OK, there is the basis of it. I think the costs are VERY resonable. Of course, they only have 20 cars because I think:
A) People do not know about it.
B) People don't really know their per km cost of operating
their own vehicle. If they had to pop $13 into the steering wheel every time they made a 1/2 hour trip in it they'd think twice. But financing the car and insurance monthly, and filling it with gas as required doesn't register the same in the mind.
A couple things I think the Co-op might benefit from:
Seeing if they can arrange with a new car dealership to have the car LOCATED ON THE CAR LOT THAT SELLS THAT BRAND, and see if they will finance replacing the car with a new model each year. Ya, on a strict business case it might not be ideal or the dealer at first glance, why provide a parking stall and new car to people who choose not to buy their own car? But maybe in PR terms it does make sense, and people move, situations change, maybe when they get to really like that Prius, and move to North Saanich, they'll buy a car at that dealership.
I think they might be able to enter into arrangements with retailers to reimburse for car-share mileage charges. ie, a customer shops at Thrifty's and spends $200 while they have the car, they get $10 back from Thrifty's, or at least Thriftys pays the co-op, and the co-op attributes it to the user's account. Because you fill in a log with your times, it can be matched with the receipt from the store, the user can submit to the car-share, the car-share validates it with the users drive log, and submits a bill to Thrifty's. A little bit of paperwork, but now the car-share person knows they can do a big shop every two weeks and Thrifty's will pay the car-ride. Again, Thrifty's looks good for the PR. Would work for lots of retailers, I think.
Maybe BC Transit can get onboard somehow. If you buy a monthly bus pass, maybe you can turn that in to the car-share every month and save some of your $15/mo. fees. Again, car-share can bill back to BC Transit.
Vancouver has 235 cars, and already has some perks:
http://www.cooperativeauto.net/perks