Adamcarley

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Hello, Adamcarley, and Welcome to Wikipedia!

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Adamcarley, good luck, and have fun. RA0808 ^talk_contribs 00:00, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

Vehicle subscriptions vs car share?

Hi Adamcarley and welcome to Wikipedia! I noticed you recently created the article Vehicle subscription, and I was wondering what the difference are between these subscriptions and Carsharing? RA0808 ^talk_contribs 00:01, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

Hi there.

Vehicle subscription is a direct replacement for owning or leasing a car, giving you full-time possession of a vehicle that is not shared with anyone else for extended periods of time, often days, weeks or months. By contrast, "car sharing" services like Zipcar or Maven typically see users taking a car for just a single trip.

You can see the difference in the pricing. Car subscriptions are priced to be at a premium to a lease. If you pay $1000 for a month of subscription, the cost per hour is quite low at around $1.40. By contrast, Zipcar pricing can run at $20 to $40 an hour, which means that you have to return the car when you are done with it.

As a result, the two types of services end up being used in very different ways. Car sharing, as the name tends to suggest, is for people who do not want to have a car most of the time but occasionally might want to do so. A typical car sharing customer might live in downtown NYC, San Francisco or Chicago, and mainly rely on public transport or Uber. They use car sharing for those few occasions when they absolutely must have a car, such as to travel out of town or to haul some stuff. Vehicle subscriptions are for people who always want to have possession of a car; these people would otherwise own or lease. Vehicle subscriptions address the pain points of car ownership (painful purchase process; hassle of paperwork and maintenance; can't switch between vehicles as needs change), but are designed with the assumption that the customer will always have possession of a vehicle. For example, vehicle subscription services assume that the customer will have a place to park the car, will pay for their own gas, etc.

Adamcarley (talk) 00:21, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification! I had been a little confused about the distinction. If I may ask, do you work for a company that provides vehicle subscription services or operates them on behalf of other companies? RA0808 ^talk_contribs 01:19, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

I see that you added a clarification. That's helpful. I don't know that there's an obvious source to back up the observations that I made in my previous comment, other than actually sourcing the math somehow. What do you think?

I work for a company that supplies software for some of the vehicle subscription providers. I don't work for any of the companies named or for any competitors to those companies. That being said, is there some sort of disclaimer that I should be adding?

Adamcarley (talk) 01:24, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

If you would rather be proactive about it, you could perhaps make a note of it on your talk page. There's no need to name the specific company, just something along the lines of "I work for a company which provides software to some vehicle subscription providers". If you have a moment, maybe read through Wikipedia's guidelines on conflicts of interest to see if you feel those might apply to you. Personally I don't think this is a conflict of interest but that's just my personal opinion.

As for the observations, have the differences between subscriptions and carsharing been discussed in any of the news articles you've cited as references? It might be good to have a brief discussion of the differences between carshare and subscriptions. Also, it might be a good idea to reach out to some related WikiProjects (groups of Wikipedians that collaborate on specific topics) to get more eyes on the article to further improve it... consider posting a message at talk pages of WikiProject Automobiles or WikiProject Transport. RA0808 ^talk_contribs 01:50, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

I'll try to take a look at those projects this weekend. The page probably should be tagged to transport, etc.

I don't think there has been an article that compares car sharing and subscription explicitly, so I'd be venturing into original research territory. I'll keep an eye out.