Kevin McLaughlin is the President and Founder of AutoShare, Toronto’s first carsharing network.
The easiest way to describe AutoShare is…
AutoShare is Toronto’s first – and favourite – carsharing network, 100% Canadian and locally-owned. We’re dedicated to providing greater personal freedom and mobility to people living in Toronto; and to reducing carbon emissions and pollution through efficiency and choice. We know that car sharing is crucial to the long term health of our urban environment and economy.
How do you compete with other carsharing companies in Toronto?
We compete by knowing our city well and being aware of each individual neighbourhood. That’s how we compete, we’re local. We’re Toronto-based. We’re also smaller, so it allows us to be more flexible and make decisions quicker.
What do you think of the trend of large corporations buying out collaborative consumption companies?
When a collaborative consumption company gets bought out by a larger corporation, sometimes they lose the innovative nature that they once had. Smaller companies are great at creating authentic and unique experiences for their customers, but if these companies are being bought out and becoming more standardized and uniform, they may lose the “magic” that they were able to create before.
How have consumers reacted to car sharing? How easy/difficult has it been to change people’s mindsets to adopt this new behaviour?
People love their cars – we depend on them. However, cars are a victim of their own success. With AutoShare, we had to prove that cars were something that people were willing to share. We found that a lot of people just seemed to get it; car sharing was a concept that just made sense to them. This is especially the case for people who live in a dense city, as it fits with their lifestyles. There seems to be a bigger shift in mindset with carpooling or ride sharing, because you lose your personal space in these instances. With carsharing, you still have your private space.
What are some other carsharing trends/companies/business models that you find interesting and/or disruptive?
Peer-to-peer car rental companies like Getaround and ride sharing platforms like Lyft are very disruptive, however not yet available here in Canada. Flight Car is also an interesting model, which lets people rent out their cars at an airport while they’re away instead of paying for airport parking. A more extreme example would be driverless cars, which Google has already begun testing. With this, there would be no need to own cars at all if they’re automatic, readily available and accessible.
What do you think about the collaborative consumption movement?
Collaborative consumption is definitely disruptive – it represents a cultural change. We’ll have to see how it evolves moving forward. It will be interesting to see if more corporations buy out these companies, and if people will still be interested once larger, bureaucratic firms take over.
The concept of the sharing economy is still quite new to most people though and not mainstream enough to be a major selling point to potential users. At the end of the day, most people don’t carshare for the environment or because it’s collaborative. People do it because it saves them time and money. There are still of course early adopters who are in it for the social or environmental reasons. Take someone who is vegetarian for example, they’ll find out about a new vegetarian restaurant on their own. The challenge is to get the non vegetarians on board.
