The commercial harnessing of car sharing in France

After a mixed start, the market for short-distance car-sharing platforms is now booming and receiving substantial government support as a contribution to the ecological transition of the mobility sector. Yet the solution of a digital platform market to meet the environmental challenges of the private car is not self-evident. To understand how this alignment was achieved, I conducted a survey using semi-structured interviews (N=22), grey literature and press articles (N=698), and observation of the socio-technical characteristics of the main platforms (N=5). I analysed this material through the sociology of market. The article shows why and how the state favours the capitalist techno-market platform model over the other two models (cooperative and social) by helping to build an economy of capture. It concludes with a discussion on the tension between the state’s objectives of greening the mobility sector, and its support for capitalist platforms, whose model is likely to have rebound effects.