be applied to rentals that take place through the service in order to protect an owner’s existing insurance coverage.

As with person-to-person lending, enabling technology for this behavior has been the Internet and the adoption of geo-location-based service.

Timeline

• May 2001 – RentMyCar launches the first peer to peer carsharing marketplace.
• Oct 2008 – Drive My Car Rentals – launches peer to peer carsharing service in Australia
• March 2009 – Spagg Network launches peer-to-peer carsharing in Los Angeles, California
• April 2010 – Whipcar launches peer-to-peer carsharing service in London, UK.
• May 2010 – Drive My Car Rentals – website and service redesign – introduction of hybrid insurance policy product that works in conjunction with the owners existing car insurance.
• June 2010 – RelayRides launches Beta product in Boston
• August 2010 - Autonetzer launches the first p2p-Carsharing platform in Germany
• November 2010 – tamyca launches all over Germany
• December 2010 – Getaround launches Beta product in San Francisco
• December 2010 – Drivy launches in France (originally named Voiturelib)
• Early 2011 – Sprideshare set to launch in San Francisco
• January 2011 – JustShareIt launches in California
• June 2011 - Rent'n'roll launches all over Germany
• July 2011 - Social Car launches peer to peer carsharing all over Spain
• September 2011 - Wheelz launches at Stanford University
• June 2012 - Carfully launches in Martinique
• November 2012 - iCarsclub at Singapore

Tort Liability issues

In the United States liability for personal injury and property damaged caused by a car accident goes back to the owner. Thus in a peer to peer rental arrangement, the lender of the car is exposed to the tortuous behavior of the car borrower while driving making this type of system highly financially dangerous.

See also

• Carsharing
• Car pooling
• Collaborative consumption
• Person-to-person lending
• Shared transport
• Sustainable transportation
• Peer-to-peer renting

External links

• Would you loan your neighbor the keys to your car? - The Independent (UK)
• Personal Vehicle Sharing Services in North America, Transportation Sustainability Research Center - UC Berkeley