Sharing is CARing

Inauguration of the car sharing parking lot in March 2011 with the founding members.

Nowadays, the car sharing concept is present in every major city – and rightly so. But in the 90s things looked completely different. However, the Hotel Luise was already a pioneer in car sharing in Erlangen at that time. As early as 1993, we took part in the “ Stattauto ” car sharing project. Members were able to reserve cars through our reception. A car was always parked in front of our hotel ready to leave.

Klaus Förtsch in the hotel’s first electric car “City-EL” with Gudrun Förtsch behind the new car sharing car.

Car sharing is now represented in 855 cities and municipalities and is used by around 2.9 million people in Germany. The entire sharing fleet now includes a good 26,000 vehicles in Germany.


The use of car sharing is one of many good measures to reduce CO2 emissions: Thanks to the “sharing economy”, a car is used more efficiently and does not sit idle most of the time, like private cars. In addition to the emissions from driving, the production of a car generates a large amount of CO2. The efficient use of cars is a directly noticeable advantage for us: one car sharing car replaces up to 20 private cars and thus significantly reduces the volume of traffic in cities. That’s why car sharing in Erlangen has been very important to us for a long time!


Even today, our guests can still rent the car sharing car through reception, as our caretakers do if a car is ever needed. Our next goal: An e-sharing car at our location.