Frequently Asked Questions

What is Car Sharing?

Car Sharing is the ability to rent one’s auto to other individuals by utilizing a mobile app. Others can locate your car and rent it for periodic times as you allow or set via criteria in the app. Car Sharing also includes the ability to rent cars’ from B2C firms like Zipcar for short stints.

How does Car Sharing compare to Ride Sharing

Ride Sharing services like Uber and Lyft shuttle passengers around via access to a mobile app. Car Sharing allows individuals to either shuttle themselves by driving fleet cars (Zipcars) or it allows you to rent out (host) privately owned passenger vehicles or select and drive others hosted autos via a mobile app.

What are the 2 types of Car Sharing services in the marketplace today?

There are 2 types of sharing services out there: One relies on a company owned fleet of cars that are placed in various spots locally or regionally and can be reserved via online or mobile apps; think ZipCar or EnterPrise Share. The second (newer) offering is the rise of the ‘Turo’ or ‘GetAround’ Car Sharing model. This Peer 2 Peer model uses a mobile app solution for private citizens to rent their cars to other private citizens.

What is a Car Sharing Phase?

The Peer to Peer Car Sharing model breaks the rental period or ride time into various phases for the purposes of defining the coverage requirements. Typically there are three phases which are referred to in the process of the rental. Phase 1 when the Owner or User has the app on but they are not driving their car. Phase 2 is when the app is on and the Owner is driving their car to a rental drop off. And, Phase 3 is the period when the enter is actually driving the Host's car or the "rental period".

How does a Car Sharing Phase affect the insuring process?

Depending on the State you live in and a number of other factors, the actual renting of your personal car could be against state statute for coverage to be in effect on a Personal Auto Policy. The renting of your car is in effect a business use and therefore should be covered on a Business Auto Policy, again depending on the state in which you live.

How to use the Tool

When trying to analyze which Car Sharing Service offers adequate coverage, input your data on the Front Page and the Tool will return your State's mandated coverage and whether the Car Share Service insurance provisions are equal.