Our economy is constantly evolving but today it moves at a speed rarely seen before. The Sharing Economy is changing the rules of the game by bringing out models such as the Subscription Economy and, today on the lips of all Milanese and increasingly on that of Italians, the car sharing. Many people have tried it: Daimler AG, or Mercedes, was the first to arrive with Car2GO, then ENI with Enjoy. Wolkswagen tried – and seems to have failed – with TwistCar: il sembrerebbe is due because the site is still active and, although it was closed in November 2015, keeps the promise to return to the site. Obviously we are waiting for them. Last BMW with Drive Now the most fashionable and high-end car sharing. All German car manufacturers seem to see a bright future in carsharing. And then GirACI of ACI, formerly GuidaMi, and Share’Ngo, decisively the ugliest but only electric. Surprisingly.
Car sharing is convenient for consumers: they do not bear the cost of buying a car; there are no maintenance costs; the costs of insurance and car stamps are zero; they forget to Area C and parking, included in the rental of the car, and of course the cost of the box or garage that you should bear having your own car.
In addition to making 100% variable an otherwise semi-fixed cost in the medium term for each household, touching it straight on the portfolio, Carsharing offers an even higher value: the convenience of finding the right owner car wherever you want it, that is to say that you can get out by car and go back on foot or vice versa.
There are also clear benefits for the community. Fewer machines are produced, saving raw materials, reducing production waste and the energy needed, thus polluting less. This guarantees a modern travelling car fleet that is safer and therefore has a reduced environmental impact. A system that has been based on very high inefficiencies has been made efficient up to now: just think of how many hours our car is moving and how many hours it is stationary, parked, waiting for our need.
“The car sharing service expands the possibility for citizens to give up the private car in favor of more efficient and sustainable modes of travel.”
Municipality of Milan, website
If it is true that car sharing helps us to pollute less by reducing the number of vehicles produced, the number of cars in the city and modernizing the car fleet circulating, why not make these cars electrically powered?
These are all vehicles that move in the urban area, in a very often well defined space (the municipality and the hinterland), with a high frequency of use but with a low distance: each journey lasts a few minutes and above all a few kilometres. It would have been a good opportunity to install electric recharging turrets all over Milan, stimulating and encouraging the development of electric even private.
Of course, it is not the emissions of a few thousand cars that solve the problem of pollution in Milan, mainly due to the companies that surround it, but these thousands of cars, with their millions of trips, would have helped to build a culture of electricity, to make it known to citizens and to make it known to them. normale, part of our everyday lives and make people discover how incredibly quiet a car that doesn’t have a combustion engine is. The feeling of bitterness in the mouth, however, remains. Of a missed opportunity to do more, to do it better.
Carsharing is revolutionising the way we move around the city, effectively introducing a new category of public transport, private time ones . It changes the mobility of the city, reduces extreme consumerism, changes the concept of ownership, which becomes more and more weak, to the advantage of possession for a limited time. It disrupts urban mobility by saving individuals and society. It is convenient and practical. Despite these wonders and advantages, undoubted both for the city and its inhabitants, the bitter taste of a missed opportunity remains: using only electric cars to reduce smog and noise. Technological and social innovation should not, however, make us forget some healthy rules of common sense.
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