ECONOMICS OF CAR-SHARING BUSINESSES IN THE U.S.
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Zaur Mamaev
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Car-sharing services have expanded rapidly across U.S. urban markets, yet the sector continues to exhibit persistent structural inefficiencies that constrain profitability and long-term viability. Despite growing user bases and increasing investment, operators routinely report fleet utilization coefficients well below theoretically achievable levels, compounded by significant unrecovered revenue arising from vehicle damage, suboptimal pricing, and inadequate cost accounting. This article examines the economic architecture of car-sharing businesses, identifies the principal sources of operational and financial inefficiency, and evaluates the quantitative dimensions of revenue leakage documented in the existing academic literature. The analysis draws on research in dynamic pricing, fleet optimization, anomaly detection, and managerial decision support to establish the theoretical basis for integrated, data-driven operational control as the most viable mechanism for addressing these inefficiencies. The article concludes that the absence of unified platforms capable of simultaneously modeling financial outcomes, detecting operational anomalies, and generating prioritized corrective directives constitutes the core institutional constraint on industry profitability.
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Authors
Zaur Mamaev
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