Cllr Wesley Harcourt (pictured right) and James Taylor (pictured left), General Manager of Zipcar UK with a Zipcar branded VW e-Golf
Hammersmith & Fulham Council and Zipcar have launched a new flexible car club in the borough.
Zipcar Flex is available city-wide and lets residents use a simple mobile app to hire a car on a point-to-point basis, meaning they don’t need to return it to a designated space when they’ve finished their journey.
What’s more, a quarter of the fleet are electric vehicles and Zipcar intend to make the entire fleet electric by 2025.
“Last year, we declared a climate emergency and ambition for the borough to be net carbon zero by 2030,” said Cllr Wesley Harcourt, H&F Cabinet Member for Environment.
“Zipcar Flex lets residents to make emissions-free journeys in an electric car so reducing air pollution on our roads and avoiding the running costs of private car ownership.
“Moving away from reliance on private motor vehicles will be vital to us tackling the climate crisis so this is an essential service to offer residents who may not be able to walk or cycle.”
Zipcar Flex is a ‘floating car club’ meaning residents can pick up a car from any standard parking bay and drop it off in any parking bay of the 12 other participating boroughs.
It will complement the two existing car clubs already operating in H&F, Zipcar and Enterprise, which both require the user to return the car to a designated car club bay.
How does it work?
Zipcar Flex costs 31p per minute for VW Polos and e-Golfs. There’s also a cap of £14 an hour, kicking in after you’re 45 minutes into your trip.
Most of London is covered by the scheme, including Heathrow T5. You can find out more and even get an estimated cost for any potential trip by entering the details using the link above.
“Zipcar has operated our Roundtrip service in Hammersmith & Fulham for many years, and we’re delighted to bring our one-way Flex service to the borough,” said James Taylor, Zipcar UK General Manager.
“Car sharing provides an affordable, simple and more sustainable alternative to private car ownership - and there's never been a more important time for this to be central to how our cities operate. We’re thrilled that residents and businesses in Hammersmith & Fulham now have an even greater choice and flexibility around how they travel.”
Tackling the climate emergency
Hammersmith & Fulham has already made huge strides towards becoming the greenest borough in Britain including a whole range of policies which:
- improve air quality
- promote biodiversity
- reduce traffic congestion and pollution
- make our streets cleaner and greener
- work with our community to put environmental concerns at the heart of all we do.
As part of our commitment to tackling the climate and ecological emergency, we’ve pledged to work to a target of the borough being net carbon zero by 2030. We’ll be working closely with residents to make these changes and front-and-centre of this work will is our resident-led commission which will drive our green agenda.
The Climate and Ecological Emergency Commission will ensure changes we make are as a result of working with residents, rather than doing things to them.
Find out more about steps we’ve taken to meet the climate challenge head-on.
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