CAR SHARING FOR THE FUTURE: AMPLIFY
LEARNING TO SHARE AGAIN: NINA KARNIKOWSKI’S EXPERIENCE JOINING A CAR SHARING APP.
The first time I handed Cindy over to a strange man, I felt uneasy. What if he hurt her? Went too fast? Didn’t treat her with the respect she deserves? Before I go any further, I should clarify that Cindy is my car. My prized BMW convertible, that I’ve recently started renting out on a car share platform. So get your mind out of the gutter, please, and let’s continue.
I worried that this guy, a goateed 30-something named Kit who’d recently moved to Byron Bay from Melbourne and who told me he loved raving, would crunch the gears and scratch the wheels and fill Cindy with sand. But then I took a deep breath, remembered that it’s never too late to learn to share your toys, and handed over the keys.
Just to be clear, I didn’t have a car for the first 35 years of my life. So when I did finally buy one, I chose something I’d dreamt about for years. I became very protective of Cindy, a name I called her because of her Barbie-esque convertible soft top. I made her a fun playlist called ‘Pop That Top’ featuring Whitney Houston and Janet Jackson and Robert Palmer. And I forced anyone who drove in her with me to choose a headscarf from the glovebox and suck on one of the lollipops I kept in the cup holder. My girlfriends and I have had some outrageous fun with her.
Given the state our planet is in, though, I’d been thinking about selling Cindy. Two cars for two people just seems excessive now, especially since my husband and I don’t have kids and both work from home. Plus I was inspired by my husband trading his cool but gas-guzzling army-issue Land Rover for a Prius earlier in the year. But then a friend suggested I rent Cindy out on Car Next Door, an online platform that lets car owners make money by renting out their cars, citing the statistic that most cars aren’t used 95 per cent of the time.
There was some resistance at first. I was all for sharing clothes with friends and renting our house out on Airbnb, but letting strangers whiz around in my BMW? That seemed somehow off-limits. This was an asset I’d saved my hard-earned dollars for, and it represented a certain level of success I wanted to portray both to myself and everyone else. I also felt a little embarrassed, worrying people would assume I was doing it because I was down on my luck.
The more I thought about it, though, the more I realised it didn’t really matter what anyone else thought, and that we can only create the future we want to see if we start living it. And since I’m constantly going on about how we cannot afford to keep over-consuming and not making better use of the underutilized status symbols we already own, I decided to try getting Cindy to earn her keep.
Turns out, Kit was a good guy, who treated Cindy well. All seven people I’ve rented her to so far have been great, actually. Especially the woman who detailed the car, returning Cindy even cleaner than when I bought her (sharing sites are based on peer reviews, which drives excellent user behaviour). At a time of austerity and economic downturn, the $60 a day or so I receive from renting my car on the app is very helpful. I’ve been driving less and biking more, which has substantially lowered my carbon footprint, and sharing a resource I’m privileged to have just feels good. Having one car between two has also forced me to be more organised, planning outings and errands in advance for the times when I either have Cindy with me or can use my husband’s car.
There have been unexpected emotional benefits of sharing on the platform, too. The guy who’s renting Cindy this week is working her into his plan to propose to his girlfriend, sending a ripple of pleasure through my week. Thinking of the happy memories people are making with Cindy is a weekly reminder of how interconnected we all are. And it has made me consider what else I could share - unworn clothes, skills, excess food, spare space, assets like bikes and musical instruments and camera gear.
From the borrower’s standpoint, the benefits are clear, especially for those living in cities with great public transport. It can be much cheaper than owning if you only need a car occasionally. You’re able to cherry pick different vehicles for different occasions – a sports car for a date, an SUV for taking the kids to sport. And you don’t have to pay for long-term parking or maintenance.
This isn't a panacea, of course. If we're moving into a time when more of us have fewer savings, we need to make sure we keep some assets for financial security and resilience through hard times to come. Then there’s the concern about the sharing economy turning everything in our lives into an asset, viewed in terms of its financial potential, which could become a bit soul destroying. But on a finite planet with limited resources and an ever-expanding population, sharing more instead of consuming more seems like the only way forward.
Thankfully, this is something an increasing number of us are realising, with the value of the global sharing economy predicted to rise to $335 billion US by 2025, up from $15 billion in 2014. We’re grasping, it seems, the madness of the fact that we use 80 per cent of the things in our homes less than once a month, while self-storage usage continues to grow. Hopefully, the rise of the sharing economy means our material yearnings are starting to fade, we’re becoming more resourceful, and experiences and rental are taking precedence over consumerism and ownership.
This is the future I want to envisage and foster. A cooperative and interdependent world is the one I want to live in, I tell myself each time I watch Cindy’s tail lights fade into the distance.
THIS STORY FIRST APPEARED ONLINE HERE