Five reasons for the importance of car sharing for e-mobility
The role of car sharing in the breakthrough of electric mobility is multi-layered and will be examined in more detail in this paper for five reasons:

Car sharing solves the “chicken-egg problem” in setting up the charging infrastructure
Car sharing reduces fears of contact with electric mobility
car2go is electric mobility at its peak – everyday testing by car sharing
Purely electric car sharing improves the air in cities – immediately
Car sharing is the perfect testing and experimentation field for the electric mobility of the future

Reason 1: Car sharing solves the “chicken-egg problem” in setting up the charging infrastructure

The development of an extensive recharging infrastructure is still a grant business from the point of view of the cities. As long as not enough private vehicle owners have an electric car, the charging stations are not working at full capacity. However, the private buyer will often decide against buying an electric vehicle as long as the existing charging infrastructure is not sufficient to use the vehicle for daily use. A classic chicken-egg problem. Who takes the first step?

E-car sharing can be a solution to this problem. On the one hand, car sharing providers such as car2go can provide cities with important information about the traffic flows within a city, the charging behaviour of customers and thus the location of the charging points. On the other hand, the parallel development of charging infrastructure and electrical car sharing fleets can ensure meaningful utilization of the charging network right from the start.

Reason 2: Car sharing reduces fears of contact with electric mobility
As long as the final breakthrough of the electric car is still to come, it has not been so easy to try out such a vehicle without obligation. However, car sharing with electric cars offers exactly that: simply drive electrically.

More than 10,000 trips with an electric car are completed daily at car2go alone. Thus car2go enables several hundred thousand people to make their first contact with electric vehicles and proves the suitability of electric mobility for everyday use. Around 1,400 purely electric cars from car2go are on the road in Amsterdam, Madrid and Stuttgart. According to the “Learning by driving” principle, car2go thus plays a decisive role in the breakthrough of electric mobility among private customers.

Reason 3: car2go is electric mobility in peak periods – everyday testing by car sharing
One of the decisive prerequisites for the breakthrough of electromobility is to answer the question of how quickly the typical teething troubles of the new technology can be overcome. The best and fastest way to get there is a high-performance practical test. car2go already has it in operation: 1,400 electric cars, which are moved up to fifteen times a day by car2go customers, provide valuable data and information.

The results are concrete answers to the question: How does electric mobility work in practice? The added value of this experience serves many different participants in the overall electric mobility system, from the electricity provider and grid operator to the battery manufacturer and the city.

Reason 4: Purely electric car sharing makes the city cleaner – immediately
If car sharing fleets are operated purely electrically, the already positive effects of car sharing on traffic load and air quality in conurbations increase many times over. At car2go’s electrical locations, this is increasingly reflected in urban measures that further promote flexible, fully electric car sharing.

When the city of Madrid imposed a driving ban on the city centre for the first time in its history at the end of December 2016 due to high air pollution, the electric cars of car2go were explicitly excluded. This allowed car2go users in Madrid’s city centre to remain flexible and individually mobile, which resulted in an increase in the number of users.

In Stuttgart, car2go vehicles can be driven at a reduced per-minute price during the fine dust alarm, with which the city calls for a change to alternative mobility offers in case of polluting weather conditions. On these days, the usage figures of car2go’s environmentally friendly electric cars also rise regularly.

This is good news for a city like Stuttgart, where several car manufacturers and suppliers are at home and individual mobility is therefore particularly important. Thanks to purely electrical car sharing, people in the city remain mobile without further increases in emissions in the Stuttgart “valley basin”.

Reason 5: Car sharing is the perfect testing and experimentation field for the electric mobility of the future
More and more companies – whether start-ups or established companies – are dealing with electromobility. This results in innovative approaches and new concepts – from the loading bicycle or the loading trailer, with which you can quickly and easily load a car, through the loading posts themselves, to optimizing the loading process.

All these ideas need a test field to be tested, improved and made ready for everyday use. Here, too, car2go’s purely electric car sharing offer in Stuttgart, Amsterdam and Madrid offers an excellent basis for the development and further development of electrical concepts. For this reason car2go is already a partner of many think tanks and shares its knowledge for new concepts.

An exciting field of development is, for example, communication between charging stations and vehicles. In the daily use of electric vehicles – whether in private ownership or car sharing – the question arises as to where the nearest free charging station is to charge and park the electric vehicle. In cooperation with other parties involved, providers of electric car sharing can provide important answers here.

Conclusion

Electric mobility has the potential to comprehensively change the transport system. However, this requires continuous further development in order to achieve a real breakthrough. Only if the technology passes the everyday test and at the same time inspires potential customers will it be able to assert itself in the long term.

Compared to private use, car sharing is a huge step ahead when it comes to electromobility. Nowhere is there more knowledge about the daily operation of large electric fleets than in this business field. That is why car2go sees itself as a partner of a number of companies conducting research in the field of electromobility – whether they want to make batteries more efficient, build infrastructure or make the technology “smarter”.

With the experience of recent years and the expertise of a world market leader, car2go already supports many areas of electric mobility. Charging stations must not only be available in sufficient numbers, but must also be in the right place to fulfil their purpose. Batteries not only have to work, they also have to pass the toughest everyday tests. And people must have the chance to experience electric mobility simply and without complications.

The prerequisite for this is an “overall electric mobility system” that understands purely electric driving as the interaction of a variety of components – from the battery to the customer experience, from the power networks to the charging infrastructure.