As a follow up to John’s spotlight post earlier this week, in which he featured Zipcar, come this week’s Five Friday Facts about car sharing. According to The Car Sharing Network:
- In 1998, there were 905 members and 69 vehicles in North American car-sharing programs. (See the graph below)
- As of 2010 (the most recent date on the graph), there were 516,100 members and 10,405 vehicles.
- The first successful car share in the USA was Portland Oregon’s Car-Sharing-PDX
- Car Sharing pilot projects like Witkar (an electric vehicle program in Amsterdam) began as early as the 1960′s and 1970′s, but modern car sharing programs launched in 1987 in Switzerland and later in 1988 in Germany, and came to North America via Quebec City in 1994.
- As of July 1, 2011- based on data provided by Susan Shaheen, University of California, Berkeley – 26 U.S. car-sharing programs claimed 560,572 members sharing 10,019 vehicles; and 78,840 members shared 2,605 vehicles among 20 car-sharing organizations in Canada.
Take a look at a decade of car-sharing growth:
Image source: Metropolitan Museum of Art
