Despite its evident English language origins, the term carsharing (earlier often written as two separate words, and still today occasionally hyphenated) is now the widely accepted international term. Synonyms include autodelen in Dutch, autopartage in French, bildeling in Danish, auto condivisa in Italian and bilpool in Swedish. In the United Kingdom the term “car clubs” is used, while “car sharing” is also used to refer to ride sharing.
“Carpooling” or “ride-sharing” refers to the shared use of a car for a specific journey, in particular for commuting to work, often by people who each have a car but travel together to save costs. However, there is a slight terminological hitch in the UK where the term car sharing (two words in this usage) is used for what in the U.S. is called “ride sharing”. Carsharing in the sense discussed in this article is a recent development in Britain, and while such plans are still known more known as car clubs (a term which, in the U.S., refers strictly to a club of car hobbyists) the international term carsharing is gradually gaining currency there as well.
