Hundreds Sign Up to New Car-Sharing Scheme
A new car rental scheme that aims to make car usage in the UK more efficient has had dozens of cars and hundreds of drivers registering a week after its launch.
WhipCar claims to be the world's first neighbour-to-neighbour car rental service. It also purports to be green by reducing the number of cars on the road.
For more information visit Whipcar
Article from Greenwise Business News
The service connects private car owners with eligible drivers looking for short-term rentals through an online booking facility.
It launched in London on April 21 and now has more than 40 cars registered on the site and reportedly hundreds of drivers signed up.
WhipCar’s owners aim to transform the concept of car usage and ownership in the UK where many of the 29 million registered cars on the road lie idle for more than 23 hours a day.
"We want to make car usage in the UK more efficient and provide a way to reward owners who want to minimise waste and still enjoy the benefits of owning a car," said Tom Wright, co-founder of WhipCar. "For drivers, we want to evolve the status quo model of traditional car clubs and rental schemes to provide a local, cost-effective and accessible rental solution."
Growing appetite for car-sharing schemes in the UK
WhipCar is the latest car club to launch in the UK, where there seems to be growing appetite for car-sharing schemes. Streetcar, which pioneered car clubs in the UK now boasts 80,000 members and 1,100 car locations in eight UK cities. The company was acquired last month for £32 million by US rival Zipcar.
WhipCar’s model addresses a number of problems faced by traditional car clubs, including over-capacity in the car market, difficulty in finding on-street parking, maintaining cars and providing vehicles to rent in sparsely populated areas.
"The cost of owning a car and the amount of time it's left unused, makes it a person's most valuable idle asset," commented Vinay Gupta, co-founder of WhipCar. "Our research shows there are many people who would be happy to pay for car rental services if they could be delivered locally. Putting the two together, we recognised this as an untapped opportunity to provide a new peer-to-peer service which links excess car capacity to potential renters."
The service is free to sign up to, but takes a 15 per cent commission on the car rental cost. It works by notifying owners by text and email when there is an approved driver in their area who wants to use their car.
WhipCar says all cars and drivers are screened by the company before a booking is completed, and each journey is fully insured through a comprehensive insurance package that temporarily replaces the owner's existing insurance for the duration of hire.
The WhipCar website suggests that cars in central London cost between £30 and £40 a day to rent.
WhipCar is funded by venture capital firm Delta Partners.
May 6, 2010
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