Like rental, but per minute. Look up car2go, although maybe they're no longer in business in the US, i. Europe they changed their brand name.
It's like those scooters you can hire and leave (almost) anywhere, the benefit with a car is, if you park it idiotically, they can check that you were the last driver and forward the parking ticket to you.
Car2Go and Reachnow both ended in the US around 2020.
There are some other carsharing services in the US in some major cities (e.g. gig car share in sf/seattle), but I would argue overall there's less carsharing now compared to 8-9 years ago. Partly the age demographics have changed, ridesharing (uber/lyft) rose in popularity, and carsharing in the us has had its share of profitability issues.
Peak carsharing in the US to me was around 2017-2018 (car2go, reachnow, limepod, maven, ...)
I think cheap uber/lyft ate their lunch originally but what sealed it was the introduction of dockless bikes & scooters.
Of course those smart cars didn't really help either. They were great for parking and stuff but damn did it feel like driving a gocart. My foot was either at full throttle or no throttle.
I think another kicker for carsharing at the time (~2020) was this forecasted revolution of driverless cars and robotaxis, which has sortof continued (waymo) but also collapsed (argo, cruise / tesla safety issues, etc. ) over the past couple years.
I liked carsharing from the stance that even if it didn't make me want to get rid of car ownership, it made me feel less inclined to invest as much into car ownership (i.e. keep an old used car with cheap insurance, use carsharing if my car needs maintenance or going on a trip where i dont want to worry about breaking down or if taking another mode of transit back.)
This line of thought kinda gets into the predicament of carsharing (and arguably rideshare/robotaxi) services owned by automotive companies - they're fairly deep in the business of selling cars much more than attempting a service business.
The kind of carsharing I use is company-run, so it's basically just rental, but billed by the minute and with parking spots scattered all over the city. I imagine they have a very expensive fleet insurance in the background.
There are also a handful of "peer-peer" carsharing systems where you let other people use your car and I have no idea how insurance would work there.
