Car Sharing and its Impact on the Automotive Sector (PDF)

Seminar paper from the year 2021 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 2,0, University of Applied Sciences Essen, language: English, abstract: Car sharing in 2021 is no longer a new invention, but rather part of the social shift toward a sustainable world. It is the breaking down of old values of owning a car as a status symbol. Thus, car sharing (CS) has its origins in 1997, when the cooperatives ATG AutoTeilet Genossenschaft and ShareCom merged to form the swiss Mobility Genossenschaft, bringing together the first thoughts on car sharing. The intention was to make it possible for all people to use a car, especially those who cannot bear the high costs of purchasing and maintaining one.

Now, a lot has happened in the project for over 20 years, with the last 10 years in particular bringing a great surge in development. Digitization and the progress of technologies have managed to generate a wide reach and market the sharing model as a worthwhile business model. Worthwhile for companies and users alike, who can now reserve and use a car close to them with little money and pay for it for a leisure trip, a trip to the supermarket or a commute to work only as long as it is in use.

The automotive industry, meanwhile, is delighted about the growing middle class, which nowadays can afford its own car without major restrictions and also wants to. Cars mean the greatest possible mobility, freedom for people. Although this is a basic human need, awareness of sustainability and climate protection has increased. As a result, the automotive industry is currently under unprecedented pressure to transform its technologies to electric drives and to decide on its own market position in a future-oriented manner, to be a mobility service provider or a pure vehicle manufacturer.
At the present time, CS is largely offered by companies that mediate supply and demand and thus connect users with automobiles. BMW and Daimler, which have been mobility service providers and CS suppliers for several years, can be named as an exception here. However, since several people now share a car, it is reasonable to assume that the sales of automotive suppliers will decline - provided that CS continues to gain acceptance and experiences exponential growth in the following years.

What exactly CS is and if, respectively which effects the automotive industry will experience due to CS, will be examined in more detail in this thesis.