The firm has been operating a car club in London for 10 years but says that London is beginning to fall behind with other European cities rapidly adopting car clubs and integrating them within their public transport systems. T

In response Zipcar has commissioned a report written by Malcolm Fergusson, an established transport and environmental analyst, which shows that:

• Each car club replaces at least 14 private cars

• Car club members can save £3,000 per annum

• Car club member reduce congestion at peak times

• London could have 1 million car club members by 2020

• Car club cars have a better environmental performance compared with the average car on the road, as typically car club vehicles have amongst the lowest CO2 and are much more fuel efficient

• Car clubs alone could displace nearly 300,000 privately owned cars by 2020

• Both TfL and Carplus have suggested that there could be a million car club members in London by 2020.

• Total car ownership in London could grow to nearly 3 million by the early 2020s

The report also includes details of the benefits of car clubs for business use, with details of two case studies – one for the London Borough of Croydon and the other for Sipsmith Independent Spirits, which have reported cost and efficiency savings as a result of using the Zipcar scheme.

Mark Walker, general manager at Zipcar UK, commented: ‘Congestion costs approximately £4billion to London’s economy. This clearly has a knock-on effect to businesses in the capital who are paying high premiums for the cost of running their own fleet of vehicles". He adds that, "We are already working with companies in the public and private sectors to try and make the capital a Car Lite city. With small businesses typically seeing a 20% saving from using Zipcar in comparison to owning their own fleet, the financial benefits are compelling.’