The assessment of the use of vehicles with different types of drive in car-sharing systems

One of the main challenges of contemporary transport policy is to reduce the share of individual means of transport in the structure of transport, i.e., to reduce the number of private cars used as the primary means of transportation. This issue is particularly important in urban areas, where congestion generates significant economic costs and poses specific risks to the environment and air quality, ultimately negatively affecting the health of residents. Over the past decades, many solutions have been developed to support the reduction of car traffic, most of which are implemented in urban areas, including short-term car rental services - car-sharing. As the popularity of such services grows, numerous scientific studies have been undertaken to analyze various social, environmental, or economic aspects related to the practical implementation of these systems. A niche area that still remains underexplored is research directly related to the vehicles that make up car-sharing fleets. Addressing this research gap, this article is dedicated to determining which vehicles, considering the type of propulsion used, are optimal for creating a car-sharing fleet based on, separately and collectively, economic, technical, and environmental criteria. To this end, an original procedure was proposed, taking into account the analysis of secondary data on car-sharing fleets in Poland, expert studies conducted among operators of these services, and mathematical analyses using multi-criteria decision support methods (point method of multi-criteria evaluation, MAJA). The study included vehicles with conventional, hybrid, and electric propulsion. Five vehicles of the same model and brand, each with a different type of propulsion, belonging to the most popular C-market segment in car-sharing systems in Poland, were considered. The analyses made it possible to identify the vehicles best suited to the needs of car-sharing in terms of technical, economic, and environmental criteria. The results indicate that under current conditions, considering all evaluation criteria simultaneously, an electric-powered vehicle is the optimal solution. When vehicles were evaluated from the perspective of one of the strategic objectives, plug-in hybrid vehicles dominated. Such vehicles proved to be the most advantageous solution, whether only economic or technical criteria were considered. Electric cars, followed by plug-in hybrid cars, are the best choice when decisions are evaluated from an environmental perspective. The proposed method serves as a decision-making guide for implementing or modernizing fleets in car-sharing systems, which can be used by car-sharing operators to organize their vehicle fleets, as well as by city authorities in selecting car-sharing service providers whose fleet meets their expectations.