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The community kitchen in Rotherhithe has provided hundreds of prepared dishes each week for two years to pensioners and needy locals in southeast London. However, their operations face major disruption by the news that they will lose access to New Year’s Day.

The group depended on Zipcar, the car-sharing company that customers to access its fleet of vehicles via smartphone. It caused shock through the capital when it declared it would cease its UK operations from 1 January.

This means many volunteers will be unable to pick up supplies from a major food charity, that collects excess produce from supermarkets, cafes and restaurants. Other options are less convenient, more expensive, or lack the same convenient access.

“The impact will be massively,” stated Vimal Pandya, the project's founder. “Personally me and my team are worried about the operational hurdle we will face. Many groups like ours will face difficulties.”

“Faced with this reality, they are all worried and thinking: ‘How are we going to carry on?”

A Major Blow for City Vehicle Clubs

The community kitchen’s drivers are part of more than half a million people in London who were car club members, who could be left without convenient access to vehicles, avoiding the burden and cost of ownership. The vast majority of those members were probably with Zipcar, which held a dominant position in the city.

This shutdown, pending consultation with employees, is a big blow to the vision that vehicle clubs in urban areas could cut the need for owning a car. However, some analysts also suggested that Zipcar’s departure need not mean the demise for the concept in Britain.

The Potential of Car Sharing

Shared vehicle use is prized by many urbanists and green advocates as a way of mitigating the problems associated with vehicle ownership. Typically, vehicles sit as two-tonne dead weights on the street for the vast majority of the time, occupying parking. They also involve large CO2 output to produce, and people who do not own cars tend to walk, cycle and take public transport more. That helps urban areas – reducing congestion and pollution – and boosts public health through more exercise.

What Went Wrong?

The company started in 2000 before its acquisition by the US car rental group Avis Budget in 2013. Zipcar’s UK revenues barely registered compared with its parent company's overall annual revenue, and a deficit that reached £11.7m in 2024 gave little incentive to continue.

Avis Budget has said the closure is part of a “wider restructuring across our international business, where we are taking targeted actions to simplify processes, enhance profitability”.

Its latest financial reports said revenues had declined as drivers took fewer and shorter trips. “This trend reflect the ongoing impact of the cost-of-living crisis, which is dampening demand for discretionary spending,” it said.

London's Unique Hurdles

Yet, several experts noted that London has specific problems that made it much harder for the company and its rivals to succeed.

• Patchwork Policies: Across 33 boroughs, car-club operators face a mosaic 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.
• Unequal Parking Fees: Residents 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 private parking cost,” said Robert Schopen of Co Wheels. “We remove vehicles. We introduce cleaner models in their place.”

Lessons from Abroad

Other European countries offer models for London to follow. Germany enacted national car-sharing legislation in 2017, providing a unified system for parking, support 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,” said Bharath Devanathan of Invers.

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

What Comes Next?

Other players 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. Peer-to-Peer Services: Which allow users to hire out their own vehicles via an app – similar to Airbnb for cars. Examples Britain’s Hiyacar and the US’s Getaround and Turo.

Turo, 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 a while for other players to establish themselves. For now, more people may choose to buy cars, and others across London will be left without access.

For Rotherhithe community kitchen, the coming weeks will be a scramble to find a way. The delivery problem caused by Zipcar’s exit underscores the broader impact of its departure on community groups and the prospects of car-sharing in the UK.