Car-sharing in France: potential, challenges, future

The GovReg Notes produced by the Governance and Regulation Chair are designed to highlight the issues at stake in a hotly debated public topic, based on recognised research or thinking on economic regulation issues. In this way, they aim to shed light on the public debate in a concise and synthetic format.

In France, car-sharing has been booming for several years now, for both local and long-distance journeys. This practice, which involves sharing the cost of a journey between a non-professional driver and his or her passengers, is being encouraged by the 2019 Loi d'Orientation de la Mobilité (hereafter referred to as the LOM), which gives it greater legitimacy. In this note, we will provide a historical overview of car sharing and show how it is linked to the main economic models of the current French market. We will then highlight a number of organisational trends common to car sharing services. Business models diverge according to distance and territory, and converge within each market. We will also review the debates on the environmental and societal impacts of car sharing. We conclude with a look at the future of car sharing promotion. Based on the research findings, we argue that, while tangible benefits are essential to change behaviour, non-monetary incentives should receive greater attention to support long-term change. Practitioners, policy makers and researchers should work together to achieve this goal.

The note shows the impact of car sharing on the decarbonisation of transport.