Booking behavior of free-floating carsharing users: Empirical analysis of mobile phone app and booking data focusing on battery electric vehicles

In recent years, the services of free-floating carsharing (FFCS) systems have gained popularity, especially in urban areas. Some FFCS operators are now including battery electric vehicles (BEVs) in their fleets. This addition is especially beneficial for cities and their inhabitants, as BEVs are locally emission free and move more quietly. However, how FFCS customers react to the new technology has not yet been empirically analyzed. By combining the app call and booking data of an FFCS operator in Munich, Germany, this study assessed the preferences of customers when booking a specific car and evaluated the attractiveness of the fleet’s BEVs. With the consideration of the spatial availability encountered when the mobile phone app was opening, the study found that the distance to the nearest available car was the most important decision criterion for customers. If a car had been available within 200 m, the probability that customers booked a car would have been twice as great compared with the case that the nearest vehicle had been 500 m away (100 m ≈ 0.06 mi). In addition, the majority of the customers booked the nearest available car. Nevertheless, certain qualities of vehicles made users walk to a car that was farther away. The study identified popular vehicle models and found that customers preferred to use the fleet’s BEVs, independent of the battery level. BEVs were used for almost the same distances as internal combustion engine vehicles and were suitable for most use cases: more than 80% of the FFCS trips covered a distance of at most 20 km (≈12.4 mi).