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The community kitchen in Rotherhithe has provided hundreds of prepared dishes each week for the past two years to pensioners and needy locals in southeast London. Yet, the group's plans have been thrown into disarray by the announcement that they will lose access to New Year’s Day.

This organization depended on Zipcar, the car-sharing company that customers to access its cars from the street. The company sent shockwaves through the capital when it declared it would shut down its UK operations from 1 January.

It will mean many helpers cannot collect food from the Felix Project, that collects excess produce from grocery stores, cafes and restaurants. Other options are less convenient, costlier, or lack the same convenient access.

“It’s going to be affected massively,” stated Vimal Pandya, the project's founder. “My team and I are concerned by the operational hurdle we will face. A lot of people like ours are going to struggle.”

“Faced with this reality, everyone is concerned and thinking: ‘How will we continue?’”

A Major Blow for City Vehicle Clubs

The community kitchen’s drivers are part of over 500,000 people in London who were car club members, who could be left without easy use to vehicles, without the hassle and cost of ownership. The vast majority of those people were probably with Zipcar, which held a dominant position in the city.

This shutdown, subject to consultation with staff, is a big blow to the vision that car sharing in urban areas could reduce the need for owning a car. Yet, some experts also suggested that Zipcar’s exit need not mean the demise for the concept in Britain.

The Potential of Shared Mobility

Car sharing is valued by many urbanists and green advocates as a way of mitigating the problems linked to vehicle ownership. Most cars sit as two-tonne dead weights on the side of the road for the vast majority of the time, using up space. They also involve large carbon emissions to produce, and people who do not own cars tend to use active travel and take transit more. That helps urban areas – reducing congestion and pollution – and improves public 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 income were minimal compared with its owner's overall annual revenue, and a deficit that reached £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, enhance profitability”.

Its latest financial reports said revenues had fallen as drivers took fewer and shorter trips. “These changes reflect the ongoing impact of the economic squeeze, which is dampening demand for discretionary spending,” it said.

London's Unique Hurdles

Yet, several experts noted that London has particular issues that made it difficult for the sector to succeed.

• Patchwork Policies: Across 33 boroughs, car-club operators face a patchwork of varying processes and prices that made it harder.
• New Costs: The closure comes as electric cars start paying London’s congestion charge, adding unavoidable costs.
• Parking Permit Disparity: Locals in some boroughs pay as little as £63 for a annual 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 remove vehicles. We’re putting less polluting cars in their place.”

A European Example

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

“The evidence shows is that shared mobility around the world, particularly on the continent, is expanding,” commented Bharath Devanathan of Invers.

Devanathan said authorities should start to view vehicle clubs as a form of mass transit, and integrate it with train and bus stations. He added that a potential operator was looking at entering the London market: “There will be fill this gap.”

What Comes Next?

The company’s competitors can roughly be divided into two camps:

1. Company-Owned Fleets: 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 – a kind of Airbnb for cars. Players include 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 head, said there was a “significant chance” to win more users. “A space exists that is going to need to be filled, because London still needs to move,” Brimmer said.

Yet, it could take some time for other players to establish themselves. In the meantime, more people may choose 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 solution. The logistical challenge caused by Zipcar’s exit highlights the wider implications of its departure on vital services and the prospects of shared mobility in the UK.