Car Sharing in Singapore

I am not a big fan of car sharing after signing up for a few scheme a few years ago. And the reasons are obvious.

1) First, it is the limited mileage - Most, if not all, car sharing scheme pay for your petrol but limit your mileage to like around 10km per hour or 30km per overnight. For people like me, if I want to use a car overnight, a trip from my home in the north to town and back will be more than 30km. That's excluding running other errands (and of course you would when you have a car at your disposal)

What happens after you exceed the limit, you are charged $0.40 per km. So either you just drive your car around the neighbourhood, which is kinda impossible for me, or pay an additional fold for the 'optional' mileage charge.

I give you an example.  Say a particular car sharing scheme I am enrolled in offers me overnight usage for $30 per night from 6pm to 8am and give you 30km free mileage, thereafter to be charged at $0.40 per km.

Say collection at Toa Payoh. So i drive from Toa Payoh to Tiong Bahru (12km) to pick up my wife. Then we go City hall for dinner (4 km). Then after that we go pick up something at MBS (5km) and then we head home to Woodlands (30km). Next morning, I drive from home to return the car to Toa Payoh. (15km). Total 66km. Exceed: 36km. Cost: $14.40. Total Cost: $44.40

Trust me, that's a typical night mileage and not exaggerated. When you have a car, you may want to go a few more places like our parents house, more errands and such. That's because there are some things that you will leave to do when you have a car and in the end you may even plan a trip from town to Punggol to collect something from a friend before you head home.

2) Returning at the same location -  As with all car rentals, due to logistic arrangement, for car sharing, we need to return the car back to the same location. It's fine for rental because you have at least 24 hours to run your errants and return the car. For car sharing, you have an hour or two and you have to do your stuffs and get back to your location where you took your car. Doesn't make sense right?

Although it is a norm for car rental companies and car rental companies usually have staffs to receive you when you return the car (the staffs need to check for damage as well). However, for car sharing, as most of the system is computerised when returning the car is nothing more than sending a message to the system, why can't something be done to improve on this?


Update: 27 April 2015

Read my new post on Smove car sharing, a totally new concept that redefine car sharing in Singapore.