Car clubs have grown steadily in the past few years and are now a popular alternative to private car ownership, especially in urban centres where it may not be cost effective or practical to own a car. GreenFleet looks at the rising trend of car-sharing and how it could transform traditional forms of business travel

According to research by the RAC Foundation in 2012, the average car is parked at home for 80 per cent of the time, parked elsewhere for 16 per cent of the time, and is only on the move for four per cent of the time. With this is mind, it is easy to understand why car clubs with a pay-as-you-drive model are getting increasingly popular.

Currently, the UK has one of the highest car club memberships in the world with more than 160,000 members. The majority of these are in London (more than 135,000 members in January 2015), with the greatest density being in inner-London boroughs such as Westminster, Camden, Islington, Wandsworth, Lambeth and Hackney. Outside of London, the fastest growing urban car clubs in England and Wales  are York, Manchester and Brighton and Hove, whilst other major cities such as Leeds, Bristol, Cambridge and Oxford also have car club operations which are expanding.

In Scotland around 7,600 people now share around 240 cars, with Edinburgh being the largest car club in the UK outside of London, and Aberdeen and Glasgow being two of the fastest growing urban car clubs (figures taken from the Carplus Annual Survey of Car Clubs 2014/15).

What is a car club?
Car clubs provide access to shared vehicles to members on a pay-as-you-drive basis. They offer drivers much of the convenience of owning a car without the burden or costs of repairs, depreciation, insurance, servicing and parking.

Most car clubs allow drivers to book a car online or by phone for anything from an hour to a weekend, with payments taken online. Cars are parked in a designated parking bay and users can access them by swiping a smart card to get the keys from the car. When a journey is finished, the vehicle is returned to the same location or another designated bay.

There are many environmental benefits of car sharing clubs, particularly in urban centres where air pollution is a real problem. Car clubs reduce the number of cars on the road, meaning reduced CO2 emissions and other pollutants.

According to the Carplus Annual Survey 2014/15, over 55,000 members would have bought a car if they hadn’t joined a car club. In London alone, 20,150 private cars have been removed from the streets as a result of car club members who have sold a car.

What’s more, the types of vehicles used in car clubs are often less polluting – the car club fleet produces over 30 per cent less CO2 per vehicle than the national fleet, and over 95 per cent of the fleet meets Euro 5 or 6 standards. The introduction of electric vehicles in car clubs will increase the environmental benefits as these vehicles have zero tailpipe emissions.

Fleet benefits
The fleet sector has a lot to benefit from the car club sharing model. Like the benefits for private use, car clubs take the cost out of owning a fleet of company or pool cars away, instead allowing them to access a ‘virtual’ fleet which can be tapped into as and when journeys are needed. It also reduces costly mileage reimbursements from private car users.

The need for parking, which is often a scarce resource for companies, can also be minimised due to cars being left in designated bays.

From a corporate social responsibility point of view, a car club allows companies to use a fleet of low-emission, electric or hybrid vehicles, showing they are doing their bit to tackle climate change and air pollution.

In the last couple of years, traditional car rental firms have cashed in on the car-sharing concept. Earlier this year, Europcar bought French start up Ubeeqo, a corporate ride-sharing business, and now has plans to expand it beyond France and into Germany and the UK. The service facilitates corporate car fleet pooling, whereby executives use their phones to borrow a car rather than having exclusive use of one. The company also offers other ‘mobility benefits’ for employees, where instead of having their own car they get points to use on shared cars, taxis or even trains.

Also this year, Enterprise Rent-A-Car bought UK firm City Car Club, and in 2013, Avis agreed to buy Zipcar.

Promoting electric mobility
The electric vehicle market is still in its infancy, with high purchase costs and a limited charging infrastructure acting as barriers to mass market adoption. But including electric vehicles in car club fleets is helping to make electric vehicles more visible and accessible to a much wider audience. Examples of car clubs offering electric vehicles are E-Car Club and Co-Wheels in the UK, Car2Go in San Diego, and Autolib in Paris.

According to the Carplus Annual Survey 2014/15, nine out of ten members who had used an electric vehicles rated their experience  as ‘good’ or ‘very good’. EV charging infrastructure, however, was only rated as ‘good’ or ‘very good’ by five out of ten users. Eight out of ten rated the hybrid driving experience as ‘good’ or ‘very good’.

Ambitious plans for London
In London, a new action plan has been developed to encourage residents and businesses across the Capital to sign up to car club schemes, with the aim of reaching one million London car club members by 2025.

The new action plan, jointly developed by Transport for London (TfL), London Councils, the Greater London Authority (GLA), a coalition of car club operators and key stakeholders, aims to grow car clubs into a mainstream alternative to the private car for essential car journeys in London. This will help to address a number of challenges faced in the coming years, including population growth, congestion and environmental issues.

With London’s population forecast to grow to 10 million by 2031, potentially bringing thousands more cars on the road in the next decade, car clubs are seen as part of the solution to address this.

Car clubs already have on-street parking bays in 27 of the 33 London boroughs. However, low awareness of the schemes remains a key barrier to car club growth. To address this, the new plan sets out ten key actions. These include working with London Boroughs to develop best practice measures to promote car clubs; improving access to data such as nearby parking bays through new technology and apps; and creating more car club parking while ensuring that existing bays are used as efficiently as possible. The action plan also aims to encourage more low emission vehicles, particularly electric vehicles, within car clubs to help increase the environmental benefits and reduce noise pollution.

The strategy also intends to use public procurement to encourage boroughs to use car clubs as part of their fleets, as well as lobbying government to include car clubs in its own procurement frameworks. Promoting car clubs to commercial and business fleets to help reduce the burden of fleet management and encourage further use of electric vehicles is also a key aim.

The future’s bright
Frost & Sullivan recently completed a survey amongst key fleet and travel decision makers at organisations across five European countries, to find out about current usage, policies, and the interest in such new mobility business models in the corporate world.

Across all countries combined, corporate carsharing was the mobility solution with the highest future interest – 24 per cent of the sample declared they were interested in deploying this in the next two years.

Further information
TfL’s car club strategy: tinyurl.com/pgl7nao
Carplus 2014-15 survey: tinyurl.com/pevhftr