An innovative car sharing electric vehicle system: An Italian experience

This paper focuses on the introduction of an innovative electric vehicle car sharing system in Rome. Specifically, the system is designed for a university community (Roma Tre University), thus it is reserved for students and employees. The fleet is composed by 30 electric vehicles and 56 recharging points have been installed in several departments of the University. The service is designed as a free floating system, allowing commuting and leisure trips. The trips are not spatially limited, but the rental has to be opened and closed within a delimited area in the city. This paper analyses the starting stage of the project. The results of a RP (Revealed Preferences) and SP (Stated Preferences) survey are discussed. The survey has been filled out by a sample of 950 potential users. Important indications have been obtained on the behavioural attributes that mostly affect the electric vehicle car sharing subscriptors and service utilization. Afterwards, specific behavioural models based on random utility theory have been proposed for predicting modal switch, considering the introduction of the new service. Attributes such as the “Green Attitude”, the “Sharing Attitude” and the “Device attitude” have been analysed in terms of their impacts on the mode choice, underlining their weight and statistical significance compared to attributes as distances and travel times.