Brent Council to introduce DriveNow's 'location-less' car club

Brent Council has awarded a new three year car club contact to DriveNow, which has successful schemes across Europe and already has 450 members signed up in Borough.

Currently, the two car clubs operating in Brent – ZipCar and Enterprise – work on a ‘back to base’ model, which means users must return the car to where they picked it up. The new model will be ‘location-less’ and it will not be necessary to make a reservation.

In its initial stage, 16 per cent of the cars used on the scheme will be electric. A one-off registration fee of £4.99 applies, and cost of use varies from 33p to 39p per minute depending on the car, and hourly and daily rates are available.

The scheme was announced by Cllr Krupa Sheth, responsible for environment at Brent Council, who described how the flexible nature of this club would encourage more people to sign up.   

“We all want to improve the air quality in Brent and see fewer cars on the road. This scheme would help us achieve that,” she said.

Cabinet member Cllr Eleanor Southwood agreed that the programme would provide a much-needed change to the current setup.

Cllr Southwood said: “I completely support this. Car club usage has flatlined and it’s getting harder and harder to encourage people to join in.