Combining Car Rental and Car Sharing: An Optimization-Based Perspective on Shared Vehicle Fleets

Car rental and car sharing are commonly planned and operated as separate mobility services, although both rely on the same central resource: vehicles that need to be available at the right place and time. Building on a previous aggregated analysis of combined car rental and car sharing services, this thesis considers the topic from a more operational planning perspective.
The presentation gives an accessible overview of the characteristics of both services and the practical motivation for integrating them. It introduces the planning problem behind allocating a shared vehicle fleet across different types of mobility demand and explains the basic idea of the heuristic solution approach developed in the thesis. Finally, the presentation summarizes the main findings, discusses the limitations of the approach, and gives an outlook on future research and possible developments in integrated mobility services.