Business models and tariff simulation in car-sharing services

The paper considers an important new and growing business in sustainable transportation, car sharing services. This is, to our knowledge, the first comprehensive analysis of car-sharing services from the business model point of view. Specifically, we apply and introduce a standard and reproducible way to compare the business models of car-sharing companies. Our analysis results show that a crucial issue in defining car-sharing services is the creation of customized tariff plans. Thus, as a second contribution of our paper, we introduce a specific solution based on Monte Carlo simulation. This tool simulates the existing price and tariff policies or the introduction of new ones for different profiles of car-sharing users, according to different mobility needs and the traffic congestion of the urban area. As an example, we use our methodology to provide an in-depth description of the situation in the city of Turin, Italy.