NEW YORK — Zipcar Inc., the car-sharing company that rents rides for as little as an hour, is expected to get a warm reception from Wall Street for its planned initial public offering this week.

Its supporters think skyrocketing gas prices will make car sharing more popular. They praise Zipcar’s technological savvy and its plans for overseas expansion.

Zipcar is “one of the long-awaited hot tickets in the IPO valley,” said John Fitzgibbon, founder of IPOscoop.com. Investors are warming up to IPOs again after the market sputtered in 2008 and 2009.

Still, Zipcar has never been profitable since it was founded in 2000. It expects to lose money again in 2011. Cars, its main expense, don’t come cheap.

The IPO’s value would total about $125 million at the midpoint of its expected price range of $14 to $16 per share.

The company plans to trade on the Nasdaq under ZIP.