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A volunteer food project in Rotherhithe has been delivering hundreds of cooked meals each week for the past two years to elderly residents and needy locals in southeast London. Yet, their operations have been thrown into disarray by the announcement that they will not have cars and vans on New Year’s Day.

The group had relied on Zipcar, the car-sharing company that customers to access its fleet of vehicles from the street. The company caused shock across London when it said it would cease its UK business from 1 January.

This means many volunteers will be unable to pick up supplies from a major food charity, which gathers excess produce from supermarkets, cafes and restaurants. Other options are further away, costlier, or lack the same convenient access.

“The impact will be massively,” said Vimal Pandya, the community kitchen’s founder. “Personally me and my team are concerned by the logistical challenge we will face. Many groups like ours are going to struggle.”

“Knowing the reality, everyone is concerned and thinking: ‘How will we continue?’”

A Significant Setback for Urban Car-Sharing

These volunteers are among more than half a million people in London who were car club members, who could be left without easy use to vehicles, avoiding the burden and cost of ownership. The vast majority of those people were probably with Zipcar, which held a dominant position in the city.

This shutdown, pending consultation with employees, is a big blow to the vision that vehicle clubs in cities could cut the need for private vehicle ownership. However, some analysts have noted that Zipcar’s exit need not spell the end for the concept in Britain.

The Promise of Shared Mobility

Shared vehicle use is prized by many urbanists and environmentalists as a way of mitigating the problems linked to vehicle ownership. Typically, vehicles sit as two-tonne dead weights on the street for the vast majority of the time, using up space. They also require large carbon emissions to produce, and people without a vehicle tend to walk, cycle and take public transport more. That helps urban areas – easing congestion and pollution – and boosts people’s health through more exercise.

Understanding the Decline

The company started in 2000 before its acquisition by the American rental giant Avis Budget in 2013. Zipcar’s UK revenues were minimal compared with its owner's total earnings, and a loss that grew to £11.7m in 2024 gave no reason to continue.

Avis Budget has said the closure is part of a “wider restructuring across our global operations, where we are taking targeted actions to streamline operations, improve returns”.

Its latest financial reports noted revenues had fallen as drivers took less frequent, shorter trips. “These changes reflect the ongoing impact of the cost-of-living crisis, which is dampening demand for non-essential services,” it said.

London's Unique Hurdles

Yet, industry observers noted that London has specific problems that made it much harder for the company and its rivals to succeed.

• Patchwork Policies: Across 33 boroughs, car-club operators face a patchwork of different procedures and prices that complicate operations.
• Congestion Charge: The closure comes as electric cars start paying London’s congestion charge, adding unavoidable costs.
• Unequal Parking Fees: Residents in some boroughs pay as little as £63 for a year’s electric car parking permit. A similar shared vehicle would pay over £1,100 annually, creating a significant barrier.

“We should literally be charged one-twentieth of a resident’s permit,” said Robert Schopen of Co Wheels. “We’re taking cars off the street. We introduce cleaner models in their place.”

Lessons from Abroad

Nations in Europe offer models for London to follow. Germany enacted national shared mobility laws in 2017, providing a nationwide framework for parking, subsidies and exemptions. Now, the country has 5.4 shared cars per 10,000 people, while France has 2.1 and Belgium has 6.3. The UK lags behind at 0.7.

“What we see is that car sharing around the world, especially in Europe, is expanding,” said Bharath Devanathan of Invers.

Devanathan said authorities should start to view vehicle clubs as a form of public transport, and link it with train and bus stations. He added that a potential operator was already seriously considering entering the London market: “There will be fill this gap.”

What Comes Next?

Other players can roughly be divided into two models:

1. Fleet Operators: Which own or lease their own cars. This includes Denmark’s GreenMobility, France’s Free2Move, and Germany’s Miles Mobility.
2. Person-to-Person Rentals: Which allow users to rent out their own vehicles via an app – similar to Airbnb for cars. Examples Britain’s Hiyacar and the US’s Getaround and Turo.

One company, a US-headquartered P2P service, is already weighing up the UK gap. Rory Brimmer, its UK managing director, said there was a “big opportunity” to win more users. “A space exists that is going to need to be filled, because London still needs to move,” Brimmer said.

However, it could take some time for other players to build momentum. For now, more people may feel forced to buy cars, and many across London will be without a convenient option.

For the volunteers in Rotherhithe, the coming weeks will be a scramble to find a way. The delivery problem caused by Zipcar’s exit underscores the wider implications of its departure on vital services and the future of car-sharing in the UK.