The concept of car sharing is not new, but it gains momentum with every step taken towards sustainability. New realities emerge, additional challenges call for solutions, and new ways of looking at transportation become inevitable.
Beatriz Oliveira, a researcher at INESC TEC, focused part of her work on this area, seeking solutions that can bring significant progress and benefits for both users and the environment. One example is the study “Price optimization for round trip car sharing”, recently published in the European Journal of Operational Research; this work shows that it is possible to increase the sustainability of this type of service by adjusting the price of each journey. The focus is the round-trip model, which ensures that users return the car to the same location where they picked it up.
Imagine you take the same home – work route every day and you with to adopt a car sharing system to reduce both personal costs and environmental impact. Beatriz Oliveira explained that the key innovation of the study lies in the “use of a mathematical model with a very fast analytical resolution.”
In practice, this will allow companies operating these fleets to update prices according to the state of the system. The price is no longer fixed but fluctuates depending on the number of cars in use. If there are many cars available, the price decreases. When most of the fleet is in use and demand is high, prices rise.
According to Beatriz, there are currently no platforms in Porto with this pricing model, but car sharing is already widely used in countries like the United Kingdom – with London serving as the main reference city for the operations studied in the paper.
The researcher pointed out that this work enables “faster decision support” and that the advantages of this method will allow companies to adapt prices to demand and fleet status, while also helping users tailor their car usage time to their needs and budget. “For example, someone planning to use the car for just 10 minutes might, on realising that the price is lower at that moment, decide to keep it for longer and run more errands,” she explained.
“With this data, companies can also adapt their strategies and decide how many cars they want to make available for car sharing – and where.”
This approach ensures that prices remain viable for providers while addressing public needs, since “the price does not vary depending on the time of day, but according to the fleet available.”
The study “Price Optimisation for Round Trip Car Sharing” is available here.
The researcher mentioned in this news piece is associated with UP-FEUP
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