There are many different forms of car sharing. The concept now most frequently used in cities is so-called free-floating car sharing, with no fixed collection and return points.
The providers collate real-time data on mobility behaviour in metropolitan areas on a daily basis.
Intelligent algorithms analyse these data and are already able to predict with great accuracy where vehicles will soon be needed.
Moreover, these data can also be used when planning traffic systems in cities.
We believed that automated and later autonomous and locally emission-free car sharing cars will help to solve many traffic problems. In a city like Berlin, for example, roughly half as many intelligently controlled, self-driving vehicles could cover the present mobility requirement: around 2,600 cars would be reduced to around 1,300.
All this still lies in the future. However, a study on our car sharing scheme has shown that a shared vehicle already replaces up to 11 private cars now. That is because private cars are on the road for an average of one hour a day and car sharing vehicles are used for between 3 and 6 hours per day.
