Executive Summary

Mobility for a Living Planet (MLP) will make $ 14 billion by licensing Stackable Rental Car (SRC) technology.
The SRC will capture the majority of the global shared car market. Currently, about 200 thousand people use shared cars in Europe and the US. The world wide potential shared car user population is about 245 million. By 2026 that potential car share user population will be almost 600 million. Car makers will produce 47 million SRCs and pay MLP a $300 to $500 royalty per car. By 2026 the sum of all royalties paid will exceed $14 billion. The cars will be bought by Car Share Organizations (CSO’s) around the world.

See more images of the proposed car at : Solution Details

A Car Share Organization (CSO) rents cars by the hour to CSO members.
Members can rent a car on the internet or by phone. Typically 1000 members belong to a CSO that owns 100 cars. A user walks a few blocks to the shared car and enters it with an RFID tag. He pays between $2 to $9.50 per hour and up to $0.69 per mile. The typical user lives in a densely populated city where parking is expensive. For example in London a reserved space is $700 a month. He will do most home-to-work travel by mass transit and use the shared car for only a few hours per week. Typical trips by car are for shopping, entertainment, or other errands. As a CSO member he has flexibility. He can rent a pickup truck one day and an 8 passenger van the next. Since most errand trips are done with one person and a small amount of cargo, a low cost two seater would be the most frequently used vehicle.

The Stackable Rental Car (SRC) is a Clean Technology.
The SRC will be a clean car that promotes clean cities in several ways. As a plug-in hybrid it will have low emissions per mile. It will travel the first 40 miles a day on battery only, possibly using electricity generated by distant windmills or solar cells. Furthermore, CS users drive about half the miles that car owners drive. Because of the high marginal costs of using a shared car, most car share users will be riding mass transit to and from work. Millions of urban Asians will spend years using car share before they can afford to own and park a private car. The urban Asians who use a mix of car share and mass transit have the potential to far outnumber car owners for decades to come. In this political climate governments will choose to favor mass transit and car share while discouraging over reliance on the car. Examples of ways that excessive reliance on the car will be discouraged are given in the section on Background and Trends. Developing the SRC will encourage the growth of car share use by lowering emissions, parking costs and other costs. The growth of car share will help foster the evolution of urban areas that are compact, clean, and easily traveled by pedestrian, bike and bus.

Car share users will prefer the SRC because of its low cost, safety, and availability.
The SRC won't be cute but it will cost less than conventional cars to use on an hourly basis. The same user that rents a BMW for $8 an hour to impress his girl friend will rent a SRC for $2.50 an hour when he is grocery shopping alone. Despite the SRC's space saving variable geometry it will provide protection in a collision. It will be safer than conventional cars of similar size due to a tubular metal roll cage and crumple zones made of stabilized aluminum foam. The SRC will be available at more sites because more parking providers will permit it to park on their lots. A SRC will be the most economical way for people in big cities to enjoy the convenience of a car without having to pay the high cost of owning and parking a private car.

CSOs will like the SRC because of its low cost, space saving geometry and abuse resistant features.
The SRC could cost 30% less, on an annual basis, to operate than a Honda Civic. If abused, the SRC will be repaired quickly and cheaply. Unlike conventional sheet metal cars the SRC will have flexible plastic body panels attached to a tough tubular metal frame. These flexible plastic panels will bounce back from minor impacts that would dent sheet metal. The fold up ends and nesting frame will conserve scarce parking space in crowded urban areas. CSO’s that offer the SRC will have an advantage, over other CSOs, when competing for parking space on lots that they do not own.

Parking providers will permit the SRC to park on their lots because of its high parking density and low emissions.
Institutions, businesses and transportation facilities will see the SRC as the best way to provide access to more students, employees and riders. For example a public transit authority, such as BART, that controls 40,000 parking spaces at park and ride lots will prefer the SRC, over a conventional shared car, because it can bring in 3 times the number of riders for a given amount of land. A college campus, airport, shopping center, and apartment building are other examples where many people would like to park but where space is expensive and the parking lot is not owned by the CSO. Congested city centers and college campuses will prefer a low emissions vehicle in order to spare the lungs of pedestrians.

The SRC’s competitors are conventional cars.
Conventional cars are not designed to take the abuse inflicted by six different renters per day. The SRC will be easy to clean and repair. With variable geometry the SRC will cut parking costs in half. It will provide protection in a collision and be safer than a conventional car of similar size due to a tubular metal roll cage and crumple zones made of stabilized aluminum foam.

Currently there are 245 million potential car share users.
By 2026 that number will grow to 600 million. An estimation of the global car share user population is detailed in Projected Car Share Users. This user population is primarily in densely populated cities of Europe and Asia. For example in China, with a total population of 1284 million, there are 382 million urban dwellers. Of these the top 20%, or 76 million, make an average of $10,580 a year. Assuming 25% are too young to drive and subtracting the 3 million private cars currently in China yields 56 million potential car share users. Similar calculations for 36 countries indicate that about 245 million could afford to rent a shared car for at least 4 hours per week. By 2026 six hundred million users could be sharing 60 million cars. About 75% of those car share cars would be SRCs. That would require 45 million SRCs. User-to-car ratios will range from 2 to 20, with an average ratio of 10:1.

MLP will develop the SRC design and own several patents on the car and its support equipment.
The primary patent, 5,417,300 covers the fold up ends and nesting body. Inventor Richard Shultz, owner of this patent, keeps an inventor’s journal with other patentable ideas on SRC design and support. The team of engineers and programmers assembled by MLP will file more patents, build 10 cars and several sets of support hardware. Cars will be loaned to CSOs for evaluation by CSO’s and their customers. An independent market research firm will likely report that Asian and European users are attracted to the SRC’s combination of utility and low cost. The same marketing firm will determine that the SRC is the most attractive form of shared car for institutions, businesses, apartment buildings, and transportation facilities. With favorable findings from the marketing research firm and CSO’s, MLP will be able to convince a car maker that the SRC is worth building in large quantity. A car maker such as Honda, Toyota or VW will invest $400 to $600 million in a SRC manufacturing plant that can make 70,000 cars a year. More plants will be built to satisfy global demand over the next 20 years.

Urban populations are increasing.
The relative value of land, and the cost of parking, will only go up. Car sharing is the future of car use for hundreds of millions people in the world’s most densely populated cities. The Stackable Rental Car (SRC) is the only car designed to minimize the high cost of parking while still protecting its occupants from collisions with heavier vehicles at realistic speeds. The SRC will be the most popular type of shared car and will capture the majority of the shared car market.

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