Scaling Up the Carsharing Community
Lineup of the evie vehicles outside

In an interdisciplinary, multi-institution team, ISyE Assistant Professor Martín Zubeldía is collaborating with professors from the University of Michigan, as well as the Minneapolis-based carsharing company HOURCAR. The team, led by University of Michigan Professor (and previous ISyE Department Head) Dr. Saif Benjaafar, also includes Dr. Elisabeth Gerber and Dr. Yafeng Yin to improve the EV Spot Network for HOURCAR.

According to the company’s website, HOURCAR is a Twin Cities-based non-profit organization that “connects people to their communities with convenient, equitable, and sustainable multimodal transportation,” and with its EV Spot Network, HOURCAR provides “an all-electric, one-way, free-floating carshare service with over 170 shared vehicles making the air cleaner, the community closer, and the future even brighter.”

Martin Zubeldia

The team’s project, “Data-Driven Analytics for Scaling Up Community Carshare: Bringing Affordable, Reliable, and Clean Carshare to More People”, focuses on HOURCAR’s estimated growth and its impact on 5 fundamental questions:

  • What drives the demand for community carshare?

  • How should a community carshare go about balancing the needs for efficiency, access, and affordability?

  • What are the features of incentives that are effective in inducing greater carshare usage and mitigating the spatial and temporal mismatch between vehicle supply and demand?

  • Can community carsharing be effective in extending the reach of public transit?

  • What tradeoffs should be considered in making investments in fleet size versus charging infrastructure?

With plans to significantly grow over the next three years, HOURCAR is preparing for the road ahead.

“With the company's growth, Evies have an added challenge that they need to be charged and charging takes time. That brings extra logistics and infrastructure. We are helping them with developing statistical tools to better understand where the demand is, and where they should expand,” Zubeldía explains.

Together with Dr. Benjaafar, Zubeldía is leading modeling and data analysis for the project. With the assistance of ISyE PhD student Yishun Luo, the team is creating software tools that better model demand estimation based on real data and current policy considerations provided by HOURCAR.

“These tools will help the company better determine where demand is, analyze loss of revenue, and provide feedback on where to expand, and how and when to move cars via incentive schemes. We are being very specific with variables, as well - geographical area and event considerations, as well as the impacts of different days and times.”

Though the team has been collaborating on this project since 2023, it is the recipient of the 2025 National Science Foundation (NSF) CIVIC Innovation Challenge grant, which is awarded to projects that focus on innovative research and practical applications that directly impact and prioritize community and civil engagement.

With the growing interest in carsharing as a form of transportation, the team believes there will be a positive impact on the current HOURCAR system as it prepares for significant growth. If successful, the outcomes of the project will prove to be cost-effective and extend the reach of public transportation, which greatly impacts users and the Minneapolis/St. Paul community. It also has the potential to serve as a blueprint for other cities that are looking to build stronger connections between resources, services, and the needs of their communities.

Categories:

Share