You Don't Need to Own a Car (If You Don't Drive to Work)

for about the last 20 years my wife and i have had a pretty simple rule if we don't need to drive to work we don't need to own a car this was pretty easy when we lived in central london because the public transit system was so exceptional but in other cities like toronto public transit and cycling could only take us so far because the few walkable parts of toronto are surrounded by a sprawling suburban wasteland that is only accessible by car and of course we also needed a car because intercity passenger trains suck so much in canada so in a city that's designed incorrectly a car will sometimes be necessary and for that we would rely on car sharing in my experience people don't understand just how easy car share programs have become you literally open the app choose a car and you can be driving in less than five minutes it's so easy it's ridiculous but i'll talk about that in more detail later in this video when talking about car share most people seem to think it's like a rental car and they associate it with the horrible experience of renting a car while on vacation and let's face it renting a car sucks you have to book it in advance you usually have to physically go to the rental car agency and when you get there you'll end up waiting in line just so you can go talk to some person who will type in all of your information into a computer even though you already did it online and then they'll tell you they don't actually have the car you reserved but they'll provide you with a free upgrade to a crappy suv that consumes twice as much gas so when people think about not owning a car they usually think about this rental car process and how painful it is but that's not the way modern car share works car sharing has been around for a long time possibly as far back as the 1940s there was even an all-electric car sharing service called vitkar that was launched in amsterdam in 1974. talk about being ahead of their time we signed up for our first car share service in 2003 when we joined auto share in toronto back then the service was really basic we were given a key to a lock box that contained the keys to a car and we booked our time slots using a 1990s style website keeping track of mileage and fuel was entirely paper-based but the concept worked well enough these days however all car share systems are app-based and you can do everything from booking a car to unlocking the doors all from your smartphone today there are many different car share programs available but generally they can be classified into two groups what i'm calling fixed and free floating they both have their own advantages and disadvantages so we maintain memberships with several different services the oldest type of car sharing program is the fixed kind and our service in toronto is like this this is where cars are parked throughout the city in fixed locations with this kind of design you start to get used to where cars are in your neighborhood and what kind of cars are available after a while we started to settle into using our favorite cars and admittedly it was nice to get a familiar car that always remembered our bluetooth connections in a fixed car share system you typically need to book your time slot in advance and you have to return it back to the place where you picked it up this makes it difficult to use a car spontaneously but it has the benefit of ensuring that your car is always there when you've booked it so in this sense they're like traditional rental cars but with many more locations and you never need to wait in line or speak to an employee to get your car a big benefit of fixed car share is that they typically have lots of different kinds of cars and vans so you can take whichever vehicle you need for the trip you're taking when people used to ask us what kind of car we owned we used to joke that we had a fleet of them and this is ridiculously useful if i was just driving somewhere by myself or with a few other people i would get a small fuel-efficient car that's cheap and easy to drive but if i had to go buy a sheet of plywood or move a bunch of large items i could get a cargo van like this one that fits everything perfectly it always made me laugh while easily loading my car share cargo van outside of the hardware store and seeing other people in the parking lot trying to squeeze a bunch of oversized stuff into their crappy suv that holds way less than they think it does so here they are driving around in this bloated piece of garbage vehicle for every trip everywhere they go and the one time they actually need it it's not big enough car share solves that problem so even when we owned our own cars we still kept our car share service active to maintain access to the fleet of cars and fans when we needed them so car share doesn't just let people go car free it also lets two car households become single car households and it makes it easier for people to buy smaller cheaper vehicles too the other type of car share service is what i call the free floating kind and it seems to be the way that most new app-based car share services work free-floating car share means that cars can be parked almost anywhere you don't need to book them in advance and you can return them wherever it's convenient these systems are ideal for spontaneous trips and they allow you to take one-way trips as well instead of being like a rental car they're more like a taxi that you drive yourself except way cheaper for example a few months ago i took a one-way trip with my kids within the city and the bill came out to 2 euros and 10 cents yeah i had to drive myself but i've never paid that little for a taxi in a developed nation now of course not all trips are necessarily that short and cheap but from our car share experience we found it best not to think too much about the individual cost of a trip rather just think about the monthly cost compared to owning your own car sure it might have cost us say 15 to go to the big grocery store in the suburbs which is a lot for a single trip but when we get the bill at the end of the month we'd usually find that all of our trips combined added up to less than 100 bucks and that includes everything the car the fuel the insurance the cleaning the maintenance even the windshield wiper fluid so we had access to a car whenever we needed it but it cost us less than just the insurance did when we used to have our own vehicle and yeah owning your own car can be a great convenience but it can also be a massive hassle too when i've owned cars there were several times where i had problems with them and it was my job to get them fixed for example the time my car's computer malfunctioned and all my plans were ruined while i spent the day waiting for a tow truck and for the mechanic to fix it and i was at about 600 bucks by the end of the day as well car share cars are reliable and they're well maintained because it's in the company's best interest to keep them in service in 18 years and hundreds of car share rides i've only had a problem once and when that happened i called their hotline they booked me another car nearby and i just left the broken car at the side of the road for them to deal with they even gave me a discount on my rental for the trouble that's great it's also nice not to have to worry about getting my car damaged or having to deal with insurance or having my car broken into which has happened to me car sharing gives you access to a car but it removes all of the stress hassle and expense of owning your own vehicle every car share system we've used has per minute rates but they sometimes have discounts for longer trips weekends and multi-day trips as well for example it's common to have a maximum rate of say five to eight hours per day and after that you pay the 24 hour rate so if we were planning a road trip we'd usually pick up the car the night before and park it right in front of our house so it was ready to go the next morning at no extra cost for example one of the times we lived in toronto our family used to drive to go skiing every sunday in the winter the daily rate at the time was 85 so our car cost for those winter months was 340 dollars for four days of skiing but of course other months of the year we might not use it at all so then we'd pay nothing the average car spends 96 of its time parked but you're still paying for it to sit there i like the idea that when i'm not using the car i'm not paying for it and i'm not worrying about it either that's a level of freedom you just don't get with car ownership you really have to be using a car more than every single weekend every week of the year before car share comes anywhere close to the cost of owning your own vehicle which is why we had our policy if we didn't need to drive to work we didn't need to own a car even when we had two kids and we saved a hell of a lot of money doing so here in amsterdam we have a lot of different car share services available to us all of this choice has given us the luxury of being able to only use car share programs that have electric vehicles because i generally think it's impolite to give little kids asthma when i'm going somewhere the way these systems work is pretty similar and they're generally the same in other cities as well so here's what a typical trip looks like on a modern free-floating car share service first you open the app and you're presented with a map of cars nearby there are usually several cars within a short walk but there have been a few busy times that i've had to take a quick bike ride out to pick up my preferred car some services only use one or two models of car especially those that are owned by a specific car company other services have several different makes and models and i've enjoyed trying out every type of car available i can confidently say that the nissan leaf is my favorite electric car you select the car you want in the app and it's reserved for 15 minutes giving you enough time to get to the car when you get to your car you take a quick look around and check for any damage new damage can be reported in the app you can also use the app to let them know if the car is dirty in my experience car share cars are almost always clean because people don't want to get charged for leaving it dirty and the car share company professionally cleans their cars on a regular basis you unlock the doors from the app depending on the model of car you may need to get the keys out of the glove box but for most electric cars you never need the keys because the app has already unlocked it you just need to press the start button then you adjust the seat and mirrors turn off whatever terrible radio station the person before you is listening to and that's it the whole process takes no more than a minute or two and you're ready to drive you can take the car for as long as you want and you can park it as necessary the car share company will provide a fuel card or fob to pay for any fuel or electricity that you use here in the netherlands there are public car charging stations almost everywhere and they work just by tapping a fob to the charger driving an electric car in the netherlands is great but i'll talk about that in more detail in a future video we've often had car chargers at our campgrounds or hotels and as long as we've used the fob the electricity is included in the cost of the car share which is nice the car share service gives you a credit if you return the car with more fuel or battery than when you picked it up so i usually plug it in near my destination when i return it having a free-floating car share service available is really useful i can drive out to the pub and then take a taxi or public transit home after drinking i can walk or take public transit to a shop and then get a car to carry my heavy purchases home if i end up buying something as you can tell i'm a really big fan of car share services and they've only become better over the years they allow us to live in a walkable urban environment and save a lot of money on transportation while still having access to a car or cargo van when we need it i don't ever plan on owning a car again because i find them more trouble than they're worth and here in amsterdam a properly designed city a car is rarely the best way to get around plus nearly the whole country is accessible with a combination of bicycle plus train but it's nice to know in those rare times when i do need one or want to drive one i still have a car available in fact i have a whole fleet of them i'd like to thank my supporters on patreon who pay me to drive through amsterdam get out of my way you bloody cyclists if you'd like to support the channel and get access to bonus videos visit patreon.com not just bikes you

Channel: Not Just Bikes

Views: 615,110

Keywords: urban planning, Car sharing, Carshare, electric cars, electric driving netherlands, no car, car-free, car-free living, car free

Id: OObwqreAJ48

Length: 12min 52sec (772 seconds)

Published: Mon May 31 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/bergensbanen]

I used to use a carshare program in Columbus, Ohio, USA and the fleet used Smartcars. I started to use it to commute to work, but I got made fun of so much by my coworkers.

Haha, just brush it off, right? Well it actually got to me. It turned into some acutal bullying and even had a manager from a different department that didn't even know me make fun of me at training in front of a classroom full of people. He knew of me because everyone was talking about the idiot that drives a Smartcar to work. Really made me feel like shit and I stopped using the carshare.

Anyone else experience this?

[u/Cloud668]

Chicago had a pretty good carshare program a couple years ago called Car2Go that was eventually bought by ShareNow, then shut down. I think it was a combination of gas smart cars coming to EOL without a way of replacing it with EVs, and several incidents of dozens of cars getting stolen and trashed.

[u/fettsack2]

The rental car experience described is so much on point, its ridiculous.

[u/zephillou]

I was dangerously close to going car free a few years back when we only had 1 kid. It was a temporary measure until kid 2 would arrive to avoid costs and save up a bigger "down" on the new to us car. But after researching the options for carshare in my suburb, it became clear that things wouldn't be as available as needed, especially on weekend.

We're still a 1-car household now that we have 2 kids... and we do use it almost daily, involving moving a dog or 2 in it, so i wouldn't see ourselves switching to car share. But i'm definitely sticking to a single car. For everything else, there's my bicycle, motorcycle or public transit.

[u/arky_who]

Was I right to stop watching? I'm a non driver not interested in driving in the slightest. Was there anything to this video apart from "car sharing exists"?

[u/rileyoneill]

I really liked this video, even though I have no personal interest in using car sharing, and the only car sharing in my area is far from my home. It does however illustrate a certain point about costs. Its drastically cheaper to use one of these than an Uber, which has to pay the driver.

Eventually, and likely rather soon. There will be self driving taxis, that will be all electric, and like the car sharing service can be drastically cheaper than owing a car. If the cost is in line with the car sharing costs, its still a pretty cheap way to get around.

[u/[deleted]]

Hey mate, thanks for your work. Really appreciate your videos. I live in amsterdam zuid and rely on rentals for weekend trips (Enterprise usually). Can you recommend a car sharing provider, where as you mentioned, you park it overnight and then pay the day rate for the time you need it? Only requirement is that they allow Cross-Border trips.

Cheers