Carsharing Cannot Compete With Traditional Car Rental

PwC published the results of the car rental market research and confirmed the hypothesis that new trends won’t affect the industry. As it turned out, today’s consumers think of the latest carsharing service as just an alternative to taxi services. Carsharing means there is no possibility to rent a car for a long period of time, therefore it has a negative effect on profits in general. Let’s not forget that carsharing is a type of a short-term car rental that doesn’t provide driver’s services. Anyone can take a car for trips around the city at specially allocated parking lots and then return it to any specified place. You pay only for per-minute or per-hour use.

There are a few reasons why classical rental is still popular:

• Rental is less risky speaking of car damage.
• You are guaranteed to have profit for the whole day and not just for a few hours.

The factors affecting the popularity of carsharing:

One of the possible obstacles to the development of a promising business will be a psychological factor: a developed sense of ownership among drivers. A long-term rental is only a temporary replacement for your own car and the customer gets used to it. Carsharing is considered as an advanced replacement for a taxi but the driver doesn’t develop feelings and emotions of attachment. Customer’s attention and willingness to take care of the vehicle are extremely little.

Besides:

• A per-minute carsharing is cheaper than taxi services but driving a car for a couple of days is much more expensive than a traditional rental.
• There is a small choice of car fleet; cars are in worse condition (there is a strange smell, dirt etc, minor malfunctions inside the car).
• Cars are to be delivered to special parking areas.

That is why there is no high demand among the middle class. People are interested in services of well-maintained cars. The main criteria are a wide choice and valid security guarantees. By using services of large companies, customers are 95% sure that their temporary vehicle meets all standards for technical specifications and such requirements as cleanliness, comfort, and freedom of movement within the region and even country rather only one city.