{"id":379894,"date":"2011-04-13T19:55:05","date_gmt":"2011-04-13T19:55:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ghanamma.net\/2011\/04\/13\/what-zipcars-ipo-means-for-car-sharing\/"},"modified":"2011-04-13T19:55:05","modified_gmt":"2011-04-13T19:55:05","slug":"what-zipcars-ipo-means-for-car-sharing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/04\/13\/what-zipcars-ipo-means-for-car-sharing\/","title":{"rendered":"What Zipcar&#8217;s IPO means for car-sharing"},"content":{"rendered":"<div readability=\"107.29522317933\">\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/fortunewallstreet.files.wordpress.com\/2011\/04\/photo_closeup.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-13904\" title=\"photo_closeup\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ghanamma.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/a339f1b6oto_closeup.jpg.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"387\" height=\"257\" \/><\/a>Car-sharing company ZipCar is expected to hit the public markets later this week, after some <a href=\"http:\/\/finance.fortune.cnn.com\/2010\/12\/16\/is-zipcars-ipo-on-the-rocks\/\">fits and starts<\/a> caused by anti-trust issues in Britain. It would have an initial market cap of approximately $618 million, were it to price its IPO at the high end of its proposed $14-$16 per share range.<\/p>\n<p>To get a better sense of what this listing could mean for the burgeoning car-sharing market, I spent some time on the phone with Shelby Clark, founding CEO of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.relayrides.com\">RelayRides<\/a>, a Google Ventures-backed company that\u00a0lets users &#8220;borrow&#8221; their neighbors&#8217; car (ZipCar owns its own fleet).<\/p>\n<p><strong>Fortune: If ZipCar successfully prices its IPO, what does that mean for the car-sharing market?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Clark: <\/strong>I think it&#8217;s a really great sign. ZipCar has done a fantastic job of taking car-sharing from a niche idea for environmental hippies and turned it into a mainstream lifestyle choice\u2026<\/p>\n<p>Assuming the IPO is successful, then it means people realize that car-sharing not only is fantastic from an environmental and community perspective, but also from an economic and business perspective. We&#8217;re really rooting for them, because we see them as more of a complement than a competitor. Even in its most successful cities, ZipCar only has between 5% and 10% penetration among licensed drivers. I could imagine up to 40% or 50% of drivers adopting car-sharing, but only if the market continues to mature.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Does this mean car-sharing begins to be thought of as a legitimate rival to car rental?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Well, it definitely means car-sharing is up-and-coming and will have a seat at the table. But I think you need to realize that there is a very big difference between the two. I saw an analyst report calling ZipCar an hourly car rental service, but it&#8217;s not. Car rental is about unusual circumstances, not about being your daily form of transportation. It&#8217;s an exception to the rule.<\/p>\n<p>Car-sharing, on the other hand, is meant to be an alternative to car ownership \u2013 a way to live without a car, or perhaps for a family to live with one car instead of with two. For trips to the grocery store or IKEA or maybe for a weekend getaway. That&#8217;s a major difference, not only in how you market your service but also in the people who will want to use it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>But some of the big rental companies have tried getting into car-sharing, and there even had been some speculation that ZipCar could be an acquisition target. Are you surprised that someone hasn&#8217;t snapped them up prior to the IPO?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>No. I think car rental companies have gotten involved in car-sharing because they see something changing and want to be in a position to understand what&#8217;s going on. But if you look at the scale of operations, some of these companies buy themselves a million cars per year. I don&#8217;t think they&#8217;d even know what to do with something as small as ZipCar, which only has around 8,500 cars.<\/p>\n<p><strong>So could there be a symbiotic relationship?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Hopefully. It&#8217;s also important to realize that it&#8217;s not just car rental companies that have some interest in car-sharing, but auto OEMs do as well. Daimler has a program in Austin, and BMW just launched one in Germany. There&#8217;s some action in Asia from an OEM.\u00a0Bill Ford gave a great TED talk recently, talking about the future of Ford and how the auto industry isn&#8217;t globally scalable, particularly from an environmental or infrastructure standpoint when you think of the hundreds of millions of new vehicles that could be required in China and India. I think that&#8217;s why Ford and BRW have rebranded themselves from car companies to mobility companies.<\/p>\n<p>Toyota also recently have away 100 Prius plug-ins to car-sharing companies, and the biggest reason was to get feedback. Think of how valuable it is for them to have thousands of people use their cars. Or to be top-of-mind if someone drops out of the car-sharing program and looks to buy a car of their own.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><span><\/span><span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ghanamma.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/a339f1b6oto_closeup.jpg-150x150.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>See the article here:<br \/>\n<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/rss.cnn.com\/~r\/rss\/money_topstories\/~3\/IP0DBn2QuaI\/\" title=\"What Zipcar's IPO means for car-sharing\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">What Zipcar&#8217;s IPO means for car-sharing<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p> Car-sharing company ZipCar is expected to hit the public markets later this week, after some fits and starts caused by anti-trust issues in Britain. It would have an initial market cap of approximately $618 million, were it to price its IPO at the high end of its proposed $14-$16 per share range. To get a better sense of what this listing could mean for the burgeoning car-sharing market, I spent some time on the phone with Shelby Clark, founding CEO of RelayRides , a Google Ventures-backed company that\u00a0lets users &#8220;borrow&#8221; their neighbors&#8217; car (ZipCar owns its own fleet)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-379894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>What Zipcar&#039;s IPO means for car-sharing - Ghanamma.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/04\/13\/what-zipcars-ipo-means-for-car-sharing\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"What Zipcar&#039;s IPO means for car-sharing - Ghanamma.com\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"Car-sharing company ZipCar is expected to hit the public markets later this week, after some fits and starts caused by anti-trust issues in Britain. It would have an initial market cap of approximately $618 million, were it to price its IPO at the high end of its proposed $14-$16 per share range. To get a better sense of what this listing could mean for the burgeoning car-sharing market, I spent some time on the phone with Shelby Clark, founding CEO of RelayRides , a Google Ventures-backed company that\u00a0lets users &quot;borrow&quot; their neighbors&#039; car (ZipCar owns its own fleet)\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:image\" content=\"http:\/\/www.ghanamma.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/a339f1b6oto_closeup.jpg.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@ghanamma\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@ghanamma\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/04\/13\/what-zipcars-ipo-means-for-car-sharing\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/04\/13\/what-zipcars-ipo-means-for-car-sharing\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"\",\"@id\":\"\"},\"headline\":\"What Zipcar&#8217;s IPO means for car-sharing\",\"datePublished\":\"2011-04-13T19:55:05+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/04\/13\/what-zipcars-ipo-means-for-car-sharing\/\"},\"wordCount\":690,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/04\/13\/what-zipcars-ipo-means-for-car-sharing\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"http:\/\/www.ghanamma.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/a339f1b6oto_closeup.jpg.jpg\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/04\/13\/what-zipcars-ipo-means-for-car-sharing\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/04\/13\/what-zipcars-ipo-means-for-car-sharing\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/04\/13\/what-zipcars-ipo-means-for-car-sharing\/\",\"name\":\"What Zipcar's IPO means for car-sharing - Ghanamma.com\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/04\/13\/what-zipcars-ipo-means-for-car-sharing\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/04\/13\/what-zipcars-ipo-means-for-car-sharing\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"http:\/\/www.ghanamma.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/a339f1b6oto_closeup.jpg.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2011-04-13T19:55:05+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/04\/13\/what-zipcars-ipo-means-for-car-sharing\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/04\/13\/what-zipcars-ipo-means-for-car-sharing\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/www.ghanamma.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/a339f1b6oto_closeup.jpg.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"http:\/\/www.ghanamma.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/a339f1b6oto_closeup.jpg.jpg\"},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/\",\"name\":\"Ghanamma.com\",\"description\":\"News In Ghana - Latest Ghana News Headlines\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"What Zipcar's IPO means for car-sharing - Ghanamma.com","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/04\/13\/what-zipcars-ipo-means-for-car-sharing\/","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_title":"What Zipcar's IPO means for car-sharing - Ghanamma.com","twitter_description":"Car-sharing company ZipCar is expected to hit the public markets later this week, after some fits and starts caused by anti-trust issues in Britain. 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