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A volunteer food project in Rotherhithe has been delivering hundreds of prepared dishes weekly for two years to elderly residents and vulnerable locals in southeast London. Yet, their operations face major disruption by the announcement that they will lose cars and vans on New Year’s Day.

This organization depended on Zipcar, the app-based vehicle rental service that customers to access its fleet of vehicles from the street. It sent shockwaves across London when it said it would shut down its UK operations from 1 January.

It will mean many volunteers cannot collect food from a major food charity, which gathers excess produce from grocery stores, cafes and restaurants. Other options are less convenient, costlier, or do not offer the same convenient access.

“It’s going to be affected massively,” said Vimal Pandya, the project's founder. “My team and I are worried about the operational hurdle we will face. Many groups like ours are going to struggle.”

“Knowing the reality, they are all worried and thinking: ‘How are we going to carry on?”

A Significant Setback for City Vehicle Clubs

The community kitchen’s drivers are part of over 500,000 people in London registered as car club members, now potentially left without convenient access to vehicles, without the hassle and cost of ownership. The vast majority of those people were probably with Zipcar, which had a near-monopoly position in the city.

This shutdown, pending consultation with employees, is a big blow to the vision that car sharing in urban areas could cut the need for private vehicle ownership. Yet, some experts also suggested that Zipcar’s departure need not spell the end for the concept in Britain.

The Promise of Shared Mobility

Shared vehicle use is prized by city planners and environmentalists as a way of mitigating the ills linked to vehicle ownership. Most cars sit as two-tonne dead weights on the street for 95% of the time, using up space. They also require large carbon emissions to produce, and people without a vehicle tend to use active travel and take public transport more. That helps urban areas – reducing congestion and pollution – and boosts public health through increased activity.

Understanding the Decline

The company started in 2000 before being bought by the American rental giant Avis Budget in 2013. Zipcar’s UK income were minimal compared with its owner's total earnings, and a loss that grew to £11.7m in 2024 gave little incentive to continue.

Avis Budget has said the closure is part of a “wider restructuring across our global operations, where we are taking deliberate steps to streamline operations, enhance profitability”.

Zipcar’s most recent accounts said revenues had fallen as drivers took less frequent, shorter trips. “This trend reflect the continuing effect of the economic squeeze, which continues to suppress demand for non-essential services,” it said.

London's Unique Hurdles

However, several experts noted that London has particular issues that made it much harder for the sector to succeed.

• Patchwork Policies: Across 33 boroughs, car-club operators face a patchwork of varying processes and costs that complicate operations.
• New Costs: The closure comes as electric cars start paying London’s congestion charge, adding extra expenses.
• Parking Permit Disparity: Locals in some boroughs pay just £63 for a annual electric car parking permit. A similar shared vehicle would pay over £1,100 per year, creating a major disincentive.

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

A European Example

Other European countries offer examples for London to follow. Germany introduced national car-sharing legislation in 2017, providing a unified system for parking, subsidies and waivers. 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.

“What we see is that car sharing around the world, particularly on the continent, is expanding,” commented Bharath Devanathan of Invers.

He suggested authorities should start to treat car sharing as a form of public transport, and link it with train and bus stations. He added that one unnamed client was looking at entering the London market: “Operators will fill this gap.”

The Future Landscape

Other players can be split into two models:

1. Company-Owned Fleets: Which maintain their own cars. Examples Denmark’s GreenMobility, France’s Free2Move, and Germany’s Miles Mobility.
2. Peer-to-Peer Services: 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.

Turo, a US-headquartered peer-to-peer platform, is assessing the UK gap. Rory Brimmer, its UK head, 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.

Yet, it could take a while 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 Rotherhithe community kitchen, the coming weeks will be a rush to find a solution. The delivery problem caused by Zipcar’s exit highlights the wider implications of its departure on vital services and the future of car-sharing in the UK.