A simulation study of Peer-to-Peer carsharing

Many studies have shown that carsharing reduces environmental pollution and the transportation costs for a large segment of the population. Car sharing also reduces the number of private vehicles on the road because members do not purchase their own car. However, the traditional carsharing business model is difficult to scale geographically to neighborhoods with lower population densities because the operator must bear the upfront fixed cost of purchasing or leasing the vehicles in the fleet. In contrast to traditional carsharing, Peer-to-Peer (P2P) carsharing allows car owners to convert their personal vehicles into shared cars which can be rented to other drivers on a short-term basis. This model leverages the fact that most privately owned vehicles sit idle over 90% of the day. This paper presents a simulation study and a reservation control policy (RCP) to increase the revenue generated from P2P carsharing. The results show that rejecting reservations, even when the time slot is available, increases revenue when the demand is sufficiently high.