FastCompany on Electric Vehicles in Car Sharing Fleets
FastCompany published an interesting article this week on the challenges and benefits of including electric vehicles in car sharing fleets - something City CarShare has done successfully in the San Francisco area, and something the CEO, Rick Hutchinson, spoke about at Meeting of the Minds 2012.
An excerpt:
City CarShare, a popular nonprofit carsharing service in the Bay Area, has taken the plunge with both battery electric vehicles (BEVs) and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV). But CEO Rick Hutchinson told us at the recent Meeting of the Minds conference that the organization isn’t offering EVs for use because they’re cost-effective; they’re offering them to increase awareness--something City CarShare can do because it’s a nonprofit. So why don’t EVs make sense for all carsharing services?
City CarShare has a long history of offering EVs--the service’s first electric cars became available in 2003 (City CarShare was founded in 2001), when it conducted a pilot study of six vehicles. It didn’t pan out, obviously; modern EV technology was in its infancy then.
Now City CarShare has 20 EVs in its fleet of over 400 vehicles (two of the EVs are older conversions), with even more set to be added this year. So far, says Hutchinson, people are more comfortable with the PHEVs than the BEVs. "There’s no range anxiety. If people forget to plug in, they can still run [the car] on a hybrid engine."
Feed the full article here: Electric Cars Aren’t The Future Of Car Sharing—Yet
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