By Raisa Ibragimova/TASS
The first car sharing network using Russian cars will be launched in Moscow in December, the car sharing operator Carousel said in a press release on Thursday.
Car sharing is a model of car rental where people rent cars for short periods of time, often by the hour.
The first users will receive an hour of rent as a gift and will be able to ride on merry-go-round for free,” the company’s advertisement says. (In Russian the name of the car sharing service Carousel means “merry-go-round” – TASS).
These cars are equipped with automatic transmission, air bags, air conditioning, seat heaters, audio system, according to the statement.
“Now most car sharing networks use cheap Korean or Chinese cars.
We buy domestic Lada Granta in the Comfort package with an automatic box, air conditioning, electric power steering”, Ivan Serebrennikov, founder of the Carousel service said as quoted by the press service.
Currently, Moscow has five car sharing operators: YouDrive, Delimobile, Anytime, Car5 and BelkaCar. Their total fleet is 2,650 cars.
According to the city authorities, each of these cars makes eight trips daily on average. More than 600,000 people are registered in the system.
The estimated capacity of the Moscow market of car sharing is 10,000-15,000 cars.