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Return home4.2. Shared car use
Learn about car share schemes and how they can reduce your grey fleet mileage, cost and emissions. Find out about car clubs, pool cars and read case studies from Arup UK, York Council and North Ayrshire Council.
Car share schemes
Employee car sharing is an effective way of reducing grey fleet mileage, cost and emissions.
By sharing a car rather than taking separate vehicles, employees can reduce their mileage as well as the costs and emissions associated with it.
Car sharing can encourage more sustainable travel behaviour and accelerate modal shifts, especially if used in tandem with active travel.
It may also help ease parking problems at sites where spaces are limited or expensive.
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The Arup Solihull office had minimal parking available. This caused daily issues with double parking and vehicles blocking emergency services routes. To address this problem, Arup partnered with LiftShare to introduce a car sharing scheme at the site.
Employees who car share are guaranteed a parking space, with priority parking over single occupancy vehicles.
Vehicles can register with the scheme, and shared trips are recorded. In total, 83% of Arup’s staff signed up for the Liftshare scheme, and 56% have since shared at least one commute.
Arup also introduced a shuttle bus from the local train station. Combined with the car share scheme, this has reduced demand for spaces at the site and resolved the issues with double parking.
Liftshare calculates that over four years, members of the car share scheme have saved 764,000 grey fleet miles. This has reduced costs by an estimated £80,400 and saved approximately 151 tonnes of CO2.
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The hospital had limited parking for its 4,000 staff. To ease the pressure on the car park, the NHS Foundation Trust implemented a scheme through LiftShare. Before the scheme’s introduction, 3,600 staff had permits to use 1,800 parking spaces. Two thirds of these spaces were meant to be allocated for patient parking.
The trust increased workplace parking costs from £5 per month to £1 per day. It also restricted parking to six days only per 10 working days (excluding weekends). At the same time, staff were encouraged to car share and use active travel or public transport. As a result of these interventions, an average of 250 extra spaces became available each day.
Car clubs
Car clubs can reduce your CO2e emissions and costs.
There are multiple models for using car clubs. These range from having car club vehicles set aside for dedicated use by your employees, to running an integrated system with vehicles open to public use. Using car clubs can help reduce your dependency on your grey and owned fleets.
Advantages of using car clubs include:
- Lower CO2e emissions per kilometre as car club vehicles tend to be newer and emit lower gCO2e/km.
- Access to a greater variety of vehicles. This gives employees more flexibility to choose the most efficient and suitable option for their journey. For example, if an employee makes a regular journey that sometimes requires them to transport larger objects, they can choose to only use larger vehicles when necessary. At other times, they can use smaller, more efficient vehicles.
- Vehicle maintenance, safety checking and valeting is included with car club use, removing the need to carry this out internally.
- Reduced admin as most car clubs use booking software, allowing users to choose their own method of travel.
- Reduced size of fleet by replacing individual vehicles with car club vehicles.
- Less risk exposure and duty of care, as personal vehicles are no longer used for business travel. This makes sure staff are using newer vehicles with higher safety ratings and are covered by adequate insurance. This also reduces employee insurance costs.
- Access to telematics data, as telematics are typically installed on car club vehicles. You can use this data to track your organisation’s vehicle use and employee driving data. It can also help you to simplify reclaiming mileage costs.
- Save wear and tear and reduce maintenance costs for employees when using personal vehicles for business mileage.
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Following a fleet review in 2015, the council found it could reduce its travel-related emissions by targeting its grey fleet. It partnered with Enterprise to get six car club vehicles, increasing to 25 in 2021. This, combined with implementing the sustainable transport hierarchy, allowed North Ayrshire Council to reduce its grey fleet mileage by a third.
In the 2019/20 financial year, the car club vehicles travelled 275,868 miles, 35,963 (13%) of those using battery electric vehicles. Grey fleet mileage fell to 820,910 miles, from over 1,115,000 in 2018/19.
As well as helping to significantly reduce costs and CO2e emissions, the car club has given staff real world experience of electric vehicles without North Ayrshire Council having to procure them. This is an example of how switching to electric vehicles can make drivers less averse to them, while also reducing the size of your company’s owned fleet.
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A lack of public transport options meant that staff often used personal vehicles for business. Highland Council introduced a car club through Enterprise to combat this, deploying 60 vehicles across 21 sites in 2018. This reduced the council’s grey fleet mileage by over 800,000 miles in the car club’s first year of operation. Since 2018, this has saved Highland Council £900,000 on travel costs and reduced CO2e emissions by 649 tonnes (37%).
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Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust (NSFT) partnered with Hiyacar to optimise its pool car fleet, resulting in lower costs and emissions.
NSFT had 110 pool car vehicles, ranging from Seat MII EVs to Ford Transit vans. The vehicles were spread across 22 locations in both rural and urban areas.
To make sharing vehicles easier, NSFT staff can use Hiyacar’s booking platform and keyless vehicle entry. Hiyacar also has a platform to manage vehicles more efficiently, called HiyaFleet.
Since partnering with Hiyacar, NSFT has achieved:
- A reduction of 18.91 tonnes of CO2.
- A 33% increase in vehicle use.
- An estimated £53,000 in savings during the first year.
- A 29% reduction in grey fleet miles.
By analysing data, Hiyacar helped NSFT optimise the number of vehicles in its pool car fleet and promote vehicle sharing among its staff. It also identified cost-saving opportunities and supported NSFT in transitioning its fleet to electric vehicles. This is helping NSFT to meet its sustainability targets.
“Hiyacar’s platform has significantly enhanced our vehicle management and streamlined interdepartmental sharing. Hiyacar has truly revolutionised the way the trust uses pool vehicles making our fleet management more efficient and helping reduce grey fleet mileage.” – Elliott Semmence, Transport Manager, Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust.
Pool cars
Pool cars are vehicles that an organisation owns or leases and are shared by multiple employees. They are different to car clubs in that they are managed by the organisation instead of a third party.
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In 2012, the City of York Council set up a trial of five pool car vehicles from the WeCar scheme to reduce employee-owned car mileage.
The scheme allowed employees to book cars online using membership cards. Employees used their membership cards to unlock cars, avoiding the need to store keys.
Since introducing the scheme, the council has shifted 40% of private car use to shared pool cars. It has also expanded the pool car scheme to 22 vehicles. Eight of these are assigned to the council and the remaining fourteen vehicles are operated as a car club for wider users.
Together with the scheme, the council increased its focus on implementing the sustainable travel hierarchy by holding training days for staff. It also reduced the grey fleet reimbursement rate per mile to 32p (down from 52p). These measures have reduced grey fleet mileage by 26% and saved the council nearly £100,000 in 2013.
