How Field Experience is Reshaping Car-Sharing Business Models Across the U.S. Market

Abstract

Of the 94 car-sharing programs deployed in North America since 1998, more than half are defunct, a failure rate that demand modeling and European business-model typologies have not adequately explained because both research traditions treat U.S. regulatory and insurance architecture as exogenous. This article argues that field-derived operational data accumulated by U.S. operators since 2015 is forcing a revision of both the profitability assumptions and the model-selection logic that underpin existing academic analysis. Drawing on verified evidence across the profitability, consumer behavior, demand modeling, and business-model typology literatures, the article identifies three limiting assumptions shared across research clusters: that membership growth proxies revenue stability, that European fleet-scaling trajectories transfer to U.S. markets, and that maintenance cost is a fixed parameter rather than a variable responsive to contract design. Analysis of U.S. field conditions shows that profitability is achievable under a reproducible configuration of fleet scale, cost-recovery pricing, and state-level insurance negotiation, and that parking access is a precondition for model selection.