NEW DELHI: Maruti Suzuki chairman RC Bhargava has urged the government to consider offering incentives to promote shared mobility over individual ownership of cars, saying that everyone including the automakers would benefit from such an approach.Shared mobility improves utilisation of vehicles as well as reducing congestion, parking problems and cost of transportation, Bhargava said at the sidelines of an ETAuto event. “Today, laws, especially, state government laws, are not pro-shared mobility. That’s the problem. I would like there to be some uniformity of good laws, which, in fact, give incentives for shared mobility over individual mobility.”One car under shared mobility does the work of five personal cars, reducing congestion, he said. Increased use of shared mobility does not reduce fuel consumption as utilisation level rises, but congestion, parking problems and cost of mobility will become much less. To reduce dependency on oil, he wants the government to promote usage of alternate energy sources such as biofuels and compressed natural gas.“People should start thinking why do I need to buy a car. I buy a car costing Rs 10 lakh. And 80-90% of the time it is lying idle. What a terrible waste of capital,” he said.A car company’s responsibility is to provide the best forms of mobility at cheaper costs to the citizens. “Is that not my job to promote it? Why is it my job to promote individual ownership and make you all subject to lose a lot of your money by having cars,” he asked.The comment from the chairman of the country’s largest carmaker sounds odd, at least at the outset.Almost one in every two cars sold in India is made by the local unit of Suzuki Motor, and the bread and butter for the automaker is its small and affordable vehicles. In fact, over three decades now, it has made a name for itself by selling the small-car dream to millions of twowheeler users in the country.Promoting shared mobility, as Bhargava advises, should hit at the very base of its business model. But that may not be the case, he said.In the long term, even if there is a decline in personal ownership, increased utilisation of vehicles by shared mobility platforms will shorten replacement cycles and help boost sales, Bhargava said.“What is the most important parameter for determining when a car should be scrapped and replaced — how much it has run. Now if more people are able to use a car and run distances which are otherwise run using two-wheelers and three-wheelers, will that result in more car running than an individual car running or not,” he asked. “So, the replacement cycle will become faster, I will have more sales … That is why I want shared mobility.”During 2015-17, 5-6 lakh cars were added by fleet operators, of which about half were on mobility platforms. Though this segment has witnessed a slowdown over the past year, automakers see it as a major potential market.