Londoners who like the idea of driving an electric car, but are unable or unwilling to buy one, now have the chance to join Britain’s first electric vehicle car club.
The E-Car Club launched on 23 October 2013 and aims to offer affordable access to a fleet of Renault Zoe electric city cars.
The first branch of E-Car Club serves the London Borough of Tower Hamlets in partnership with a social landlord, which owns around 9,000 homes in the local area. The organisation’s staff and residents will enjoy access to low-carbon transport on their doorsteps, while the pay-as-you-go club membership will make electric cars available to the wider community.
Why electric cars make sense in the city
Each E-Car achieves a 50-75 kg-per-year reduction in nitrous oxide emissions and up to a 2 kg-per-year reduction in soot. Reducing this particulate matter, which is present in the exhaust gases of diesel-powered vehicles, is vitally important in urban areas where it exacerbates asthma in the young and old and is considered carcinogenic.
The Renault Zoe
The E-Car scheme uses the Renault Zoe, a fully-electric city car with a maximum range of over 130 miles in optimum conditions, and 62 miles in cold weather city driving.
CO2 figures for the Zoe are quoted as 62 g/km based on average values for the national grids across Europe. In France, where a good proportion of electricity is nuclear, the figure drops to 12 g/km. Charging the car with electricity from a sustainable source would reduce the figure further still, and, crucially for the urban environment, the car emits no harmful soot.
Philip Igoe
Co-wheels have electric cars in a fair number of locations across the country. In fact we have been in the vanguard of shared car use since we started our Community Interest Company almost 6 years ago. We have even had hydrogen cars available for a short period in Aberdeen – where we also have the only wheelchair accessible car club vehicle in the world (so far as we know). We also operate a social franchise scheme to help local communities set up their own car clubs.
(Oh, and we use ETA breakdown cover too)