UK’s first point-to-point car club operator throws in the towel

Point-to-point car club operator car2go ceased its UK operations this week and said an entrenched culture of private car ownership had influenced its decision. 

Car2go, a joint venture of vehicle manufacturer Daimler and car hire firm Europcar, operates in 25 cities worldwide. It  launched a service in parts of London in December 2012 and introduced a 12-month trial in Birmingham last May. 

Whereas traditional car clubs require members to return the vehicle to where they hired it, car2go’s ‘free floating’ model allowed members to pick up a distinctive ‘smart fortwo’ car from one location and leave it at another within the scheme’s ‘home area’. Members were charged by the minute for hires.

In February the firm suspended its final operations in London and this week it quit Birmingham. 

In a statement the company said: “We’ve listened closely to customer feedback and taking the UK’s strong culture and tradition of private vehicle ownership into account, we have decided to withdraw from the UK market place.

“As the world’s largest free-floating car sharing provider, we will continue to observe the UK market for cultural changes towards the ‘free-floating model’,” it added. “car2go will continue to be a worldwide success story as we operate in a total of 25 cities around the world with more than 700,000 customers.”

Chas Ball, chief executive of Carplus, the organisation that promotes car clubs and car sharing,  said: “Despite this decision we believe that the shared use vehicle option (car clubs and car- sharing) for social and business travel is growing. We believe that in the right locations both flexible car sharing (like car2go) and point-to-point electric car sharing will become established successfully in Britain.”

Sandra Green, founder of car club Co-wheels Birmingham, said: “I think the failure of car2go was that they came in with a ready-made solution rather than listening to what people actually need. Their small two-seater cars were promoted as a zippy way to make short journeys around the city – but it was already easy to do those trips by taxi, public transport, walking or cycling.”

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