Car Sharing Service Cuts 60 Million Pounds of CO2 Last Year

Car sharing is, if you like, a simplified car rental service. One that, for all intents and purposes, is catching on, rapidly, fueling its hunger on the need for less emissions and, equally as important, the need not to pay a fortune at the gas pump.

Several independent companies currently operate car sharing services, and two mainstream manufacturers, Daimler and BMW, have either launched or will launch similar business, in an attempt to tap into this new and growing segment of the market. In BMW's case, the future car sharing service will focus on making the products from the i range popular.

Proof that this concept works, at least as far as efforts to save the environment go, comes from San Francisco and a company called City CarShare. Using data from third party studies, the company claims to have prevented 60 million pounds of CO2 from reaching the atmosphere last year.

The studies, which have been conducted by UC Berkeley, EPA and AAA, City CarShare says that its users have managed to reduce their carbon footprint in such a degree that even a huge pile of money in terms of cost of car ownership have been saved: $82 million.

"People who live in the Bay Area care about quality of life for their families and their neighbors," said Rick Hutchinson, City CarShare CEO.

"They see City CarShare as the smart choice because they know we're here for the long term and, together, we save millions of pounds of CO2 emissions while putting thousands of dollars of transportation costs back into our members' pockets."