High monthly costs and parking problems are increasing the popularity of car sharing, especially in the Randstad, the densely populated western part of the Netherlands. While car sharing used to be something for idealists and counterculturalists, today also businessmen and lawyers get into a car that they don't own exclusively.
It's a simple idea. You reserve for a car for an indefinite period of time, via the phone or the Web. The car will be ready at a designated parking place. You open the doors with a user card, while your PIN code provides you with the key. An onboard computer registers your mileage. A pass issued by the rental company allows you to tank up. At the end of each month you pay for your mileage. In short, you have a car at your disposal in a simple manner, and for not too much money.
The "Witkar"
The concept of car sharing certainly isn't new. At the end of 1960s, the Amsterdam counterculture activist Luud Schimmelpenninck already experimented with the witkar ('white car', photo). This was an electric four-wheeled vehicle 
Hearing the name 'Schimmelpenninck' makes Henry Mentink smile mildly. He has been a car sharer for a long time. Mentink is the president of the Vereniging voor Gedeeld Autogebruik, an association that promotes car sharing. Previously the association was purely about idealism, but today environmentalism and profitability go together really well.
Car sharing association
Illustrating that idea is the fact that Mentink is not only the president of the car sharing association, but also the owner of Wheels4All, a company in Grootebroek in the province of Noord-Holland that provides car sharing services. Mentink confirms that commercialisation has set in:
"At the beginning of the 1990s the first small car sharing companies started in Rotterdam and Amsterdam. Present day initiatives like Greenwheels, ConnectCar en Wheels4All are successful professional organisations."
Profitability
In the garage of ConnectCar in the southeast of Amsterdam, a number of brand new silvery grey Opel Corsas are awaiting their red logos. The company has just ordered a hundred new cars, but, according to director Hemmie Kerklingh, the growing fleet doesn't automatically imply that the returns are rocketing:
"Demand is not always there, but we hold the view that we need to expand. You have to put cars out there if you want them to be used."
So ConnectCar's philosophy is "nothing ventured, nothing gained", but even if the investments pay off and the clientele keeps on growing, the margins of profit will remain limited, says Kerklingh:
"Realising profitability is really hard. The cars involve costs, and people use them for relatively short periods of time. That's a profitable situation for the customer, but not for us."
Image issue
According to Kerklingh, the professional users are very diverse: lawyers, real estate agents, people working in small and medium-sized businesses. People as different as chalk and cheese, but who are all bothered by fuel prices, high costs for leasing or buying, and finding places to park. Henry Mentink of the car sharing association claims that, as well as the practical objections, something else is going on. Cars have an image issue. Kerklingh agrees:
"People are just less interested in cars than ten or twenty years ago. The car, to many people, is no longer the sacred cow it once was."
An estimated 75,000 people participate in car sharing, 50,000 of whom are private users. 75,000 shared cars out of a total of six million cars in the Netherlands don't seem to be much, but Kerklingh has high hopes:
"The number has been growing by 35 to 45 percent for years now, so I expect the growth to continue. There are 50,000 districts and villages in the Netherlands. Once there's a shared car in every district, we will be making good progress, because than we will be able to serve a million people."
* Translation RNW (fd)
Tags: car sharing, Netherlands, Schimmelpenninck, Witkar