It has probably occurred to many of us, midway through a half-hour trudge through heavy rain that was supposed to be a 10-minute walk, that if only some kind person could leave a car by the kerbside right now, our day would be made. Out of the rain, into the comfort and warmth for the balance of the journey, and – whoosh – like magic that same car would disappear, responsibility-free, once we have reached our destination.
The thing is this exists. It cannot have escaped your notice that on the street corners of Dublin, Cork, Galway and other urban centres, there are often parked cars with curious corporate logos splashed across them, most commonly those of GoCar or Yuko. These are car sharing vehicles, cars designed for instant hire, where you simply tap the app on your phone to unlock and activate them, and rent them by the hour for short hops, as and when needed. This is car hire without trekking to and from the airport, and these car sharing services have the potential to save you both money and salve your carbon conscience if you use them right.
GoCar and Yuko (owned by Toyota) are two of the most popular car sharing services in Ireland. To use one or the other, you simply sign up in an app, and then select which car you want to use and when. In theory, you can do this on a whim – GoCar has close to 1,200 cars available around the country, and says that it is operating in every county, while Yuko has some 600 cars available. Of course, with 150,000 GoCar users currently signed up, and 30,000 for Yuko, you may face some competition at peak use times.
You can choose a free subscription where you pay per use or you can choose to pay a monthly fee to unlock discounted hourly or daily rental rates. Yuko charges a fee of €10 per hour rental or €54 per day, while GoCar starts at €9 per hour, or €50 per day for its smallest and cheapest cars, although you can pay extra for larger vehicles, or even rent vans when needed.
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So, is this actually saving you any money? Indeed, GoCar claims that there are profound savings to be made if you were to give up your own car and plump for car sharing instead. According to its figures, the average cost of owning a car is approximately €10,600 per year, once you take into account depreciation, fuel, insurance, maintenance and tax. The average private car owner drives 16,000km per year and according to the company the equivalent cost of driving that 16,000km in a GoCar is €3,600 – based on an average hourly cost of €11.25. This could lead to savings of up to €7,000 per year.
Yuko claims savings too, with a spokesperson telling Business Ireland that: “There are certainly potential savings for customers who don’t need a car every day. With Yuko Share, for example, fuel, insurance and on-street parking in Dublin city are all included, and vehicles can be booked from as little as one hour.”
Even avoiding the hassle of having to pay for on-street parking, never mind the cost saving, almost makes it worth the effort of changing to car sharing alone.
Obviously, the idea behind car sharing is an urban-centric one. It’s designed so that individuals or families who don’t fancy the idea of owning and being responsible for a car can still have the use of one for those times when nothing but a car will do – collecting an elderly relative from the airport for example or maybe collecting bulky electrical items from an out-of-town shop. If you’re a rural dweller, you can still take advantage of such services, but with a slightly different emphasis – Yuko offers Yuko Rental services, for example, which offer you longer-term rentals via Toyota dealerships, with customers taking cars for as long as 12 days on average, compared to the eight-hour rental for Yuko’s on-street services. There are business-facing options too, such as Yuko’s subscription service which can give you access to a car for up to three months and spread that access out over multiple employees.
The cost savings are, therefore, baked-in and if you have a car sharing service parked on your street, or at least easily accessible, then you can be potentially quids-in compared to owning and running your own car.
What about the carbon savings though? Do those add up? After all, most of the cars available through these car sharing schemes are petrol or hybrid-powered, with only a minority – for now – powered by electricity, so are we not just deferring the carbon cost?
Perhaps not. According to research by environmental think tank Transport & Environment, each car sharing vehicle effectively replaces somewhere between five and 15 other cars on the road, which dramatically reduces the overall carbon cost of their use.
There’s another potential benefit to car sharing, though, and it is one that is almost a psychological change. According to GoCar: “By getting rid of your car, you rely on more modes of transport eg cycling, walking, public transport and using a GoCar as and when you need it. Walking and cycling more increases your fitness and reduces carbon emissions.”
Too optimistic? Well, maybe not – according to a study carried out in 2023 and published in the scientific journal Sustainable Production and Consumption, GoCar’s claim could be right on the money. The study found that: “When car buyers give up the purchase of a vehicle and instead start car sharing there is a decrease in the overall footprint. These decreases in transport footprints are caused by reduced vehicle ownership and changes in travel behaviour such as increased use of public transport.”
The study further found that money saved from car ownership is spent in other areas, chiefly food, furniture and household goods, and on communication services. The downside, potentially, is of course that if fewer people are buying cars, then the car industry suffers as a result and that has the potential for no little catastrophe.
The European car industry employs, it is estimated, some 13 million people directly and indirectly and it is already under enormous financial pressure, be that from Trump tariffs or from Chinese competition. Companies such as Volkswagen Group are already talking about having to make massive 20 per cent spending cuts, on top of recent job losses, so an en masse move to car sharing could further upset that applecart.
The Sustainable Production and Consumption study also found that a cut in carbon emissions from a shift to car sharing isn’t automatic, saying: “Car sharing enables a decrease in carbon footprints when there is a shift from private vehicle ownership to car sharing and when car sharing is operated in a sustainable manner. But if there are shifts from active and public transport to car sharing, or if car sharing is operated in an unsustainable manner, carbon footprints increase. Changes in consumption due to car sharing cause rebound effects. Thus, car sharing is not a standalone solution; rather, in order to reach its potential emissions savings, it needs to be implemented alongside other sustainable solutions that target changes in lifestyles, that curb consumption of high-emission sectors, and that incentivise the implementation of low-emission technologies.”
In other words, as with all carbon reduction ideas, car sharing isn’t a magic bullet. If you want to reduce your personal costs, it seems like a slam dunk, but if you’re using it to reduce your carbon emissions, then you must make sure you are using it properly and responsibly.
