Number of car sharers rises by 22% in Flanders to 46,600

Over 4,600 shared cars were driving around in Flanders in 2024, 11% more than in 2023. The number of car sharers also increased by 22% last year to 46,600 drivers, according to the annual report of Way To Go, the former Autodelen.net.

The same annual report also shows shared bicycles and e-scooters accounted for 24 million rides in Belgium last year. Shared mobility continues thus to grow and gain in importance.

However, Way To Go argues that local and regional governments should structurally embed shared mobility in their mobility vision to take the next step toward a fully-fledged and reliable mobility option.

27% more shared car trips

According to Way To Go, more than 4,600 sharing cars made more than 749,000 trips last year, 27% more than in 2023. Moreover, Jeffrey Matthijs, director of the network organization, calls those figures an underestimate.

The sharing platforms Poppy and Miles do not share their figures and are thus not included in the count. However, the number of car sharers and rides is still estimated to be about a third higher.

A larger supply—Flanders currently has about a dozen providers of shared cars, with one out of four being an EV—also leads to more use and less traffic congestion, Way To Go argues. A shared car can replace up to 14 private vehicles.

In addition, in cities like Ghent and Mechelen, where car-sharing is used in combination with bicycles and public transport, car ownership is not growing. Also striking: a shared car is used on average 383 minutes per day, or more than ten times the average private car, which drives 34.5 minutes daily.

According to Way To Go, private car sharing, where you let others drive your car in exchange for a mileage allowance, is also rising. With 1,559 private cars, this category grew 6% compared to 2023.

Fewer shared cars in Belgium, but strong growth in roundtrips

However, developing a profitable system of shared cars in Belgium is generally becoming difficult. At the end of 2024, for example, there were 8,976 shared cars in Belgium, 706 fewer than a year earlier.

The Danish company GreenMobility, for example, withdrew from Belgium. Also, D’Ieteren’s typical red Poppy cars can no longer be seen on the streets of Ghent, Leuven, and Mechelen, apparently because those regional cities do not have enough critical mass to run such a fleet profitably.

In general, the supply of roundtrip shared cars, where you return the car to where your ride started, increased 20% in Belgium in 2024 compared to 2023 to 3,757 vehicles, or 41.9% of all shared cars in Belgium.

The number of free-floating shared cars, which can be parked anywhere and use public parking spaces, is not far behind with 3,660 cars, or 40.7%.

Flanders leader in the use of shared bikes, Brussels e-scooters

By the end of 2024, more than 40,000 shared vehicles were available in Belgium: 21,721 shared bicycles and 18,764 shared e-scooters. No less than 24 million trips were made with these vehicles last year. Flanders dominated bicycle use, with 76.7% of all trips, while 63.6% of the trips made by shared e-scooters took place in Brussels.

Such figures are not surprising. With 64%, the largest share of shared bikes is in Flanders. Brussels and Wallonia account for 35% and 1% of all shared bikes, respectively.

The center of gravity for shared e-scooters is Brussels, where 52% of all shared e-scooters are located, representing 16.6 trips per day per 1,000 inhabitants, although many tourists or commuters also use them.

It is also striking that users of shared bicycles in Flanders choose other types of shared bicycles than users in Brussels, a choice that is not always determined by the supply.

80% from fixed stations

In Flanders, for example, almost 80% of all rides are made using fixed stations, such as the red Velo bikes in Antwerp, which can be left at any Velo station—the account for 2.9 trips per day. However, only four out of ten Flemish shared bicycles are of this type.

In Brussels, two-thirds of all rides are by shared bicycles without fixed stations, accounting for 4.1 daily trips. These are the bikes from Bolt and Dott, among others—however, this type of bicycle accounts for less than half of the supply in the Brussels Region.

However, a study by Brussels Mobility also showed that the current Villo! service is relatively inefficient, with, among other things, 0.7 rentals/bike/day over a year, a low density of bike stations, and heavy and uncomfortable bikes.

Brussels leader in per capita shared mobility

According to Way to Go, there were 722,997 active users of shared bicycles and 1,237,280 users of shared e-scooters last year, representing almost 2 million active users.

Brussels has the highest density of shared vehicles, with 6.1 shared bikes and 7.8 shared e-scooters per 1,000 inhabitants. Flanders follows with 2.0 and 1.0 vehicles per 1,000 inhabitants, respectively, while Wallonia has a modest share with 0.1 shared bikes and 0.6 shared e-scooters per 1,000 inhabitants.

“International, the Brussels region scores better than cities such as London and Rotterdam but lags behind frontrunners such as Paris,” says Way To Go, which, for the first time, has also mapped bike and e-scooter sharing.