Roland Berger: Car sharing to grow exponentially

The market for sharing one’s car – car sharing and ride sharing – is expected to explode over the coming years, according to Roland Berger Strategy Consultants. The consultancy has projected that the market will grow between 30% and 35%, year on year, until 2020. This will mean that the market is expected to be worth €7,2 billion in 2020, with the most optimistic view placing its value at €10,8 billion.

In the study 'Shared mobility, how new businesses are rewriting the rules of the private transportation game’ the consultancy firm investigates how people will be moving themselves around in the coming years. The key conclusion from the research is that forms of sharing – sharing cars and rides, sharing bikes and parking spaces – are on the pick up: “The attitude of consumers has changed. The preference for use over ownership is going to produce a transformation in the everyday modes of transportation” says René Seyger, partner at Roland Berger in Amsterdam.

As it stands, thousands of users are already engaging in car- and ride sharing, using services like Uber, easyCar, DriveNow, Buzzcar and Mitfahrgelegenheit (Germany) to coordinate with each other. According to Roland Berger, in the long run half of the car owners in developed countries, including the UK, will in principle be willing to share their car. It follows from this potential that growth in the market for car sharing will explode in the coming years. The global revenue for car sharing is expected to be between €3,7 and €5,6 billion in 2020, while for ride sharing this will be between €3,5 and €5,2 billion.

Four contributing trends
Four ‘megatrends’ are the biggest drivers for shared mobility, according to the report. There is a changing attitude toward sharing and community, making sharing more acceptable; there is scarcity in resources, for both consumers and government to create the conditions in which individual ownership continues to make sense; demographic changes mean that people live closer together in cities, thus locality create opportunity; and the availability of digital services like apps and the internet, makes sharing more accessible: “The ease of the internet means that sharing of information and the booking and paying for services ever more convenient. This plays into the hands of services that offer sharing,” says Seyger.

Shared mobility
The creation of services that offer shared mobility are also potentially lucrative to innovators and creative start-ups. The drive toward innovation is itself a driving force in the growth of the market, stipulates Casper Veenman, project manager at Roland Berger. “The models are generally readily scalable so that companies can grow quickly once they are through the start-up phase. They also do not require large investments in people or equipment." All in all, this makes shared mobility “one of the fastest growing sectors of the new sharing economy."