Car-sharing clubs can curb choking air and clogged streets
- Source: Global Times
- [21:45 May 13 2010]
- Comments
Illustration: Liu Rui
By Jiao Kun
China is witnessing an era of car mania, as it has become the biggest auto market in the world.
The best example is the just-finished Auto China 2010 show in Beijing. Nearly 800,000 people visited the show, making it the biggest auto event in China. But lots of these visitors probably need to think twice as to whether it's really a good choice to buy a car.
In China's neighbor Japan, the same car mania is now fading. After Japan's economic boom in the 1970s, owning a decent car was considered a sign of wealth and status, just as it is in China now. However, today in Japan car sales are shrinking every year, and young people are losing interest in having a car.
The reason is simple: It is often a waste of money to keep a car, especially for people living in cities. The owner needs to pay taxes, buy insurance and spend money on maintenance. It also costs money to park and refuel.
A survey shows that in Japan's big cities, private cars are only used for a few hours on average each month, because the country has the most developed public transportation system in the world. The abovementioned expenses, in this circumstance, thus appear a heavy burden.
But there's a new way for Japanese people to use cars - joining in a car-sharing club. Car-sharing clubs first emerged in Switzerland. The new trend then spread to the US, and is now thriving in Japan.
By becoming a member of such a club, one can borrow a car anytime and pay only for the time occupying it.
All the taxes, insurance and maintenance expenses are taken care of by the club. Right now there are already more than 20 companies running car-sharing clubs in Japan, and the future of this business looks bright.
This way of using cars is much more suitable for Chinese people. It is true that China's auto market is growing fast, thanks to so many ordinary people enthusiastic to buy their first cars.
But for the government, a huge number of private cars many pose social problems. The roads in big cities are already carrying too many cars, and air pollution has been severely worsened as a result.
In fact, cities like Shanghai have long been adopting policies to restrain the growth of cars, and have been trying to improve its public transportation system. If this is the right choice for most Chinese cities, what's taking place in Japan will undoubtedly happen in China in the near future. Instead of buying a car, more people will prefer sharing one.
A big advantage of car-sharing clubs is that they can help make clean cars popular. Some types of hybrid car and electric car have already been put into the market, but none of them have yet been successful.
Prices of electric cars are often double that of traditional ones, and they can only run for a short distance. It also costs a great amount of money to build charging stations and other necessary infrastructures.
Hybrid cars are a little bit cheaper, but in China, even the most successful hybrid car in the world, Toyota's Prius, shows no sign of taking off. Without subsidies from the government, it often takes more than 20 years to recoup the cost of the car through gas savings, which makes them less possible to be widely accepted.
It is difficult for the government to subsidize each purchaser of clean cars. But when it comes to car-sharing clubs, subsidies are possible. For the government, car-sharing clubs would be the best way to cut the number of cars, as well as the carbon emission from each car on average.
However, some problems will also loom when this business is introduced into China. It must be run on a large scale from the beginning to produce profits, which means it may need initial financial support from the government. It also calls for laws and regulations on this market.
But the government should see its bright future, and make fostering this new business a part of its public policy.
The author is a scholar living in Japan. forum@globaltimes.com.cn
