EVS37 Symposium

COEX, Seoul, Korea, April 23-26, 2024

Sustainable business models for the innovative urban

mobility services
Fernando Ortenzi1, Adriano Alessandrini2, Fabio Cignini3
1
(corresponding author) Renewable sources and energy technologies dept. of ENEA,Via Anguillarese 301, Rome
(Italy), fernando.ortenzi@enea.it;
2 Environmental and civil engineering dept. of Florence University;
3 Energy efficiency dept. of ENEA.

Abstract
The Life for Silver Coast project opened its mobility services on May 22nd, 2021. The project tested electric
mobility services for Orbetello, Monte Argentario and Isola del Giglio summer tourism locations in Italy.
The business models of three shared mobility services have been analysed to assess their profitability. Any
services aiming to make urban mobility sustainable need to help reduce environmental impacts (and electric
vehicles usually do) and improve the quality of life for all in cities as, for example, shared mobility services
do. However, they also need to demonstrate they are financially self-sustainable and public and shared
mobility has so far failed to reach such a goal. The analysis showed how e-bikes and e-scooters can be
financially neutral and even prof-itable, thanks to the lower cost of the vehicles, but only if the utilisation
rate is similar between winter and summer. At the same time, shared electric cars are not unless some subsidy
is provided. These results align with other experiences and highlight how the two ways to make any shared
service financially self-sustainable are to lower vehicle purchase cost and raise its utilisation rates. Key
characteristics a new shared service must have to be profitable and to become widely adopted to significantly
contribute to making urban transport sustainable are identified.
Keywords: shared mobility, transport services, business model, sustainability.

1 Introduction
The Life for Silver Coast (LifeSC) project opened its mobility services to the public on May 22nd, 2021. The
project conceives and tests new vehicles and electric mobility services for Orbetello, Monte Argentario and
Isola del Giglio territories. These mobility services include collective services such as electric minibuses and
boats on the Orbetello lagoons and at sea and individual services such as sharing e-bicycles, e-scooters and
e-cars. All services are integrated and managed by a mobility platform that allows travel planning, ticket
purchase (where necessary) and booking (and use) of services in a “one-stop-shop”.
This paper analyses the financial results of sharing electric vehicles, without externalities evaluation; it only
explores the cash flows. It is organised into four sections beyond this introduction. Section 2 is dedicated to
the background study concerning taxonomy definitions, pros and cons of each service, and a deep literature
review. Section 3 is devoted to calculating cash flows analysing costs and revenues to identify what can be

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changed to increase the services’ financial profitability. Section 4 uses the lesson learned to identify solutions
for a new urban mobility service, based on sharing vehicles, which can be financially sustainable; it defines
a few service characteristics which can contribute to profitability in many different urban areas.
The fifth section concerns conclusions, summarises the approach and highlights the main results obtained by
identifying future research objectives.

2 Background: Sharing experiences and business models

Susan Shaheen was the first to define carsharing in 2015 [1] and, more generally, vehicle sharing systems
and their impacts on society and mobility, similarly, a German study [2] shows that no prevailing sharing-
service business model tends to substitute the others. Therefore, vehicle-sharing services aim to limit vehicle
ownership by pushing those who use little private cars to give up possession in favour of shared ones only
when needed. Moreover, the operating and business models can significantly differ in tourist areas, especially
during seasonal periods. Tourist-sharing experiences offer potentially greater opportunities when tourists do
not travel - or may not travel – to the holiday location by their private vehicles. However, greater seasonality
problems are knowledge and understanding of a locally based service and trust in the service.
According to Shaheen [3], the main motivation for the first sharing services was to buy the benefits of car
mobility without bearing the purchase and maintenance costs.
Digital technologies enabled and increased carsharing attractiveness to operators and users, such as remote
bookings, vehicle access, and real-time vehicle tracking. Such developments have made car sharing an
important alternative transport mode in many regions and urban areas [4]. So far, new business models
become interesting; they have generally been classified as roundtrip, point-to-point, non-profit/cooperative,
or P2P car sharing.
Indeed, not all operators perfectly fit in any of these rather large groups; there are significant differences
between firms and operating models within the same group. To solve this problem primarily of language,
Remané and his co-authors defined in 2016 [5] a classification scheme that translates the aforementioned
technological advances into the creation of economic solutions of value and can be used for an analysis more
accurate than existing operators as well as the systematic discovery of new business models. The taxonomy
resulting from the cited work is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Taxonomy of the different carsharing service and business models ([6]).

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As can be seen, the accurate taxonomy of Remané does not consider geographical characteristics and demand
for the service or the fact that the demand is for tourism, residential, commuting or business travellers. After
that, he defined seven archetype clusters of different services: Roundtrip with Multiple Vehicle Types,
Roundtrip with single-Purpose Vehicles, Roundtrip with Cooperatives, One-Way Free-Floating, One-Way
Stationary, P2P with Manual Access, P2P with Automatic Access. While in 2018, SAE International adopted
the official taxonomy proposed by [6], aiming at uniform terms and definitions.
The research [7], titled “I like it, but I don’t use it”, analyses how to achieve a successful carsharing service.
In particular, the authors argue that free-floating electric vehicle services are generally preferred and that the
choice of whether or not to be a carsharing user is not what it would seem to be a binary option (yes or no).
Instead, it seems a multidimensional choice depending on service characteristics, trip and service quality.
In general, it emerges from the analysis of the literature that the kind of service offered (including its business
model) and the rates for service use are the fundamental characteristics to convince potential customers to
try the service but, to keep customers active service users, the service(s) must be of high quality with vehicles
available where and when they are needed and in good conditions.
The study [8] identified the fare as a crucial factor in attracting users, so it developed different methods to
identify the optimum fare. They developed a simulation method to define optimal fares according to user
profiles, which are defined as a function of mobility needs, hours of use, frequency of use and state of
congestion in the urban areas of use. The developed method was then applied (only in simulation) in the city
of Turin.
One of the carsharing issues is related to low utilisation rate; in some cases, it is due to the polarisation of
demand that concentrates vehicles in certain areas at certain times and other areas at other times of the day;
it occurs especially in one-way services. The source [9] has theorised a method for repositioning vehicles;
they ask users to choose to park in an area (where vehicles are needed) different from the desired one, offering
a discount on the fare to do so. In this way, the same vehicles can supply many more trips than if parked
where they are not needed. The analysis of the (simulation) results shows that, with the user-based relocation
strategy, the number of rejected bookings can be significantly reduced, even with a relatively small number
of vehicles, and, at the same time, the operator’s profit can be increased by satisfying more demand with the
same vehicle fleet. Another way to increase the utilisation rate of shared vehicles is to guarantee different
services by the same fleet at different times. In the early morning, a service-oriented to commuters would be
conceived to have them driving toward the attractive destinations of the city, while in the central hours of the
day, the service remains concentrated in the centre of the main centrality. The research [10] has studied an
interurban carsharing service by modelling the behaviour of potential users through a stated preferences
survey, demonstrating the considerable theoretical attractiveness of a service aimed at bringing commuters
to Salerno city from other smaller municipalities of the same province.
Great attention has recently been given to the P2P business model involving individuals sharing vehicles. In
2012, Shaheen and others [11] examined sharing services between private individuals in America founding
33 personal vehicle-sharing operators worldwide (10 active, 3 planned, and 4 deceased). They concluded
those services can impact the transport sector by increasing availability and interconnectivity between modes
of transport by providing more alternatives to vehicle ownership in multiple geographic locations. P2P
sharing services can be seen as complementary to traditional sharing services and at a market level.
Many other analyses can be found in the literature identifying positive impacts of carsharing services:
• environmental benefits [12], [13];
• reduction of car-ownership rates [4], [14];
• reduction of vehicles-miles travelled [15], [12], [13];
• efficient transportation alternative, particularly when it complements existing transportation modes or
supplements off-peak public transit services [16], [17];
• decreasing the demand for cars, reducing traffic and parking congestion, and increasing social cohesion
amongst sharers [18], [19], [13], [4], [20].
Overall, the literature review shows many business models for sharing vehicles, which must be well managed
and integrated with other transport services to attract users and keep their trust long enough to convince them
to give up private car ownership. Recently, the [21] evaluated the size of the carsharing industry, and it
assessed 245 operators worldwide; 58% are station-based, 30% are free-floating, and 11% are P2P.
In parallel with the LifeSC, object of this paper, the I Share Life project was active, mainly centred on
northern Italy to demonstrate electric car-sharing services, mixing traditional and P2P carsharing services.

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The I Share Life project ended before LifeSC, the results are presented in the Deliverable 1 “Report on
implementation” [22]. Those two projects have at least three fundamental objectives in common:
• Maximise vehicle utilisation rate;
• They serve customers with different needs who would not guarantee intensive use of the vehicle but
who, having complementary needs, can do it together;
• Identify a main customer (preferably a business ones) who acquires (buys or rents) electric vehicles
and who, not using them fully, makes them available to others on certain days and time slots so that
they contribute (even if minorly) to lower the overall costs of vehicles.

3 Business model and cash-flows for Life for Silver Coast (LifeSC) service
LifeSC showed three vehicle-sharing services: e-bikes in a station-to-station sharing model, e-cars and e-
scooters, which, after an initial test phase with pre-established parking areas, have been converted to free-
floating sharing. Initially, it can be a cluster 1 ([5]), which all journeys were roundtrip, and the vehicles were
different and multipurpose, then the project switched to a service that covers two types: cluster 4 (free-
floating services), and cluster 5 (one-way services) with stations to pick up and leave the vehicles (hubs for
bicycles and charging stations for cars and scooters). Moreover, the tariff structure is difficult to classify
compared to others in the past, those applied in LifeSC demos are indicated below:
• E-bikes were rented for € 0.21 per minute up to the first hour of use, for € 19.90 from 1 to 3 hours, for
€ 26.90 from 3 to 6 hours and € 34.90 after 6 hours for the daily rate;
• E-scooters were rented for € 0.25 per minute up to the first hour of use, € 22.90 from 1 to 3 hours, €
29.90 from 3 to 6 hours, and € 39.90 after 6 hours for the daily rate;
• E-cars were rented for € 0.28 per minute up to the first hour of use, € 26.90 from 1 to 3 hours, € 32.90
from 3 to 6 hours and € 49.90 after 6 hours for the daily rate.
The tariffs changing with the rental-time cover more business models with the same service. The pay-by-
minute typical of free-floating services and used for short trips to quickly move in a selected area are
supplemented by the tourist-excursions model typical of the short-term rental for bicycles and (mostly) for
scooters in tourist areas to reach a far-away beach or another tourist attraction and by the daily-rental model
typical of people needing to travel by car for one or few days.
This last model was mostly used to drive to Florence or Rome because the car is rented in Orbetello with the
battery fully charged and driven for almost its entire available range (from 200 to 300km) where the electric
car can access the central LTZs (Limited Traffic Zones) and parked for free in a parking spot reserved for
EV charging. The person will then spend the entire day in city centre and retrieve the car fully charged to
drive back to Orbetello. It is an unconventional use of electric cars but has significantly increased the rental
hours (and therefore the utilisation rate) and responded to a specific need. Naturally, from the sustainability
point of view, it could have been better to favour the use of the train to reach both Florence and Rome, but
financially, it helped the service. Table 1 shows the overall results of the LifeSC sharing service.
Table 1 LifeSC main results
Parameter Unit Car Scooter E-bike
Number of rents # 907 116 110
Average rents per vehicle # 302.3 4.64 4.78
Total rental time - 587h 29’ 24’’ 586h 41’ 31’’ 298h 51’ 10’’
Total distance travelled Km 9,394 5,543 1,300
Service period Day*vehicle 156 349 57
Utilisation rate % 16 7 22
From these data, e-bikes were used 22% of the time they were available, cars 16% (also thanks to several
multi-day rentals that extended the rental times encouraged by the maximum daily rate) and scooters 7%.
The e-bike data is less robust than the other because not all bikes were available at the same time as there
were not enough active stations, and the e-bike sharing model was station-to-station; the availability is
therefore calculated as a sum of the times each e-bike was made available for rental but over nearly four
months from may the 22nd to September 21st (when data were collected) 23 e-bikes instead of being available

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 more than 2500 e-bike*days were available only 57. Data are from summer 2021 in the thick of the COVID-
19 pandemic. The tourist flow has been verified to check whether summer 2021 was less attractive for tourists
than the preciouses until 2019. According to the local chamber of commerce data in 2021, the tourist flow
was slightly above the data for 2019. The decrease in international tourist presence was more than
compensated by the increased presence of Italian tourists. Slightly less presence in hotels and more in summer
houses (whether rented or owned). Overall, the COVID-19 pandemic did not influence the tourist flow in the
area for the summer of 2021.

3.1 Economic evaluation methodology

The service's revenues are extracted from the information system of On-Sharing, the company managing the
services. Revenue values are consistent with those calculated by applying the fare plans to each rental.
Though it is not entirely orthodox, as summertime is supposed to be the most attractive season, the revenues
obtained were “expanded” over one year to calculate a yearly balance of revenues and costs and to verify if
the incoming cash flows exceed those outgoing for the implemented vehicle sharing services. In section 3.4,
when discussing the results of the balance, other hypotheses instead of this linear “expansion” are considered
as it increases the overall utilisation rate. All the following economic evaluations include VAT.
Cost calculation is made by applying a very simplified cost model. The costs depend on the vehicle ownership
(either long-term rental contracts or vehicle depreciation over a time period), maintenance, insurance,
circulation tax, vehicle wash, consumption (fuel or energy) and personnel mostly to move the vehicles to the
vehicle wash and maintenance and occasionally to reposition them. They can be classified into:
• company (or overhead) costs, normally considered as a percentage of operating costs, include the
managing office (structures, administrative and maintenance staff). These costs can also be highly
relevant but, as a first approximation and especially for small companies, they can be neglected because
they are covered by other local structures/offices where employers are already paid for other tasks and
have free time to spend on other local duties;
• ICT costs, for developing and maintaining the mobile APP and IT services (outsourced or in-house);
• the cost of a call centre to intervene in case of need;
• interests in invested capital.
None of these last three costs are considered in these simplified accounts. It is because none of the three is
predictable and varies with the company form; its main business is the number of vehicles managed. In
section 3.3, a discussion on costs is made, and these (which, according to Bartolucci [23] for the Rome
carsharing service is 24%) need to be lowered either sharing them on many local services or having local
cooperation with other companies or administration. Though these costs are not negligible, they need to be
neglected to understand the potential of a service to be profitable. Even so simplified, the proposed
methodology for cost calculation is easy to explain and helps understand the main strengths and weaknesses
of any sharing vehicle business model; however, it is a primitive calculation to gather the actual final financial
outcome of a service supply. As shown in section 3.4, the calculated costs align with those measured by other
vehicle-sharing services, neglecting company, administrative, technology and call centre costs.

3.2 The revenues

Overall, the three vehicle-sharing services have collected € 12,120 in revenues, divided as follows:
• € 4,986.49 was collected from the cars in 156 total days of availability of all vehicles, which, extended
throughout the year, estimate each vehicle in a year of 11,650 €/year*vehicle;
• € 5,387.30 was collected from the scooters in 349 total days of availability of all the scooters, which
extended over 365 days, bringing the expected income for a scooter to 5,635 €/year*vehicle;
• € 1,764.10 collected from bikes with bikes available for a total of 57 days, which extended over the
365 days of a year, brings the expected income for a bike to 11,500 €/year*vehicle.

3.3 The costs

The annual costs of sharing services are the following:
• Vehicle Depreciation Costs: These costs are determined by dividing the purchase cost of the vehicle
by its years of use. Shared cars typically travel 10-12 thousand km/year for a maximum of 5 years,

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 after which they require replacement due to obsolescence and safety concerns. Scooters and bikes have
even shorter lifespans. So the purchase cost divided by 5 for cars, and by 3 for e- scooters e- bikes.
• Fixed Ownership Costs: These encompass property taxes and insurance. Insurance expenses vary
based on the number of vehicles insured, their usage patterns, and initial cost. A standard cost of
€1000/year per vehicle has been applied here. Smaller, cheaper scooters and bikes, despite their lower
value and speed, incur higher insurance costs due to unfavourable accident statistics.
• Maintenance: Maintenance costs are typically calculated as a percentage of the vehicle's purchase
price—around 5% for traditional vehicles and 2% for electric ones annually, based on market research
and expert knowledge.
• Washing Costs: Though vehicles were not washed frequently during the demonstration, regular
washing is essential to maintain user satisfaction. In addition to personnel expenses for transporting
vehicles to and from washing sites (accounted for separately), each car requires a weekly wash at €6
per wash. Scooters and bikes can be cleaned every two weeks, with each wash costing €4.
• Personnel Costs: These cover tasks such as vehicle repositioning, washing, recharging (where
applicable), maintenance, and emergency interventions. The number of personnel required depends on
the service offered. In the LifeSC demonstration, one individual managed three cars, 25 scooters, and
23 bikes. The exact allocation of time for each service is unknown, so for calculation purposes, it was
assumed to be evenly distributed.
• Energy Costs: Actual costs incurred for energy consumption were not billed to the service manager
during the project, as the energy provider was a project partner, and specific energy consumption data
for each vehicle was unavailable; so it was estimated based on average energy consumption.
• Infrastructure Investment Costs: These are evaluated by dividing the total infrastructure expenditure
by the useful life of the infrastructures (including depots, workshops, and charging stations). In this
project, only the e-bike sharing service requires a dedicated infrastructure to be maintained and
amortized; the others are demanded by third parties, which manage also other services.
Table 2 compares the vehicle and operation costs of the three services.
Table 2 Operation and energy Cost comparison between the three services
Cost per vehicle Unit Car Scooter E-bike
Purchase (VAT included) € 34,000 2,460 1,200
Number of vehicles # 3 25 23
Years of depreciation Year 5 3 3
Depreciation cost € 6,800 820 400
Insurance and circulation € 1,000 1,000 1,000
Maintenance € 680 50 24
Washing (52 weeks/year) € 312 104 104
Personnel € 3,333 400 440
Infrastructure € 0 0 330
Sub-Total € 12,125 2,374 2,298
Energy cost €/kWh 0.45 0.45 0.45
Energy consumption kWh/km 0.20 0.05 0.02
Distance travelled km 9,394 15,510 1,330
Days of operation days 156 349 57
Equivalent yearly distance km 21,980 16,221 8,516
Energy cost for a year of service € 1,980 130 80

Errore. L'origine riferimento non è stata trovata. shows the energy evaluation of the three services. For
example, the energy costs 0.45 €/kWh, and the cars had an average consumption of 0.2 kWh/km; so, a car
costs 0.09 €/km. The car fleet travelled (overall) 9,394 km in 156 days*vehicle of operation, expanding from
156 to 365 days; each vehicle is expected to travel 21,980 km/year, costing 1980 €/year of energy. In the
LifeSC demonstrations, bikes are stored and recharged within technological hubs; each costs € 20,000 and
accommodates 6 bikes with 10 years of life expectancy. Amortising the cost of the infrastructure on the 6

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 bikes over 10 years added a further cost of 330 €/year*vehicle to the e-bike costs. The annual cost of sharing
one vehicle is the sum of operation and energy costs; it evals 14,105 €/year*vehicle for cars,
2,504 €/year*vehicle for scooters and 2,378 €/year*vehicle. Though costs (and revenues) are commercially
sensitive data commonly not publicly available, validating their share in the balance is possible. Errore.
L'autoriferimento non è valido per un segnalibro. shows the share of the different costs, with data
collected by the Rome mobility agency (Roma Servizi per la Mobilità) [23].
Table 3 Direct cost component shares, translated from the Rome Carsharing Service (slide 25).
Direct costs component share Percentage
Fuel 14%
Car wash 2%
Vehicle rental (depreciation, maintenance, insurance and taxes) 36%
Personnel 24%
Call center 12%
Technologies 10%
Administrative costs 2%

Table 5 compares results from the Rome service (Table 4) with the ones from LifeSC (Table 2 and Errore.
L'origine riferimento non è stata trovata.), where this second used only the first four categories and
accounted for the first, such a difference in categorizations forced to re-evaluated the Rome results to fit with
LifeSC (see the relative column, and by using a linear proportion). The Rome carsharing service cost of
technologies, administrative and call centre are (overall) 24% of total service costs, while in LifeSC are
neglected (see section 3.1). LifeSC cars cost including depreciation, taxes, insurance and maintenance are
equal to 60% of the annual cost, while in Rome only 47%. On the contrary, fuel/energy accounts for 13% for
LifeSC and 18% for Rome. These differences are in line with expectations as the LifeSC vehicles are electric
(more expensive than traditional ones), and they are not leased or rented but purchased, which has a higher
overall cost but electric energy is cheaper than fuel. Car wash is in line, and LifeSC personnel are cheaper
(22%) than Rome’s (32%).
Table 4 Results comparison between Rome and LifeSC use cases
Direct costs component share Rome Rome re-scaled value LifeSC
Fuel/energy 14% 18.4% 13.1%
Car wash 2% 2.6% 2.1%
Vehicle depreciation 36% 47.4% 60.1%
Personnel 24% 31.6% 22.0%
Total 76% 100% 100%

The personnel cost is a highly relevant factor; one person did manage the services in the demonstration, but
the demonstration period was too short to consolidate the value. On the other hand, Rome has a much more
dispersive environment, and even the easy task of reaching the carwash might require much longer than in
Orbetello. Overall, the magnitude of the calculated shares is in line with the expectations and the Rome
experience.

3.4 The balance

The balance between costs and revenues per year is extraordinarily positive, so positive that it is unlikely.
• The cars have 11,560 €/year*vehicle of perspective revenues and 14,105 €/year*vehicle of perspective
costs, losing 2,455 €/year each; i.e. just over 17% of the annual cost is not covered by the revenues;
• The scooters have 5,635 €/year*vehicle of perspective revenues and 2,580 €/year*vehicle of
perspective costs, earning 3,131 €/year each or more than 125% of the costs is profit;
• The bikes have 11,500 €/year*vehicle of perspective revenues and 2,318 €/year*vehicles of
perspective costs, earning 9,122 €/year each, i.e. the net profit is almost four times the cost invested.

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The e-bikes balance is biased by only 57 days of availability for 23 bikes (less than three days per bike on
average), maybe due to the hub (the rental stations) being late and the 23 bikes not being available altogether,
which has increased the utilisation rate of the few bikes available. A realistic service, as reported in the
Chinese study has an average utilisation rate of 4% to 10%, it reaches 15% (only in peak hours with some
other conditions). So, the average of 20% measured in Orbetello seems overestimated. The e-scooter service
has a very positive balance with a utilisation rate of only 7%. The bike service would have a positive balance
with a similar utilisation rate. Each bike would collect about 4,200 €/year*vehicle, still nearly twice the costs.
The utilisation rate is the cornerstone of the profitability of any sharing services. It can rise by reducing the
number of vehicles, but it affects the quality of service with a twofold negative impact. Firstly, it reduces the
transport demand, and even the remaining demand loses confidence in the system, which would negatively
impact the possibility of users making radical choices like giving up private vehicle ownership; which is the
main contribution to sustainability sharing services. This utilisation rate, obtained for the summer months,
was considered constant throughout the year. This assumption can be plausible for cars (a limited number of
cars used mainly by permanent residents even in summer) but is much less so for scooters and bicycles that
will be affected by weather and environmental conditions.
If the utilisation rate for bikes and scooters were 7% in summer (3 months of the year) and 1% in the other
nine months of the year, this means an average value of 2.5%, the equivalent revenues are
1800 €/year*vehicle for bikes and 1900 €/year*vehicle for scooters. These more realistic projections for
using scooters and bicycles over the year would bring all three balances into negative territory.
It is worth noticing that the budgets of the three shared services are neutral if the company costs, mobile APP
and IT services costs, remuneration of capital and personnel are not paid by the service revenues but “offered”
by local (or not local) supporters and partners. Such a situation is typical of services organised by
municipalities or municipal companies that use existing staff, structures, call centres, and public funds to
purchase (or build in-house) IT services for mobility.
To make any of these services an interesting investment for private investors who use their own risk capital,
and who therefore expect remuneration and a good return in exchange for the risk incurred, supplying these
services is not convenient. The critical parameter remains the utilisation rate that should be enhanced. In
order to improve it, separate studies are required due to significant differences in vehicle costs between cars,
scooters, and bicycles. The utilisation rate measured for cars (16%) is insufficient to even the balance.
Increasing it above 16% for the whole year is extremely difficult; as a comparison, the carsharing service
managed by the mobility agency of Rome (a much more populous municipality), directly measured by CTL
of La Sapienza University in 2012, has a utilisation rate between 13% and 19% and for a sharing business
model with fixed stations which extends rental times. Those rates are also aligned with other types of services,
such as free-floating car sharing, which varies between 15% and 25% in peak hours [24].
Repositioning vehicles dynamically to follow demand can increase the rate, but it requires either the use of
many human resources that worsen the balance or a technological revolution to enable automatic cars. The
7% utilisation rate measured for scooters would be widely sufficient to ensure profitability if it could be
maintained throughout the year. E.g. in winter, this goal seems difficult to achieve without relocating all (or
partly). In any case, sharing bikes and scooters in winter is less doable due to climate conditions.

4 Discussion on how creating potentially profitable sharing services

This section discusses how to deploy a potentially profitable sharing service based on background and on
LifeSC experience; thus, the key features a vehicle-sharing service must have to be profitable outside the
central areas of large cities where the isotropic demand allows free-floating sharing to be so. In the following
are described five main approaches. Vehicle sharing is beneficial when it allows citizens to live without
owning cars. Any such service should not compete against conventional mass transit but be complementary,
especially where and when transits are less effective. Generally speaking, transport demand is extremely
variable during the day, the week and the year. Dimensioning the fleet on the maximum demand would have
a negative financial impact; dimensioning it on its lower levels would mean not supplying a good enough
service to build customer loyalty.

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4.1 Sharing rides in peak hours and directions complementarily to public transport
A solution to reach the goal is to mix carsharing and ridesharing. At peak times (and prevalent direction), the
customer rents a seat instead of renting the vehicle. In contrast, the standard free-floating business model is
adopted in off-peak times and directions. The ridesharing model can work even better if the service is
integrated with other “scheduled” transport modes (such as trains or metros). So, all people from one area
travel together toward the transport hub (or vice versa, getting off the train to reach their home). One of the
customers drives the car, and the others are passengers. Rental costs are shared (and therefore, services can
be used daily), and fewer vehicles are needed because some of them are relocated and can be used again.
A second innovation is also needed to enable this business mode to work. It can be the “on-the-fly” driver
exchange. When a pool of customers travels, their trip foresees at least one stop for each destination required
by the person involved. The innovation could be adding one more stop (is necessary and if it does not match
other scheduled stops) to pick up the driver of the next pool. So, this little detour allows the customers in the
first pool to reach their destination, and the vehicle can continue its trip without parking the vehicle with the
customer picked up before (he has to drive).
Vehicle parking includes the parking slot search, parking, and the closing of the rent (and other non-
remunerative actions that require a small amount of time), which could be time wasted. If the next driver is
not picked up during the trip, when the vehicle is available it can be too far from the vehicle, while if the
previous pool reaches him directly at his home, it can be more productive in terms of time and quality of
service. So, when looking for a vehicle to rent each customer must state the origin, destination, desired travel
time, and drive availability if required. This service can be implemented quickly thanks to recent
improvements in ICT technologies. This new feature can solve the repositioning problem studied in Genova
[9] without the inconvenience of parking the car far from the desired destination and increase the perceived
quality of service, which has been demonstrated [7] to be crucial to customer satisfaction.

4.2 Self-repositioning of empty vehicles

Vehicles already need much less repositioning with the ridesharing and the on-the-fly exchange, especially
in small realities like the LifeSC locations, where picking up the next customer at the “other end” of the
municipality only increased the travel by no more than 5 minutes while reaching the doorsteps of the
destination without the need of parking saves much more than that. However, having a customer waiting for
a car when the other one is arriving is still a matching problem with uncertain results and off-peak, when the
demand is very low, empty-vehicle-repositioning might still be needed.
As described in [26], technology exists for empty automated vehicles driving at low speeds along pre-
certified infrastructures. Though this is less certain, even the legal framework might allow it (up to a certain
extent and in specific locations). The other technological option to reposition empty vehicles at low cost is
to have one driver driving a convoy of up to 10 vehicles (depending on the country and its road regulations,
the convoy can be up to 18.5, 32 or 60 meters long). There must be a large enough fleet and a big enough
demand to justify repositioning that many vehicles simultaneously. Paying a driver for less than six vehicles
to reposition would be difficult.

4.3 Shortening or eliminating charging times

The utilisation rate can rise by decreasing the vehicle idle, even for recharging. It is not just a matter of
increasing the vehicle mile range with one charge, the charging strategy has to change instead. There are
several technological options to do so, ordered from the easiest to the most complicated:
• Use hybrid vehicles instead of electric ones. Bringing back refuelling (customers can do it in exchange
for discounts) and extending the range when the vehicle is used for longer trips.
• Faster wireless automatic charging at high power. It would reduce charging times and the burden on
the customer. However, it requires a feasibility investigation because such charging infrastructures are
not easy to implement everywhere; e.g. one of LifeSC issues comes from legal and formal authorisation
(for installation on the road) of “static” car charging stations and bicycle hubs.
• On-line fast charging, analogously to the overhead electricity line used by tram, a few main corridors
can be electrified “energy-active” and recharge the passing vehicles. This would eliminate any request
to stop for charging, especially in urban settings.

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4.4 Differentiating vehicles to lower costs and allow different uses
The vehicle purchase cost impacts the profitability of the models proposed. A mixed fleet composed of many
lighter (slower and cheaper, as mopeds or microcars), standard vehicles (cars) and a few larger vehicles
(mini-vans up to 9 seats) can be a good trade-off. Urban service exploits small vehicles assisted by the largest
ones to fulfil the majority of transport demand in peak hours by using carsharing mixed ridesharing.
Moreover, this second vehicle type expands the covered area by offering interurban trips, especially for off-
peak rentals. Such a mix allows the selection of different power trains for the different vehicle types. The
larger and standard vehicles can be hybrid, and the lighter ones can be electric with fast charging.

4.5 One integrated service to cover all mobility needs

Overall, the new service will need to respond to all the customers' mobility needs wherever they need to go
with whoever (pets or babies) at whatever time. It means every trip needs its vehicle size.
A convenient mobility solution for a standard commuter journey may be a train trip with a shared car waiting
for the last mile trip at the arrival station. A crucial requirement is that the customer can plan, book, manage
and have all the information through the same integrated tool. This solution will increase customer confidence
in the service and boost the probability of convincing them to give up vehicle ownership to completely
embrace sharing with the positive effects on the consumption of urban space.
Even more important is that by increasing customers' use of shared vehicles, the balance of the services can
become positive, thus relieving the cities of the need to subsidise and sustain the shared-mobility services.
Many attempts to create a MAAS (Mobility As A Service) integrated platform to have the one-stop-shop
platform to access all transport services are underway. However, the main problem has been to “force” every
service to be reachable by the same platform. An interesting approach proposing Open Innovation and Data
Sharing has been proposed by [27].

5 Conclusions
The paper has investigated the business models of vehicle-sharing services through literature and project
review and then presented the results of the financial analysis of the electric vehicles-sharing demonstration
done by the LifeSC Project in the municipalities of Orbetello, Monte Argentario and Isola del Giglio on the
southern Tuscany Tyrrhenian coast in Italy. The financial analyses showed how the investigated sharing
services can be profitable with difficulty and require public subsidies. These findings hold true for most
sharing services outside the city centres of large cities. However, the findings also highlight how lowering
the purchase price of shared vehicles and increasing the service utilisation rates could be profitable. Five
main features are identified as the best chances to organise a vehicle-sharing service, which can be profitable
in tourist locations or city peripheries:
• Sharing rides and not just cars in peak hours and directions complementarily to public transport;
• Self-repositioning of empty vehicles;
• Shortening or eliminating charging times;
• Differentiating vehicles to lower costs and allow different uses;
• One integrated service to cover all mobility needs.
Responding to a fluctuating demand without increasing the fleet can improve the utilisation rate without
lowering the quality of service. It can be done by introducing ridesharing at peak times, on-the-fly driver-
exchange and relocating empty vehicles without many personnel. Selecting the most appropriate vehicle
type, powertrain, and charging method also influences the utilisation rate. Creating a really integrated service
would help build customer confidence, impacting urban mobility sustainability.
Two final considerations are about the COVID-19 pandemic, which lowered people's sharing propensity.
Mostly to share rides but also to share vehicles. This effect was not directly appreciable in the Life for Silver
Coast project thanks to explicit (and well-publicised) sanitisation protocols. Convincing people to re-start
sharing rides and even increasing this can only be done through education. Two noteworthy papers address
the education problem toward the use of shared services [28] and electric vehicles [29]; both will be needed
with technological solutions to share rides without any contagion risks.

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Funding
This research was part of the Life for Silver Coast Project funded by the European funding program
LIFE+2016 (Grant Agreement LIFE 16 ENV/IT/000337).

Acknowledgements
The calculations presented are part of the deliverable on Business Models of the Life for Silver Coast Project
authored by the paper's author with the contribution of Raffaele Alfonsi e Gian Piero Joime.

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Authors
Adriano Alessandrini holds an MSc in Mechanical Engineering (1998) and a PhD in Energy
Technologies (2003) from the University of Rome La Sapienza. Associate Professor of Transport at the
University of Florence since 2015. His research, spanning vehicle technology and traffic planning,
focuses on the environmental impact of vehicles and automated transport systems. Adriano has
coordinated major European projects, including CityMobil2, deploying automated shuttle fleets across
seven cities. He is a sought-after speaker at international events and serves as an evaluator for the
European Commission and The National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) in the
U.S.

Fabio Cignini has been a mechanical engineer since 2013 and a doctor in transportation since 2019. He
is a researcher at ENEA's Energy Efficiency Department (DUEE). He works mainly on database
designing for WEB-based applications in projects focused on sustainability, energy and public entity
support. He also works in automated road transport systems and ICT technologies with low
environmental impact. He has recently been involved in several ES-PA projects to design and deploy
WEB interfaces that help technicians and decision-makers address energy and greenhouse gas
emissions evaluations.

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 Fernando Ortenzi is a mechanical engineer (2003) and Ph.D in energetics (2008) ; works as a researcher
at ENEA Research Centre in the Eco-friendly Vehicles Laboratory (DTE-PCU-STMA) from 2012 and
as research fellow in Sapienza University of Rome from 2004. Author of more than 60 technical papers.
he participated in many research projects on real word vehicles consumption and emissions, electric
vehicles and charging infrastructure. He studies and research about Measurement and modeling of
energy and emissions of vehicles; charging infrastructure, Fleet management of vehicles and trucks
from OBD/CAN data; Alternative fuels for internal combustion engines.

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