A new generation of car sharing

The need to conserve fuel in the 1940s meant the proponents of car sharing pulled no punches, but despite there being 38 million empty car seats travelling around Britain every single day, the concept of pooling resources seems just as hard a sell today.

Let us suppose that on a street of 200 houses, half the dwellings have a cordless drill. Given most are used only very occasionally, 95 are surplus to requirement. Put another way, many streets are home to £10,000-worth of unused cordless drills.

What if every such street sacrificed a single parking space in favour of a shipping container stocked with a comprehensive range of good-quality tools? A single investment of £100 by each household would buy a comprehensive range of tools for all to share. And if that worked, why stop at tools? Most cars spend their time sitting in the road unused. Could not a street invest in a small fleet of vehicles comprising a wide range of options from electric bicycles, to a minibus and a van – with the cost spread across all those who wanted access?

If there is a will for this type of cooperative ownership scheme, technology promises to make it more feasible an option than ever.

In Cuba, government vehicles are obliged to pick up hitchhikers if they have free seats. Hitchhiking in Poland was legalised in 1957 and, until 1985, formalised into a rewards scheme. Booklets of coupons were sold from travel agencies and the coupon given to drivers who picked up hitchhikers. Drivers who collected coupons could exchange them for prizes.

Over the years, this most basic and impromptu type of travel share has entered the digital age, but real-time ride-sharing apps that allow users to hitch a lift at little or no notice has yet to develop mass appeal.

Hoping to change that is goCarShare, a new website that matches passengers and drivers helping them to share car journeys and both save money.

The concept is already well established in Germany and building a following in France. It's growth in Britain has been slower. It seems we are innately suspicious of it; the idea of travel sharing has become intertwined with the phenomenon of stranger danger.

goCarShare is built around Facebook, so it's possible to get a sense of their potential sharer - they may even be connected via a friend. The potential size of the car sharing pool is huge. Let's take inspiration from our neighbours in continental Europe and dive in.