In this lecture I would like to talk about collaborative consumption and the sharing
economy.
The basic idea of collaborative consumption is that there are resources that we as individuals
own and/or control that have excess capacity and are underutilized as a result, and because
of our inability to share easily we buy far more capacity generally speaking than we need
just in order to make sure that we have access to the services that we need when we want
them.
So, this sharing is hard.
We will over buy our resources and we’ll over subscribe to make sure that we are never
without a resource that we want.
So, let’s ground this with a particular example, and this example will be a Zipcar.
Some of you might be familiar with Zipcar.
The basic idea of Zipcar comes from the observation that a typical car sots idle almost 23 hours
out of the day so the folks who founded Zipcar thought huh, what if instead of having that
car sit idle we just shared the cars so that those 23 hours were being used rather than
just sitting around creating capacity in cars that we weren’t using?
Well, we could own less cars, we could get greater efficiency out of the cars that we
do own, we can create a community, and we can do something that creates a more sustainable
environment for everyone.
Well, that’s basically what Zipcars ideals are.
When you want a car you use some technology, you use their app or you use a website to
reserve the car online.
When it comes time for you to use it you take a physical RFID card key and you use it to
unlock the car by waving it on a sensor on the windshield of most cars.
Waving it on the windshield causes it to unlock.
You drive it around for the period that you reserved it.
Zipcar pays for the insurance, they pay for the gas, they pay for the cleaning, they pay
for maintenance, they pay for parking at the spot at which the Zipcar resides at the pickup
point, and when you’re done you return the car to the location in good order and voila,
you’ve eliminated your need to own your own car if you live anywhere near where a
Zipcar is available.
So, it turns out that I am one of those people.
I’m in a family of 6 people.
We have one car.
For any extra car capacity that we need I use car sharing in a particular Zipcar.
This is great because although that one car that we have gets used pretty often, more
than 1 hour a day because it’s not used for communing, it’s used for running kids
around all over the place and doing errands and I rarely need another car, but occasionally
I do and fortunately I live in a location where there are probably 6 or 7 Zipcars within
walking distance, and probably 15 if I’m willing to ride my bike to pick up a car.
So, I’ll often use car sharing in order to augment the car capacity of our family.
Well, to make this work of course there are a lot of details that need to be attended
to.
For example, how do you pay for the car?
How do you as a consumer who is part of the Zipcar environment pay for it?
Well, in Zipcar's case it’s hourly.
That isn’t always the case with car sharing organizations.
Who is going to clean and maintain these cars?
They are all over the place and it’s hard to get to sometimes, and they need to be cleaned
and well maintained in order for people to want to use them.
So, it turns out that in Zipcar's case they outsource this to 3rd party companies that
are sort of unbranded, In fact, I’ve come across them a few times servicing the car
and they kind of reminded me of like magic elves that come and scrub the car, and change
the oil, and do all kinds of things you need in the dark of night.
What happens when you get in an accident?
What happens if you don’t return the car on time?
There are a lot of details but Zipcar has managed to finesse a lot of them, and for
the most part this whole arrangement works pretty well, surprisingly well actually.
They reasonably estimate that owning a car costs about $8000.00 a year.
They have a calculator online that you can go check for your particular circumstances
how much car owning costs.
So, they estimate that it costs about $8000.00 a year, and depending on how often you need
the Zipcar it can cost you about a $1000.00 instead to use Zipcar.
Their calculator is very good for figuring out if it’s an economic decision for you,
although economics may not be the only thing that’s motivating you.
Convenience, environmental impact and credit may all be issues that prevent you from owning
your own car or wanting to participate in Zipcar.
So, although it’s not a perfect analogy you can consider Zipcar to be like an hourly
car rental arrangement.
In addition to the economics reasons there are other reasons why you might want to share,
and this screen shot sort of points to some of those.
You can imagine that the economic impact of having 21 cars for 20 families meaning one
car per family and then one Zipcar instead of having 40 cars for 20 families so 2 cars
per family, that’s pretty big.
So, the impact of what Zipcar can do in reducing the car ownership is pretty substantial depending
on how you use your cars.
Well, not surprisingly Zipcar isn’t the only car sharing service that’s out there.
It turns out that there are quite a few of them internationally and in the U.S., and
each of them kind of have their own unique model for their take on what car sharing looks
like.
Car2Go is an example of another car sharing service.
This is a car service that eliminates the idea of having a parking space.
With Car2Go you can just park the car anywhere that it is legal and walk away.
Someone else who wants to use the car is just going to pick it up from where it’s currently
parked, or Car2Go people will reposition it into a more distributive location.
This is a way of keeping cars in the environment and not necessarily having a specific place
where they live.
When you see bike sharing it kind of works this way.
It used to in Portland Oregon.
Another type of car sharing is called ZEV-NET.
ZEV-NET manages zero emission vehicles, pure electric vehicles, and they keep them at commuter
rail stations.
Person 1 drives to the train station in a ZEV-NET car and takes the train to work, whereas
person 2 arrives at the train station and takes the car that person 1 drove to the station
and person 2 takes it from the station to their work.
At the end of the day person 2 takes the car back to the train station, and person 1 takes
the car home at night.
It’s an interesting take on using commuter trains when you have people that are going
opposite directions and would otherwise need some way of getting to and from the train
station on their own.