Even before the public charging hubs went live across Oxfordshire, the partners involved in their installation wanted to include electric car clubs in the Park and Charge project. Car club operators would be a dedicated, regular customer for manufacturer and operator, EZ-Charge. Car clubs would offer more Oxfordshire residents access to electric driving, whilst avoiding the high purchase costs. Research, including from myself and colleagues, showed that a reduction in car ownership and use as well as electrification was required to meet emissions targets. Car clubs are compatible with a car-lite lifestyle.

Delays and other challenges to the project, partly due to the pandemic, left no budget nor resource to include electric car clubs before the project funding ended in 2022, but the key partners at Oxfordshire County Council, the University of Oxford and EZ-Charge kept the discussion alive.

They involved other parties in their partnership – Oxford City Council, the shared mobility charity CoMoUK, car club operators, Co-Wheels and Enterprise, community green groups from Eynsham and Thame, district council car park operators. They used survey and public engagement data from the Park and Charge project and Co-Wheels. They used messages and research published by CoMoUK. They built on the enthusiasm of local green groups, and the trust established with the district councils during the hub installation.

Out of this partnership working, Oxfordshire County Council negotiated a year-long trial of electric car clubs at a selection of the Park and Charge hubs and Oxford City’s Redbridge Park and Ride. The car club operators would provide the EVs at their own risk. EZ-Charge and the city / districts would dedicate particular parking spaces and charge points for their use. I applied for and won some University of Oxford internal seed funding to support the trial and develop a roadmap for evaluation and maximising outcomes. All involved would promote the new car clubs through their various outreach channels.

A live experiment is underway. These car clubs are innovative in not only being all-electric, but also in being located in towns and villages, away from the dense urban areas where most car clubs are found. Data is being collected on membership, utilisation, and bookings for the car clubs, and energy utilisation at the dedicated charge points. Mini-surveys provide some insight into user motivations and preferences. A public event in May offered publicity to the trial with a more personal touch. In-depth discussions were held with car sharing advocates from Eynsham and Thame, and with two independent car club organisers in Hook Norton and Banbury, who have developed alternative business models.

The trial is half way through the promised year, and already we have insights to share. The availability of electric cars is attractive to potential customers, who say they prefer commercially-run or community car clubs to peer-to-peer options. The most successful electric car clubs in the trial are in towns where car clubs already existed locally or nearby – Henley, at Redbridge, and Abingdon. Eynsham has also taken off surprisingly quickly, perhaps because of the community interest already in place. The trial car club is not attracting many customers in Banbury, perhaps because of the local competition, and negotiations are underway to shift the operations.

A further research-led project is scheduled for spring 2024 to answer policy questions such as: Are the frequency of bookings and number of unique users of these trial car clubs lower than in city car clubs, but the duration of rentals higher, as data on existing Co-Wheels vehicles in areas with lower population density and higher vehicle ownership suggests? Is the utilisation sufficient to support retaining the trial car clubs and perhaps expanding into other towns and villages? Will car club charge point utilisation help support EZ-Charge’s business model, and encourage other charge point operators to welcome car clubs? Do the electric car clubs make electric driving more affordable and accessible?

These questions can be answered as our partnership continues learning by doing.