The Revolutionary Zipcar

Zipcar was ahead of its time. Everyone's familiar with the concept--Zipcar membership allows you to reserve and essentially share a neighborhood car for an hourly or daily price. Smart and sustainable each Zipcar takes 15-20 personally-owned vehicles of the road. When you multiply that by 5000 it yields a big number. In San Francisco (of course!)

 Zipcar includes a plug-in electric hybrid in its fleet. The company was founded in 1999 by a 42-year old mother of three, Robin Chase. She'd just learned about the concept of car sharing from a friend who'd traveled to Berlin. As the March 5th New York Times Magazine feature notes Chase began in 1999 but seemed to have 2009 in mind. Her "savviest move was to tap into her constituency’s desire for an old-fashioned sense of community." We urbanites long for that.