New mobility concepts (part 2)

In the capital, in Hamburg and in Munich, things look quite different from the Ruhr area. Car sharing is almost ubiquitary even if today's user of alternative concepts still have to plan their appointments well and sometimes have to go long ways.

These barriers are currently only easily overcome by people with high environmental standards, rare car use or those with thin wallets. Only slowly does it reach the mainstream - a larger ciritcal amount of cars and stations is necessary. The final task to coordinate everything online via interfaces such as smartphone apps or web portals to locate, reserve or pay for services is a smaller barrier in comparison. "The use of all networked systems must turn into a use without thought" demands Weert Canzler of Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung (Science Centre Berlin für Social Studies; translator's note). "As easy as getting into your own car."

DB Call a bike. Foto: DB

One of the best reasons to share a car with others: a car sharing vehicle replaces seven private cars. The new mobile world is completed by providers who refuel their electric car fleet with green electricity. Greenpeace and Cambio offer two regenerative-electrically powered Mitsubishi i-MiEV. Will electric cars play a larger role in car sharing than in private traffic however? Yes, says Sociologist Canzler. Due to its high costs, he doesn't see electric cars as private goods but as an "element of an extrensive intermodal transportation service" whose high costs are distributed among a maximum of users via a fleet model.

Rural areas do not (yet) play a role

We may predict the following: In ten years from now, the intermodal providers will have interlinked their respective systems. For the time being, the state of euphoria will die down due to the non-existant critical mass of car sharing fleets. One thing is obvious: So far, nothing can challenge the flexibility of your own car - not even in big cities. And rural areas don't play a role in this system. By the way: The new mobility concepts would be the idea field for a subsidy from the National Development Plan Electro-Mobility of the government. Instead of supporting manufacturers for research and development of new technologies, something would be supported that provides an instant public profit - a new philosophy of mobility.

(Part 1)