You know the collaborative consumption trend is taking off when it starts infiltrating business practices. The good news is, it is. Increasingly, forward-thinking companies are considering ways to share resources, such as turning to car-sharing services for company cars rather than owning their own fleet.
WeGo, a car-share startup based in the Netherlands, recently launched a business option that does just that. Instead of companies investing in their own vehicles, employees have access to WeGo cars at anytime. Employees can unlock the cars with the WeGo app and a manager’s permission.
Switching to car-sharing can be just as good for business as it is for Mother Earth. It cuts costs not only because you don’t have to purchase or lease the cars, but also because it takes fewer vehicles to meet company needs when the resources are shared.
It’ll be interesting to see if the idea takes hold with popular car-share startups in the U.S., like Lyft and RideShare. Already, ZipCar has a special membership option for businesses, and so do some car rental companies. Enterprise’s car-share program can be either an option to totally replace your company fleet, or to just place a few rental cars near the office. According to the Enterprise website, opting to share company cars can reduce the carbon footprint of a business as much as 42 percent, because it cuts the fleet size down from 40 to 26 vehicles.
If more rental companies and car-sharing upstarts follow suit, the future will certainly look bright, both for businesses and the environment.
Image via (cc) flickr user Nemo’s great uncle
