Like most great ideas, it???s a simple one ??? carsharing, where people get wheels when they want without the hassle of ownership.

Yet when it was first suggested, critics gave it the thumbs down, saying it would flop within a year.

Ten years later, today, those critics are eating dust: Singapore???s carsharing pioneer, NTUC Income Car Co-op, is roaring ahead. It has 186 cars in 80 locations across the island.

Membership has gone from 50 to 4,500. Not only that, the venture has turned in surpluses (cooperative-speak for profits), which it has shared with members in rebates.

And since Income???s trailblazing move, at least three other players have come onto the scene. They include CitySpeed, which belongs to transport group ComfortDelGro Corp. It has 80 cars in 36 locations shared by 2,600 members. Then there is Honda Diracc, a subsidiary of Honda Motor which uses a fleet of 82 petrol-electric hybrid Civics. This company is unique in that members do not need to book a car. Neither do they have to indicate when they will return it.

All they have to do is to find out where the nearest available car is via SMS and access it via a smartcard. They return it anytime they wish, and at any designated station they wish. Honda Diracc has more than 2,000 members.

The other sizeable player is WhizzCar, part of the Popular car rental group. It has 75 cars in 31 locations shared by 1,500 members.

In all, that adds up to 10,600 members sharing 423 cars ??? or 25 drivers to a car. That compares favourably with Switzerland, which started modern carsharing 20 years ago, and currently has 38.5 drivers to a car.

One man???s drive

NTUC Income business enterprise head Lai Meng may be the pioneer who started it all.

He first hit upon the idea more than 10 years ago when he was a shareholder in a car rental firm. Ironically, he had given up driving because of the high cost of cars.

It was the mid-1990s and a Toyota Corolla cost around $130,000, over twice its price today. Even though he could afford it, he found the capital outlay hard to stomach.

Public transport was a viable alternative for him most of the time. But several incidents made him wish he had a car to use.

Once, he took a cab to a meeting in Tuas but found himself stranded after the meeting ??? taxis were rare in Tuas.

Mr Lai, 48, recounted: ???I tried phone-booking but no cab was available. After an hour, I decided to walk out, confident that I would be able to hail one on the road.???

He was wrong. In the end, soaked in sweat, he hitched a ride from a truck driver.

Another time, he was lugging his computer to Sim Lim Square. Again, getting there was not an issue but getting back was.

???People were rushing for cabs like they were rushing for gold,??? he recalled. Those incidents affected him. ???Public transport may work for you 99 per cent of the time, but all you need is just one or two situations to make you wish you had a car,??? he said.

But such occasions still did not warrant full-time car ownership in his mind. So Mr Lai, then a partner in car rental firm Smart Automobiles, began researching carsharing on the Internet. Convinced it could work here, he approached the Land Transport Authority (LTA) for permission to start such a scheme.

The LTA did not share his confidence, but kept an open mind. Serendipitously, then Communications Minister Mah Bow Tan mooted the idea of carsharing soon afterwards. It was 1996.

NTUC took up the proposal but did not quite know where to start. The LTA remembered Mr Lai, and put him in touch with the cooperative. Mr Lai, who had sold his share in Smart Automobiles by then, joined Income.

year later, Singapore???s first carsharing plan started in the HDB estate of Toh Yi Drive in Upper Bukit Timah. There were four Mitsubishi Lancers shared by around 50 members.

And 10 years on, the critics are well and truly silenced.

The road ahead

BUT with car prices at their lowest in two decades, is carsharing still as relevant?

Mr Toshio Iwamoto, managing director of Honda ICVS Singapore which operates Honda Diracc, said: ???We still see a growing opportunity for us to increase our market share in Singapore due to rising petrol prices, fluctuations in COE prices and increased parking charges.???

He also believes Singaporeans are becoming more environment-conscious and ???beginning to recognise the benefits of carsharing???.

Mr Lai reckons carsharing is the way to go in a metropolis like Singapore.

???Even if our population does not reach (the forecast) 6.5 million, it is clear that we cannot accommodate a one-in-seven car ownership ratio,??? he said, referring to a 2010 target the Government had set in 1996.

Currently, about one in eight residents owns a car. Indeed, so positive is Mr Lai that he is now preparing to introduce fresh schemes for Income Car Co-op members.

One has to do with lowering the biggest cost of running the business: interest charges. He said one plan would call on members to pay higher fixed charges, so that they can enjoy lower usage costs.

As he puts it, no matter how well developed public transport is, ???there will always be times when only a car will do???.

And he is a man who speaks from experience.

"Public transport may work for you 99 per cent of the time, but all you need is just one or two situations to make you wish you had a car???
Mr Lai Meng, who mooted the idea of car-sharing in the mid-1990s