The British Vehicle Rental and Leasing Association (BVRLA) is supporting a new action plan to drive the growth of car club members in London.
The association is working with Transport for London (TfL), London Councils, the Greater London Authority (GLA), Carplus and a range of car club operators in a new Car Club Coalition. The Coalition has spent the past six months formulating the ‘Vision for Car Clubs in London’. The strategy sets out the actions it believes are required to see the number of London car club members reach one million in the next decade.
BVRLA Chief Executive Gerry Keaney, said: “Promoting new models of urban mobility is essential if we hope to deal with the issues of congestion, road safety and air quality that affect our cities.
"Car clubs, car rental and other forms of pay-as-you-go motoring are evolving at a rapid pace. The BVRLA will support this development by ensuring that operators are treated fairly by policymakers and get all the support they need to serve their growing customer base.”
While the Vision for Car Clubs strategy has now been published, the BVRLA will continue to work with all participants to ensure that its ten key action points are delivered. They include:
- Developing a monitoring framework to build the evidence on the impact of car clubs
- Transforming London’s public sector fleets
- Helping Londoners make the switch from private cars
- Making parking management smarter and easier
- Driving the uptake of low-emission vehicles
- Transforming the profile of car clubs in London
- Driving the uptake of car clubs in London’s commercial fleets
The BVRLA will use its lobbying power to get greater support from government, better procurement from local authorities, and more take-up from the wider fleet sector. Currently, car clubs operate in 25 of the 33 London boroughs, though low awareness remains a key barrier to car club growth.
The BVRLA already represents a number of leading Coalition members, including Europcar, Hertz and Zipcar. The association is delighted to announce that this year Bolloré, car2go and DriveNow have also become BVRLA members.
car2go Head of Business Development Trevor Storey said: “car2go continues to engage and contribute to the development of the London car club proposition, and we are expecting to re-enter the London marketplace in the very near future. car2go is delighted to form a relationship with the BVRLA as this will enable us to work with an independent trade body whose close links with government and local motoring agencies will ensure that legislation is fair and doesn’t stifle competition for future development.”
Joseph Seal-Driver, UK Director of DriveNow commented, “DriveNow launched in London to contribute to the existing mobility mix, offering Londoners all the flexibility and spontaneity that car ownership offers, without any of the cost or responsibility of ownership. That we have seen over 10,000 customer registrations within three months of launch highlights that DriveNow is fulfilling a very clear need in the business area. We ensured that DriveNow became a member of the BVRLA at launch as we wanted to belong to a trade body that promotes our shared values of professionalism and best in breed customer service. Being a member of the BVRLA can only assist us in our goal of making car sharing services a mainstream transport choice for Londoners as soon as possible.”
This week DriveNow added 30 electric BMW i3s to its existing London car sharing fleet.
