“The average use of a car is 5%,” explains Alexandre Jouaville. “This means that 95% of the time, it is parked, it serves no purpose while being a huge and costly object that requires a lot of infrastructure. This first absurdity was the starting point for all car-sharing projects.”
This observation is shared by around sixty residents of Toulouse who, in 2008, created an association that quickly became a cooperative of collective interest, Mobilib, to invest in the purchase of about ten cars. The cooperative, which runs the Citiz project in Occitanie, thus belongs to its employees, clients, partners, but also to the territory, the local authorities, and all the stakeholders who will participate in governance and decide together on strategic directions.
Since its creation 16 years ago, the cooperative has grown and now has over 250 cars shared by nearly 4,300 people in Occitanie. There are 2,700 cars in France and more than 100,000 users.
"The idea of car-sharing is to ask ourselves, yes, my trips are necessary, but do they require the ownership, the privatization of a vehicle?,” questions Alexandre Jouaville. “Wouldn't sharing cars be more desirable? It takes a lot of energy to transform resources into cars, then they need to be transported. And since there are 40 million in France, we need parking spaces everywhere, while we could do something else with our streets and cities.”
Today, with Citiz, it’s about rethinking daily travel, commuting, shopping, taking children to school or activities, and for example, investing in an electric bike or a public transport subscription with what we save when we no longer own a car.
Because the issue of purchasing power is also at the heart of car-sharing. A car does not only cost its purchase price. It requires paying for insurance, technical inspections, repairs, maintenance, and ensuring parking.
"It is, depending on the years and studies, the first or second budget for families, alongside housing, and hardly anyone realizes it. Because it seems mandatory anyway, we think we cannot live without a car.”
And the other social aspect is that there is a part of the population in France today who rely on public transport, walking, or cycling every day, but not by choice. Because they cannot afford the car budget, which restricts their ability to move around.
"And we can give them this possibility, since we will not impose owning a car year-round to enjoy a weekend. Instead of having a global annual budget, we will have a budget per trip,” explains Alexandre Jouaville.
"Finally, there is also the societal impact, meaning that our cars are shared objects. Our cooperative is shared, non-profit. So we try to maintain a spirit of community, respect for one another, and sharing, in a period of our country's history that really needs it,” concludes Alexandre Jouaville.
