shared car groups
how to setup a shared car group
- do the agendas of the participants match; if everyone expects to need the shared car on Saturday morning you have a problem
- the number of kilometers that you expect to drive as a group per year; thoroughly analyze your current annual kilometers in advance
- what do you expect from the shared car in terms of performance and presentation
- so, what costs are you willing to accept per kilometer
- do you also want to pay per unit of time or only per kilometer
- are you actually willing to be a shareholder; a shared car is not a rental car
- how do you deal with damage or with a disappointing total of kilometers for the shared car
- will 1 shared car be sufficient for the group or would you prefer 2 or more cars
how does Iris #1 intend to make electric driving possible?
Shared car group Iris # 1 started car-sharing in the summer of 2018 with the price set at € 0.35/km. They had calculated that electric driving is feasible at that price. After a year of car sharing, with an old-fashioned combustion engine, it became clear how many kilometers per year they drive as a group, how lengthy the trips are, how many trips per day and therefore what range (and battery) is the logical choice.
Financing with a group of fairly different individuals is quite possible if you lease a car or pay for it with a loan. The latter was chosen, but not a loan from the bank but a loan from the group itself: everyone puts money in and receives interest on it. After the agreed term (7 years) everyone has received his / her share in the loan with interest. If you choose that interest somewhere between the savings interest that you would have received at the bank and what the loan would have cost at the bank, then you keep financing costs for the group on the low side and the participants have a nice additional benefit. If you drive a car, you will drive cheaply, if you don’t drive, your money will pay: Pay as you go, save when you park!
A second-hand electric car with charging station costs between € 16,500 and € 20,000 and also has € 2,600 up to € 2,750 in annual operating costs. Depending on the chosen car and the number of kilometers you drive as a group, the costs are between € 0.30/km and € 0.35/km. The original assumption of shared car group Iris # 1 is therefore correct. And even: if there are no major costs after the payment period, the kilometer price will go down by 40 to 50%!
organization of Iris Elektrick
how did Iris Elektrick get its name?
The first part of the name is easy to understand: our initiative originated in the Iris neighbourhood. Should it also be limited to this? No, but there are no plans to make it bigger. But if, for some reason, the initiative goes beyond the neighbourhood, we think that’s fine.
The second part of the name needs more explanation. The initiative focuses on car sharing and that does not necessarily lead to electric driving. But electric driving does have the future and is strongly promoted by the government, both nationally and locally. And electric driving is an important element in the energy transition. In addition, it provides a cleaner living environment, which makes it a dream scenario for us.
More practical: we wanted dedicated parking places for our shared cars and were dependent on the municipality for this. By linking our initiative to electric driving, we hoped for cooperation. We succeeded: we can now rent shared car parks from the municipality. The trick to connect car sharing to electrification has worked: “elektrick”.
In the merger of the two: “Iris Elektrick”.
when did Iris Elektrick start?
The idea arose during a discussion on paid parking in De Blokhut (autumn 2017): paid parking is slowly coming our way but is only a solution for the parking problem during the day. In the evening and at night we already have a parking problem.
Discussions about a shared-car group took place in the spring of 2018 and led to a first active shared-car group from 1 August 2018.
At the same time, negotiations were started with the municipality on shared-car parks equiped with private charging stations. The name Iris Elektrick was then used for the first time in an official setting.
So the best answer is: Iris Elektrick started in August 2018.
why starting a new organization?
We initially searched for existing car sharing organizations to join. But all of them were too expensive to our opinion. We also looked at products for sharing shared cars and we find these generally also too expensive.
It seems that the market for shared (electric) cars is primarily a market for lease cars. And that is not in line with the average car driver in the Iris neighbourhood.
With Iris Elektrick we focus on sharing used cars. So we are not reinventing the wheel. We are looking for a new wheel, and that includes a new organization.
purpose of Iris Elektrick
how far do the ambitions of Iris Elektrick go?
Iris Elektrick started off with the car sharing issue because the car park density is an acute problem for the neighbourhood: too many cars and too few parking places.
The solution lies in jointly solving a problem where this usually is approached individually. The togetherness provides for a better solution: car sharing makes a more expensive and an environment friendly car suddenly accessible.
And there are more problems that are more easily solved if you tackle them jointly: making houses climate-proof, making houses all-electric, neighbourhood heat network, …
At this moment, we focus on getting car sharing going in the Iris neighbourhood. But we will not avoid further reaching ambitions in the future.
why second-hand cars?
We see all kinds of car drivers in the Iris neighbourhood. Of all these types, the second-hand car driver is in the majority. If we want to make car sharing in the Iris neighbourhood a success, we have to focus on this drivertype first.
And if you take the mentality of the second-hand car driver as a guideline, a second-hand car is not enough. Then the electricity that is purchased will also have to be as cheap as possible. And no matter how nice the Allego charging stations are: they deliver electricity that is 40% more expensive than electricity from a private electricity connection. So we want our own charging station that supplies electricity at a private rate.