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Neighbour to neighbour car sharing: why do we do it?

A few words from Will Davies, Uber Carshare’s CEO. Discover why Uber Carshare loves car sharing! Here's a hint - saving money, the community and the environment.

Maryse Dubois

A few words from Will Davies, Uber Carshare’s CEO

Will, our CEO recently gave his "State of the Nation" address at the inaugral Uber Carshare bush dance in Bondi. The assembled dignitaries were so moved by the speech that we thought we'd share it with you.

Thank you all – our pioneers – for your enthusiastic early support for Uber Carshare’s neighbour to neighbour car sharing scheme.

We don’t own or sell any tangible assets. We just make it possible for you guys to share amongst yourselves. So, more so than most start up enterprises, we are completely in your debt. Thank you for having the courage and curiosity to try something new, and take a risk. You are amazing people.

Our mission is building community, helping the environment and saving people money. I want to expand on these themes tonight.

Let’s start with the ‘helping the environment’ part.

I know that this is a bit sombre, and I have been told that this is a topic to avoid. According to the focus groups, people find it offputting, and it gets people’s back up. But I’m going to touch on it anyway, so if you are feeling off-put, or backed-up, then my apologies in advance!

Today was a 39 degree day, one of the hottest October days on record. It’s getting hotter year on year, and scientists are more confident than ever that humans are contributing to climate change.

Huge and seemingly insurmountable obstacles need to be overcome to bring about change and our leaders have so far proved themselves to be extremely slow at making progress. But these changes don’t all need to start at the top.

Dave, Chloe and I set up Uber Carshare as our answer to answer the question “What can we do now to help reduce carbon emissions?”

Merryn and Megan have joined the team also motivated by that same question. And I know from speaking with many of you that a part of your involvement in Uber Carshare has been to take a step in this direction.

Neighbour to neighbour car sharing means that we collectively own fewer cars than the average group of people. If you haven’t considered the environmental benefits of that, here they are in brief:

Firstly, it takes a lot of energy and resources to make a car and get it to your street, so if ten people can share one car, that's a huge benefit.

Car share members also tend to drive less. We’re smarter about the way we use cars, and see them as part of a transport mix rather than our permanent leg replacements.

What’s even more exciting is that Our little Uber Carshare community is one of hundreds of thousands of groups and organisations across the world attempting to do their bit to address the climate change problem.

Now to the ‘saving people money’ part

We save money because it’s a lot cheaper for a bunch of people to contribute to the costs of a car through neighbour to neighbour car sharing than for everyone to own one car each.

There are much better things in life to spend your money on than your car. Neighbour to neighbour car sharing means that you can offset the costs of car ownership or give it up altogether – which means that you can have much more fun with your money.

And finally, ‘building community’

Through neighbour to neighbour car sharing, we’re naturally helping to create stronger connections in our local communities.

But we’ve got a problem. Our system and technology has made so efficient that you can share without even meeting! That’s why we want to organise events like this where we can get together, hang out and have fun. It’s fantastic to see you guys here tonight.

Please enjoy yourselves, and thanks again for being one of our pioneers! We grow through word of mouth, so please - tell your friends and get them involved, and have a great night!


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