Hourcar: Minneapolis-St. Paul nonprofit car share to shut down

[Richard Layman]

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Hourcar is a nonprofit car share organization serving Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota. Since 2005-21 years--it has been a rare non profit organization in the field that has survived

Most of the initial firms sold themselves to for profit providers around the time that they needed to raise funds for the first wholesale replacement of the original fleet of cars as they aged.

But now, faced with significant increases in repair costs, insurance, and recission of federal grants to the organization as well as to government partners led to a triple whammy--a $1.1 million deficit that the board was not able to raise funds for and cover ("HourCar calls it quits, Evie electric carshare ends Oct. 15," St. Paul Pioneer-Press). From the article:

To maintain and expand operations over the years, the car-sharing service — which allows members to book a fuel-efficient car for hourly use via an app — has relied heavily on financial support from St. Paul, Minneapolis, Xcel Energy and other public, private and philanthropic partners, as well as federal grants.

LaGrange said the board convened Tuesday night and determined that while they had made headway on a $1.1 million budget gap, some $625,000 remained to be raised to complete a $5 million budget and keep the organization afloat. With most fundraising avenues already exhausted and cities, counties and fellow nonprofits expressing alarm about their own finances, finding the extra cash seemed unlikely.

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So now it's going to shut down. From the Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal ("Hourcar, facing budget gap, will end car-sharing service"):

HourCar was launched in 2005 by Neighborhood Energy Connection (now the Center for Energy and Environment). It outlasted some early rivals, such as Car2Go (which left the market in 2016) and expanded with partners including Xcel Energy Inc.

According to a 2025 Community Impact Report, the service was used for 196,220 trips the past year. Most of the users responding to a survey in March 2026 said the used the service for entertainment reasons and for household tasks like grocery shopping. Forty-one percent said they used the service to get to medical appointments.

One of the problems with transportation demand management systems is that it's comprised of a mix of private, government and nonprofit providers. US government actors aren't prepared to step in to cover losses, even if the service is worthwhile.

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The Veo Trike ("Is the Electric Trike the Next Big Thing in Shared Micromobility?," Wired Magazine).

-- "Further updates to the Sustainable Mobility Platform Framework" (2018) [this entry needs an update compilation within the framework, like Veo trikes]

Maybe not in Minneapolis-St. Paul, but I know in DC, another problem is that car share is seen not so much as a mobility resource and as a way to reduce parking demand, but a profit center to be charged high rates for the use of public spaces. And taxes. In DC, a car share trip costs more in taxes than a trip on Uber or Lyft.

It's possible in a place like Hamburg or Berlin, where the city government is the main actor through a transit subsidiary, that agencies there could step in if there are problems, seeing the value of continuing the service. But it's not guaranteed.

Similar problems have come up with bike share, as the way it usually works is that systems serving multiple cities are really set up behind the scenes, city by city, and this can lead to sub-optimal outcomes.

And the dockless systems, which pay cities a license fee. But aren't always sustainable. Also with the White's Ferry in Montgomery County, Maryland.

-- "Another example of the need to reconfigure transpo planning and operations at the metropolitan scale: Boston is seizing dockless bike share bikes, which compete with their dock-based system" (2018)
-- "New Jersey still has private transit carriers providing "public transit"" (2023)
-- "Revisiting the need for comprehensive transportation planning at the metropolitan and regional scales | For profit services, and White's Ferry, Montgomery and Loudoun Counties" (2022)

Scenario planning, like what I recommend for parks master planning in jurisdictions with parks operated by multiple agencies, is absolutely necessary in maintaining and improving the sustainable mobility platform/MobilityAsAService (MaaS). DC was and somewhat is a leader, but it's not planned (this piece needs an update too).

-- "DC is a market leader in Mobility as a Service (MaaS)" (2018)

That way they are prepared for changing circumstances. Ideally, in a system with various profits and losses, profits in one area could subsidize losses, with the aim of maintaining the ideal system.

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Berlin's integrated transit app: integrated apps as an element of brand leadership. In Berlin, they've created a mobility app that integrates transit modes provided by the transport association and non-transit modes offered by private firms ("Berlin's new transit app Jelbi connects all modes in one place," Fast Company).

The app, Jelbi ... connects services that currently each have apps of their own, making it difficult to plan a trip or buy tickets given the number of choices. “We have eight bikesharing companies in the market, alone,” says Christof Schminke, the managing director in Germany for Trafi, the tech company that built the platform for BVG, Berlin’s public transport company. “I think it’s a good sign that Berlin has all the mobility options, but for every service you need a separate app on your smartphone.”

BVG, which runs the city’s subways, trams, buses, and ferries, wanted to become a broader mobility provider for Berlin. “They also saw a competitive threat, because there are also other players, like automotive companies or the Ubers of the world, that are also starting to integrate other modes of mobility… they didn’t want to leave it to private players to [take on] this integrator role,” Schminke says. Other companies, like the startups offering bikes and scooters, saw the benefits of connecting with a public transit platform and getting more riders.

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Jelbi shifts, adds mobility hubs. Photo: IMAGO/Funke Photo Services

The thing for me, is that while transport associations need to organize as systems, I don't think it matters as much to users. They don't need an app with every possible option. Instead, they are content to have apps for the services that they regularly use, which is a small subset of the total.

But in Berlin, the transport association takes a more direct role in coordinating private services ("BVG keeps Berlin mobile – with a pleasing year-end result ," BerlinLive).