This paper advances the understanding of peer-to-peer (P2P) carsharing within the broader context of shared mobility and its connection to the built environment in the US through a survey conducted in 2014 (n = 1,151). Eleven percent of respondents used carpooling/ridesharing more, and 19% avoided a vehicle purchase due to P2P vehicle access in urban areas. Nevertheless, P2P carsharing has the potential to operate in a range of land-use environments and could be an important strategy to further deemphasize car ownership. Additionally, as the deployment of automated vehicles (AVs) is examined, sharing of privately owned AVs could mirror current P2P carsharing dynamics in important ways.

The local structure of two skutterudite families -CeM4As12 (M = Fe, Ru, Os) and LnCu3Ru4O12 (Ln = La, Pr, and Nd) -have been studied using the Extended X-Ray Absorption Fine Structure (EXAFS) technique with a focus on the lattice vibrations about the rare earth "rattler atoms", and the extent to which these vibrations can be considered local modes, with the rattler vibrating inside a nearly rigid cage. X-ray absorption data at all the metal edges were collected over a temperature range of 4 to 300 K and analyzed using standard procedures. The pair-distances from EXAFS results agree quite well with the average structure obtained from diffraction. The cage structure is formed by the M and As atoms in CeM4As12 and by Cu, O, and Ru atoms in LnCu3Ru4O12. Although some of the bonds within the cage are quite stiff (Correlated Debye temperatures, θcD, are ∼ 500 K for CeM4As12 and above 800 K for LnCu3Ru4O12) we show the structure is not completely rigid. For the rattler atom the nearest neighbor pairs have a relatively low Einstein temperature, θE; ∼ 100-120 K for Ce-As and ∼ 130 K for Ln-O. Surprisingly, the behavior of the second neighbor pairs are quite different; for CeM4As12 the second neighbor pairs (Ce-M have a weaker bond while for LnCu3Ru4O12 the Ln-Ru second neighbor pair has a stiffer effective spring constant than the first neighbor pair. In addition, we show that the As4 or CuO4 rings are relatively rigid units and that their vibrations are anisotropic within these cubic structures, with stiff restoring forces perpendicular to the rings and much weaker restoring forces in directions parallel to the rings. Consequently vibrations of the rings may also act as "rattlers" and help suppress thermal conductivity. In general neither the rigid cage approximation nor the simple reduced mass approximation are sufficient for describing rattler behavior.

No abstract