Cathie Wood, chief executive of ARK Investment Management, is amongst the developing band of investment pros expecting a important behavioural shift among the vehicle-buying public. “Thanks to web-enabled solutions such as Zipcar, Uber and Lyft, household autos are beginning to really feel like the stranded assets they are: high in expense but employed on typical only four per cent of the time in a 24-hour day,” she mentioned.The realisation of such by buyers could at some point prove costly for carmakers.
Specialist automotive consulting property AlixPartners says that every car in a auto-sharing network represents about 32 scrapped decisions to get.ARK Investment Management, meanwhile, says that a rise in automobile-sharing to five per cent of all journeys could just about halve US auto sales. At this early stage, the projections stay a little nebulous and like-for-like comparisons amongst auto sales and vehicle-share figures are particularly complicated. But it is clear a trend is gathering momentum and there seems to be no shortage of backers keen to tap the austerity zeitgeist.