Kevin Van Paassen, National Post Kevin McLaughlin hopes he'll have as much success with AutoShare as he has had with the market.

Kevin McLaughlin is an avowed environmentalist. He believes composting is a great idea. He won't touch a cigarette. And he doesn't own a car. He sounds like a real West Coast flake. But when it comes to investing, Mr. McLaughlin is as hard as nails.

Eight years ago, when Mr. McLaughlin was 26, he opened up an account with InvestorLine, the discount brokerage operation of Bank of Montreal, and started investing whatever money he could find in a handful of technology companies, such as Microsoft Corp.

He did well. Mr. McLaughlin used a big chunk of the proceeds, some $60,000, to establish AutoShare, a tree hugger's idea of a car rental company.

So far, the Toronto-based company has 385 members. Each pay a $500 refundable membership fee in exchange for 24-hour-a-day access to 27 different vehicles parked throughout the city.

If you need a car for the day, or just a couple of hours, you call AutoShare, go to a prearranged spot (usually a parking lot) near public transit, pick up the keys from a locked box near the vehicle and drive off. No muss, no fuss. And it's really cheap. For $20, you can use the car for up to four hours.

Compare that to the cost of owning and operating a car. According to the Canadian Automobile Association, a subcompact car in a so-called low-cost province (based on factors such as insurance), such as Manitoba or Alberta, will eat up roughly $7,000 a year. In a high-cost province, such as Newfoundland or Quebec (Ontario is the third most expensive province in which to operate a car, British Columbia is the sixth), the same car will cost you upward of $8,000 a year. The range for a full-size vehicle is even greater, between $10,600 to $12,000 a year.

Although AutoShare isn't profitable yet, Mr. McLaughlin is convinced he will be rolling in green. "I'm quite bullish about where car sharing is going," Mr. McLaughlin says. "I just hope that we, as a business, are smart enough to get a piece of that success."

Back in 1989, when Mr. McLaughlin graduated from Queen's University with a degree in commerce, he wanted to work in corporate real estate "because that's where you made a lot of money."

It wasn't until he travelled through Asia in 1990 that he abandoned his dreams of being a real estate baron. And upon his return to Canada he joined Evergreen, an organization that creates green areas in city spaces. He headed to Vancouver with the company in 1994. But he stayed environmentally active in his spare time and helped launch a non-profit car sharing company, the Co-operative Auto Network.

While in Vancouver, Mr. McLaughlin crossed paths with another car sharing advocate, Liz Reynolds. Both Mr. McLaughlin and Ms. Reynolds thought a similar service would fly in Toronto. So, in late 1998, Mr. McLaughlin decided to return to Toronto and establish AutoShare with Ms. Reynolds as his business partner.

But he couldn't have done it without the help of the markets.

His investing foray began in 1991, when he purchased a mutual fund through a broker friend at Midland Walwyn (which has since been bought by Merrill Lynch).

The following year, Mr. McLaughlin opened a discount brokerage account and bought his first individual stocks -- 10 shares of Apple Computer Inc. (AAPL/NASDAQ) and 10 of Microsoft (MSFT/NASDAQ). "Which was not very much," he concedes, "but they were good picks back in 1992." You bet they were. Mr. McLaughlin made, as he put it, "many doublings" on those shares, as well as those of Nortel Networks Corp. (NT/TSE) and Ballard Power Systems Inc. (BLD/TSE). "I think I was really lucky. The bull market of the 1990s is helping finance AutoShare."

Lately, Mr. McLaughlin says he's become more of a "merger momentum investor," snapping up stocks of companies that he believes are good takeover targets in sectors of so-called media convergence -- for example, CTV Inc., which was bought by BCE Inc. (BCE/TSE) last year.

"I think it's low-risk to buy a company if there's takeover rumours and hold on to it for a while. Because you know, if the company's got a history and all that, it's not going to go back to nothing," he says. "The potential [reward] of somebody offering you 40% or 50% more than [what] you bought it for is worthwhile."

But the urge to make a quick buck won't come at the cost of his environmental beliefs. There are certain sectors he won't invest in -- particularly, mining, oil and gas, chemicals, tobacco and, believe or not, cars. Unfortunately, that means he's missed out on top-performers such as tobacco giant Philip Morris Cos. Inc. (MO/NYSE).

Currently, about 75% of what Mr. McLaughlin hasn't thrown into AutoShare is invested in cash. He's looking at throwing some of it at two voice-recognition companies: Nuance Communications Inc. (NUAN/NASDAQ) and SpeechWorks International Inc. (SPWX/NASDAQ). "They're at the hot tip stage right now," he says. "I would say that I would get into those with my 'mad money,' just for fun."

The other stock he likes is Suncor Energy Inc. (SU/TSE) because it offers ethanol-blended gasoline. "It burns cleaner and reduces air pollutants."

True, and the stock may give his portfolio a big boost, too.