Flexcar

Flexcar is a for-profit car sharing company, the oldest and (as of 2004) largest such program active in the U.S.. Founded in 1999 in Seattle, Flexcar is also active in Los Angeles; Portland, Oregon; San Diego; and Washington, D.C., and, to various extents, in their suburbs. They have 15,000 members in Seattle, over 3% of that city's population.

In many of these areas, the company has formed a public-private partnership with a local public transit entity. For example, in Seattle they are partnered with King County Metro (which operates the Seattle metropolitan area's buses), and the company's advertising materials there say, "Ride Metro when you don't need a car. Use Flexcar when you do."

Flexcar vehicles--mostly late-model 4-door sedans, with the occasional sports car, light truck, or minivan--each have a home location, a reserved space either in a parking lot or on a street, typically in a dense urban neighborhood, although a few are in suburban locations. This stands in contrast to the typical practice of a car rental company, whose cars usually are grouped together in special guarded, locked lots.

Members reserve a car by web or telephone and use a key card to access the vehicle. The reservation must specify the pick up and return time, so others can schedule the vehicle. Vehicles are returned to the station they were picked up from.

The primary target market for this service is people who would make only occasional use of a vehicle (or people who would like occasional access to a vehicle of a different type than they use day-to-day).

Flexcar claims that the service should be economically beneficial to anyone whose car would normally only be away from their home about 15 hours a week. The system as it stands is clearly not appropriate for those with a daily automobile commute, but it has already proven extremely popular among those who live in Downtown Seattle or the nearby densely populated Capitol Hill and First Hill.

The company has also started an initiative to convince Downtown Seattle employers to join their program as business members rather than maintaining their own car fleets . Other market segments include placing vehicles at transit stations to provide "last mile" connectivity between transit and suburban office locations and, most recently, providing subsidized vehicle access as part of low-income "jobs access" programs.

Other carsharing companies providing similar services include the oldest company in North America founded in 1994 Communauto in Montreal, Quebec City, Sherbrooke and Gatineau, as well as City Carshare in San Francisco (a non-profit), Zipcar, serving multiple cities on the East Coast of the US, Philly Carshare, I-Go Cars, Chicago, and others.

External link

• Official site