Tristan Skinner didn't want to sell his car when he moved overseas temporarily, and leaving it to sit idle made no sense with expenses like registration and insurance.
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So he found a way to turn his vehicle into a money-maker that paid for itself and more.
The former Melbourne man, who now lives in Canberra, rented his Hyundai i30 out through Car Next Door, a car-sharing platform that recently expanded to the ACT.
Mr Skinner is one of the first two Canberrans to list his car for hire on Car Next Door. It is available for $30 a day, and with he and his partner preferring to cycle to work, he hopes it will be rented out up to five days a week, leaving it free for him to use on weekends while still netting him $150 a week.
"It worked really well for us [in Melbourne], so when Car Next Door opened in Canberra, we were keen to give it another go," he said.
Car Next Door co-founder and chief executive Will Davies said the company aimed to break the "one person, one car" mentality by turning every car into a shared resource that could take up to 10 other cars off the road.
The former mortgage broker was motivated by a desire to reduce carbon emissions, and realised widespread car-sharing would result in fewer cars being manufactured.
"It's no good wanting to reduce carbon emissions without solving a real-world problem," Mr Davies said.
"The whole system of personal car ownership is actually incredibly stupid. We all own these assets that we pay thousands and thousands of dollars for every year and they're only used 4 per cent of the time. The other 96 per cent of the time, they're just sitting around. It doesn't make sense.
"Cars should be shared between people to get that utilisation up. We can help people save or make money on their car by getting it utilised more."
Mr Davies said car owners were free to set their own prices and dates of availability, but Car Next Door offered guidance in those areas.
He said the average car owner on the platform, which was founded in 2013 and already operated in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Newcastle and the Gold Coast, made $3500 a year. Others made up to $10,000 a year.
While many would be reluctant to allow a stranger to drive their car, Mr Davies said "borrowers" had to go through a strict vetting process before being allowed to book cars. This involved criminal, credit and driving history checks.
All vehicles were fitted with GPS trackers when first listed on the platform, making them easy to locate, and incidents like damage and theft were covered by insurance.
For Mr Skinner, the benefits of car-sharing far outweighed the risks during his experience.
"I suppose it's not for everyone," he said.
"But we're not really car people. For us, it's more a utility than a thing that we love, so I'm not worried if a little bit of damage is done to it.
"When we were in Melbourne, there was scuffed rims and stuff. The push button key eventually broke. There was a little bit of maintenance, but we weren't too precious about that.
"The benefits of the extra income and having a shared resource in the community outweigh those little maintenance things you might have to do."
Climate Change and Sustainability Minister Shane Rattenbury said transport was expected to create more than 60 per cent of the ACT's emissions by 2020, with private car use accounting for most of the emissions.
"We are strongly committed to reducing greenhouse gases by encouraging active travel, providing high-quality, low emissions public transport options and transitioning to zero emissions vehicles," he said.
Mr Rattenbury said car sharing schemes should strongly encourage the use of zero emissions vehicles because the more kilometres they travelled, the more savings were made.
