WTN 2006 Prize Nominations

World Technology Environment Awards 2006: Greenwheels

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Carsharing is a "glass of milk" health delivery system where a fleet of cars (or other vehicles) is owned and operated/overseen by a company, public agency, cooperative, ad hoc grouping, or even a single individual, and made available for use by members of the carshare group in a wide variety of ways. The costs and troubles of vehicle purchase, ownership and maintenance are transferred to a central organizer (the Carshare Operator). It has been around in various forms for more than half a century, but it is only in the last decade that it has begun to gather force as a viable alternative to car ownership-for some people and some places. Today there are more than six hundred cities in the world where you can carshare.

Greenwheels WTN 2006 Environment Award Nomination

"Why buy a cow, when all you want is a glass of milk?".
- From DenzelDrive Austria, 1998

We are pleased this year to nominate the Greenwheels carsharing group in the Netherlands for this year's World Technology Environment Award in the corporate/team category. And to invite you to second this nomination by clicking here:

Jan Borghuis, one of the two Greenwheels founders, first came across the idea of sharing a car when he and his partner read about Berlin-based StattAuto Car Sharing. They liked the concept but were convinced that it could be improved upon with the help of modern ICT applications such as on-board computers, chip cards and mobile telephony. Realizing their ideas, they put their first three cars on the Rotterdam roads in June 1995. Undoubtedly helped by a partnership with the Dutch Railways, their success soon surpassed that of their German example. They took over StattAuto in 2004 and Shell Drive Deutschland in January 2006.

What the Greenwheels team has done over the last several years is no less than to take the business and reach of carsharing - basically a club approach to very short term auto rental as a replacement for your second or even first car if the circumstances are right - a big next step into the future. Both in terms of increasing the technology content on a large scale, and then simply the continuous growth of the enterprise which is starting to cover all of the Netherlands and of late with some big bites out of the German carshare

At a time when carsharing is making rapid strides in many cities and countries, in particular in Europe and North America but also in a slow crescendo in other parts of the worlds - there are more than six hundred cities in the world in which you can carshare today. But if that's the case, what it is about Greenwheels and its founders that makes it worthy to be sorted out for this year's WTN Award?

We make this nomination for the combination of technology and business savvy that the group has showed over the last several years which has made it the fastest growing carshare operations in the world. Today Greenwheels offers services in 42 cities in the Netherlands and now runs the biggest carshare operations in Germany, active in 23 cities. In all they service carsharing vehicles which are distributed over 1.000 pick-ups and parking areas. The average time that it takes to order a vehicle is less than one minute.

The city of Amsterdam, admittedly the most mature operation thus far, offers a good feel for the extent to which this new way of "owning" and using a car is working there. There are at present some 450 pickup points for vehicles spotted all over the city with an average walk required to get to the nearest on the order of 300 meters.

Technology
One of the most important things the Greenwheels team wanted to prove is that a fully automated carsharing service is possible and even more convenient than the traditional manual service. At the start in 1995 Greenwheels was the first carsharing scheme that completely equipped their carsharing fleet with onboard computers. In a few years the automated carshare system was completed with web reservation, contact-less chip cards, GSM data communication.

"We were haunted by the idea that you could use technology to make this idea into a large scale, professional operation that would be very convenient for customers," said Jan Borghuis, co-founder of Greenwheels - dressed in the de facto company uniform of shorts, sandals and a T-shirt, in the company's ramshackle Rotterdam office surrounded by bicycle tires rather than auto parts. "We know it would have a good effect on the environment."

In 1997 Greenwheels implemented the first 20 vehicles that were directly accessible with a contact-less chip card, without a separate key-manager system. This system lead to a new one-car-locations distribution strategy that made carsharing more accessible than ever. The one-car-location distribution is best demonstrated in the City of Amsterdam with its 450 locations most of which within easy walking distance from each other. Last year a user survey indicated a nearby-location-satisfaction of 9 on a scale of 1 - 10. A solid demonstration of putting technology to work in order to offer a convenient service 24/7.

Economics:
As far as consumer economics are concerned, the cost of full auto ownership in Amsterdam (including parking, insurance, etc.) is on the order of four thousand Euros, whereas the top of the line subscription to Greenwheels will cost you on the order of 600 Euros. For cities it is a godsend since each carshare vehicle allows them to take anywhere from 5 to 10 expensive parking slots off the street, a considerable economy. And the fact that people who carshare tend to be better customers for public transit, cycling and walking saves on the taxpayer's wallet and, at another level, the citizen's waistline.

By awarding this years WTN Environment Award to Greenwheels, we will be sending a message to local and national government in their search for better ways of dealing with the enormous pressure of global warming on the one hand and the petroleum crisis on the other. There is more to the future of transport in cities than carsharing, but there is little doubt that carsharing, got right, is a great way to open the door to the rest.

For more on Greenwheels

Short Presentation (PPT)
Greenwheels site in the Netherlands (clickable map)
In Amsterdam
In one central area (11 slots at ca. 200 m. intervals)

Merging into the mainstream (Intl Herald Tribune, 5 July 2005)

Further background on how carsharing works