Car Share Organizations (CSOs) have a difficult time making a profit while renting conventional cars. Conventional cars are costly to provide for rental because, among other things, they are not built to last and they require expensive parking spaces.
Conventional cars are not designed to be used by many drivers. They have outer skins of thin sheet metal which are easily damaged and expensive to repair. Their interiors are easily stained and hard to clean. A single coffee spill or cigar smoker can create a mess or a smell that is hard to remove.
Plastic handles, knobs, air vents and levers are easily broken. Many small dents, scratches and rips in the exterior and interior will accumulate to make a conventional car look shabby, even though the drive train is still solid. When mistreated by many renters, a conventional car will be lucky to last three years.
Parking can be a big expense for CSOs. German CSO's have to rent expensive on street parking slots. In San Francisco the typical city parking garage charges $300 a month for a reserved space. In New York the going rate is $450 and London about $700. In most large European and Asian cities the cost of parking will be the largest single cost, after amortization, if not the largest.
Other problems with conventional cars are pollution and traffic accident fatalities.
World wide traffic accidents kill about 1.2 million people annually.
"We have 1.2 million people killed every year in the world," said Stephen R. Kratzke, associate administrator for rule making at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the top American regulatory agency, in a telephone interview from Geneva.(NYT_Nov04)
Conventional cars can be made safer or more "crashworthy". Go to a junk yard sometime and look at the twisted wrecks. It is easy to see how thin, flimsy, stamped sheet metal, held together with a few spot welds, does not provide a strong or rigid roll cage.
(NYT_Nov04) http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/16/business/16auto.html
A Pioneer Global Safety Rule Will Seek Safer Auto Doors
By DANNY HAKIM
New York Times, November 16, 2004
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