CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background

Car-sharing is a car-rental model where users rent cars for a short period of

time, usually per hours. Car-sharing is a part of the larger trend of modern mobility

strategy. The main difference with traditional car-rental model is that the owner of the

cars are usually individuals, and independent from the organizer of the car-sharing

service. Car-sharing also emphasizes on self-servicing, whether on reservation,

pickup, or return stage of the sharing.

The first known instance of the concept of car-sharing is coming from Zurich,

Germany in 1948. However, it is not until late 1970s when official, large-scale

experiment on car-sharing is performed. The experiment is done on Suffolk, United

Kingdom, where an office is set up to connect car drivers that are interested to share

their passenger sets. The experiment’s method is to let car-drivers share their car seats

to other people, instead of sharing cars to different drivers. This method of car-sharing

will soon turn into real-time ridesharing.

Through the 1980s, car-sharing services continue to grow slowly in Europe as

non-profit systems, with smaller level of growth in Canada and USA. However, in late

2000s, existing car rental providers launched their own car-sharing services,

prompting an explosive growth of users of car-sharing services in the USA. Similar

level of growth is also experienced on densely-populated cities, such as Tokyo,

Beijing, and Moscow [1].

The combination of increased density of population on urban cities and

environmental concerns over emissions from large volume of cars, makes car-sharing

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an attractive proposition for commuters. On a report published by Deloitte in 2017,

several countries in Europe are notable for high car-sharing user count, reaching 1.2

million users in Germany, 1 million users in France, and 500 thousand users in Italy.

Germany’s success of car-sharing is particularly notable, as the users are served with

merely 16 thousand cars from various providers. According to the same report, it is

estimated that Europe would have 15 millions of car-sharing users by 2020 [2].

Car-sharing also enjoys popularity in Russia, Moscow in particular.

Combination of expensive parking costs and high level of traffic jams makes a

compelling case of switch to car-sharing services. As of 2018, there are 16 thousands

of cars serving various car-sharing operator on Moscow, which serves 23 million rides

throughout the year.

In Asia-Pacific nations, it is projected that car-sharing providers would have

11-25% of market penetration on Indonesia, and other South East Asian countries by

2030 [3]. This represents a significant shift in car ownership model in Asia.

The thesis objective is to offer a solution to the car rental industry by creating

a car-share application that is both user-friendly to the customers, and at the same time

can be easily extensible and manageable by the management of the company based on

Indonesia.

1.2 Scope

The project’s scope is described in this section. First, the solution would be

built as a web application running on a server, accessible through web browsers on a

desktop or laptop. The project would be capable of a full booking process for a car

from choosing a car to use all the way to payment. The project would also have a

different set of functionalities for administrative tasks.

Payment methods supported by this solution would include credit card

payment. The project would only support booking a car, as specified on the

background, and the project would only support booking a car from pre-determined

locations by the administrators.

The project would also be limited to the main application to perform bookings,

whereas automatic vehicle returns and key-sharing mechanism would not be part of

this project, and mocked out with a manual return functionality.

This application was initially author’s final project at RMIT University and

was made originally by a team of five. Author was in charge of doing the client side

development. The overall web application could be improved that is why author

decided to add more features like payment which was not on the initial project, made

the project Indonesian based, and change some of the function on the server side

development. The detail of the functionalities will be described in Chapter 4.

1.3 Aims and Benefits

This project aims to create a web-based car-sharing booking platform that can

help customers to easily book cars from the car-sharing provider company, and also

help employees to easily manage their cars and customers’ accounts. As it is a fully

cloud-based solution, every data that are sent to the system, such as booking details,

are backed-up easily and can be restored if there is any issues or emergencies.

The project was expected to provide the following benefits:

• To provide a streamlined car-sharing experience for customers

• To avoid data losses, as every data that is on the system is on the cloud and can

be backed-up automatically
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• To provide better accountability to car-sharing company employees and

managers, as each and every booking will go through the system.

• To reduce costs, as modern system is more maintainable and should cost less

to host.

1.4 Structure

This thesis followed the following structure:

Chapter 1– Introduction

This chapter described the background of the current state of car-sharing industry.

Later in this chapter, the scope of the project is described, in order to solve the problem

that appeared in this project.

Chapter 2 – Theoretical Foundation

This chapter described the theoretical foundation of car sharing application and

methods of developing the application.

Chapter 3 – Problem Analysis

This chapter addressed the problems in car-rental industry and the proposed solution

for them, and also discussed the existing solutions in Indonesia and other countries.

Chapter 4 – Solution Design

This chapter explained the details of the proposed solution from previous chapter.

There would be a Use Case Diagram to pointed out the functionalities of the

application, system flowcharts to explain the flow of each functionality, and entity

relationship diagram (ERD) to explain the technical structure and the user interface for

the visual of the proposed solution.

Chapter 5 – System Implementation

This chapter described the implementation details, such as the requirement of the

system, in order for the application to work and the UAT scenario along with the

results.

Chapter 6 – Discussion

This chapter elaborated on the process of making this application. This chapter also

described what went right, what went wrong, and any constraint that had to be set to

ensure the completion of the project.

Chapter 7 – Conclusion and Recommendation.

This chapter consisted of general conclusion and recommendations from the project.