The company this summer committed to make 325 fully-electric Volkswagen e-Golfs available to its members by the end of the year, with the first 100 having been rolled out by July 2018. These 100 EVs have been used by 6,000 members for 20,000 journeys around the capital to date, Zipcar revealed on Wednesday (17 October).

Zipcar’s UK general manager Jonathan Hampson said he believes this new EV offer is helping to create a surge in demand for shared car ownership and sustainable travel in London.

“Our figures speak for themselves: as a result of our new EV fleet, Londoners are embracing EV driving and proving that there is a real potential to make EV driving mainstream in the capital and help fight the city’s pollution challenge,” Hampson said.

“We passionately believe that electric car sharing is the way forward for Londoners when it comes to driving in the capital.”

Hampson added that the new fleet was created to help overcome some of the commonly-cited barriers to EV adoption, including a lack of charging infrastructure and the high upfront costs of purchasing an EV.

Zipcar introduced the fleet of e-Golfs to its London-based network in July in a bid to create the UK’s largest pool of publicly available shared EVs. The cars, which have a range of 150 miles per charge, are available as part of the firm’s pay-per-minute Flex service, which allows members to “drive and drop” cars for one-way trips within London. The cost of this service is 31p per minute or £14 per hour.

Sharing is caring

The London fleet forms part of Zipcar’s goal of getting 800,000 Londoners actively using 9,000 zero-emissions, shared cars in the capital by 2025.

The car-sharing network claims the move would see 160,000 tonnes less CO2 emitted and 821 million fewer miles driven every year, alongside 120,000 fewer privately owned cars on the streets of London.

To date, 230,000 drivers have become Zipcar members – a 25% increase to the number of members registered at the start of 2018.

The sharing economy was recently listed as one of the 10 game-changing developments that are empowering businesses to transition to low-carbon fleets in one of our edie Insight reports. You can download the Accelerating the Shift report for free here.

Sarah George

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