This June, will mark the 19th year since we joined Modo. Back in 2007, when the member owned co-op was known as the The Co-operative Auto Network, it was much smaller, and low-tech.
Modo’s gone from strength to strength, with more geographical coverage, better technology, and a growing fleet of electric vehicles.
Modo’s success has meant that after 20 years, and now with three drivers in the family, we’re still continuing to live “car-free”.
Every now and again there will be a spike in our monthly Modo costs, that makes us pause to consider the cost-benefit of car sharing versus owning our own car.
Cost isn’t everything and it’s only part of the reason why we car share rather than own.
But with cost in mind, I put together a chart of our monthly expenses since we started car sharing with Modo, 226 months ago.
About the Monthly Chart of Car Share Costs
In the chart, each vertical line is a single month showing the total that we were invoiced by Modo for that month.
The horizontal red line shows the running monthly average of the previous 12 months.
If you watch carefully, you’ll see a couple of months are negative. That’s because we received a credit for buying gas when there was a problem with the Modo credit card.
I should also point out that we have used other car share organisations like Evo and Car2Go and sometimes ride share with the likes of Lyft, Uber or taxi. But Modo has been our mainstay. I may update the chart to reflect all our car use expenses.
Notes on the chart
Modo’s pricing model has changed over the years, responding in part to rising inflation. Our needs have also evolved over the years. When we started we were a household of two. Now there’s four of us and, in November 2024,my son became a Modo member.
The biggest recent change in Modo’s pricing model was, in April 1, 2024, an increase to the hourly rate from $1 per hour across all classes of vehicles (e.g. from $4 to $5 hour in the basic rate or “daily drive”). The kilometre rate was simplified at the same time to $0.35 per km.
Other changes include a change in the co-op innovation fee, previously $1.50, which is applied to every booking. It went up to $3 for ICE cars, and down to $1 for EVs, on 1st January 2025.
Modo raised the price on overnight bookings on 1 February, 2026. Previously, overnight bookings were capped at three hours between 6pm and 9am (i.e. $15 for a Daily Drive vehicle). Since the beginning of last month, overnight bookings have been capped at three hours between 9pm and 7am (a difference of five hours).
Strait of Hormuz
The cost of motoring with ICE cars has blasted upwards with the war in Iran sending crude oil yoyoing around the $100 mark.
Drivers across the planet are experiencing not just pain at the pump, but state and self-enforced rationing.
This hasn’t filtered through into the costs here, although it may do further down the line.
Technical note
I compiled Modo invoices from 226 months into a csv, and using a perl script, output via ffmpeg as an mp4.