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United Kingdom Transportation

Zipcar To End UK Operations (bbc.co.uk) 47

Posted by BeauHD from the end-of-an-era dept.
"The car-sharing company, first launched in the U.S. in 2000, has been active in the UK since 2010 and has just under half a million members," writes Slashdot reader guesstral. "'I'm writing to let you know that we are proposing to cease the UK operations of Zipcar,' wrote Zipcar UK's general manager, James Taylor, in an email to members today. He went on to say that Zipcar will temporarily suspend new bookings after December 31, pending the outcome of a consultation with its 71 staff members." From the BBC: In its most recent company accounts for 2024, Zipcar blamed the "cost of living crisis," which was affecting UK customers, for revenues falling to 46 million pounds to 53 million the year before, while its after-tax losses had widened to 11.6 million pounds. According to the same accounts, Zipcar membership fees cover the cost of fuelling or charging the vehicle and, as energy costs continued to rise last year, it has added to financial pressures on the company. The company would also be liable for the incoming congestion charge in London that is expanding to include electric vehicles from 26 December, although this was not referenced in Zipcar's email to membership or company accounts.

Zipcar To End UK Operations More | Reply

Zipcar To End UK Operations

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  • Because I've never heard of Zipcar or what they do.

    • Re:Perhaps they should have tried advertising. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by XXongo ( 3986865 ) on Monday December 01, 2025 @05:47PM (#65828969) Homepage
      It's a pity; I loved Zipcar when I lived in Boston a decade or two back. I could live without a car for weeks, but if I wanted one for an hour or an afternoon, two clicks on the app and I got one.

      Moved away, though, and haven't used them since.

      • I never understood how they overcame the peak use problem. Either you have to have enough cars for your peak times, in which case they will be sitting just as idle other times and are thus just as expensive anyway, or as a customer your are risking that they may not have a car when you need one. Mathematically there doesn't seem to be any way around it.

        • There is no "peak" time here. People aren't using this for their morning commute. They are using them for relatively rare trips which usually don't massively align with others. Mathematically there simply is no problem, not unless someone decides to create a "hardware store day" where everyone without a car suddenly needs one to go buy a bunch of 2x4.

          • I'm thinking a lot more people want them on sunny weekend than stormy ones.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by TWX ( 665546 )

              This is a guess but it's based on how people were when I was in college. The market for these would be people who occasionally need a car for something where they cannot borrow one or where they cannot get a friend to provide a lift.

              For a short-duration trip where this service makes sense, that's probably going to be a chore or an appointment. The chore could be shopping where hand-carrying isn't practical and where the shopping needs to be done in-person and delivery isn't practical or available. For ap

      • While Zipcar may be a curiosity in the USA, it's just one of several car-sharing platforms in London. It's very much not a unique service there.

  • If _sharing_ cars is so expensive... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ffkom ( 3519199 ) on Monday December 01, 2025 @05:44PM (#65828961)
    ... that it "falls victim to a cost of living crisis", then maybe something was severely wrong with the business model to begin with. Sharing cars should be substantially cheaper than "owning one's own" - if it is not, then why would anyone want to "share" it with strangers?
    • It's costs a fortune to own a car in the UK. Zipcar was still substantially cheaper, and yet still too expensive. The UK is fucked right now and it's not getting any better.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ledow ( 319597 )

        Horseshit.

        I spent decades never spending more than a couple of hundred GBP (Slashdot Classic still ddoesn't let me type £ properly... see?) on a car, then throwing it away and buying a new one when the MOT failed. They often lasted years.

        What now everyone can afford to do is BUY IT FROM NEW or lease the damn thing. Both are ridiculously expensive ways to "own" a car. Honestly, that's a modern disease thinking that you have to lease the thing, with balloon payments no less, and then have it se

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ledow ( 319597 )

          *what NOT everyone can afford to do...

        • horseshit my friend. The UK second hand market is knackered. Those 'cheap' cars you used to buy are now all hoovered up by webuyanycar/BCA The cost of VED is ridiculous since they changed the rules. Major cities now cost £60 to visit since LEZ zones are in place. Car insurance LOL have you priced it up recently ? And fuel ? Sure you might be someone who can fix a car, doesn't live near a LEZ zone. Well you weren't the target for zip car then.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Their model seems to be people who don't use a car enough to warrant owning one, but want the convenience of having access to one and are willing to pay a premium for it.

      • Their model seems to be people who don't use a car enough to warrant owning one, but want the convenience of having access to one and are willing to pay a premium for it.

        Premium? As a (former I suppose) member, it was very much the not premium option, rather the cheap option. For occasional use, way cheaper than owning a car, way cheaper for odd jobs than hiring one too. Also hiring cars is an obnoxious pain in the arse on the whole.

    • ... that it "falls victim to a cost of living crisis", then maybe something was severely wrong with the business model to begin with. Sharing cars should be substantially cheaper than "owning one's own" - if it is not, then why would anyone want to "share" it with strangers?

      OK, not being an Angry Individualist American On The Internet(tm) I'm not pathologically allergic to "strangers". With that aside, it is a lot cheaper. The alternative to zipcar is generally speaking not using a car at all. The alternati

      • just remember that fully one third of Americans do not have a license,

        I have to seriously question this stat you put up....especially if you are talking about real American Citizens....

        But even so, not having a license doesn't necessarily keep one from driving....

        We have a LOT of folks in the US without a lot of proper documentation or licensing driving around these days....

    • I think you don't understand the concept of a "crisis". Sharing cars is subject to a subscription service, and in a place with generally excellent car free mobility it becomes an optional expense.

      The cost of living crisis has hit many things in the UK, Netflix subscriptions, internet, phone replacement, eating out, entertainment, type of stuff bought. The second hand market is booming. The optional expenses (which for most this service is) are plummeting. Hell the only one really making a profit are those p

  • I suspect competition from other modes (Score:4, Interesting)

    by shilly ( 142940 ) on Monday December 01, 2025 @06:09PM (#65829017)

    In the last decade, we’ve had massively improved cycling infrastructure and also the rise of scooters, e-bikes and Lime and similar bikes, along with Uber. I think each of those will have eaten away at Zipcar rides.

    A shame, bc Zipcar filled a niche, but if they can’t make the number add up, then not a surprise

    • Looks like Turo is available in the UK as well, I dunno if it's as popular as in the US but they kinda stole their whole bit!

      • Zipcar can be rented for very short periods of time (an hour or so) while Turo's minimum is a day or more.

    • Zipcar didn't make it out of London. London has, as you say, umpteen other options, so the times you *need* a zipcar instead of one of those options is (say) when you've got a big supermarket shop (that you couldn't get online), or you need to take some stuff to the tip (that you couldn't get AnyJunk to do for you). There's the problem - for every *need* of a car, there's an alternative that might work about as well, so it's really only the exceptions that work.

      Contrast to the towns outside London (like whe

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by shilly ( 142940 )

        I could see why a CIC could make this work. The main problem outside London is that populations are less concentrated, and there's relatively less money (bc London is so disproportionately wealthy compared to the rest of the country). And while these services ought to appeal to people wanting to save money through switching from ownership to a PAYG model, I don't think that's what happens in practice.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by TWX ( 665546 )

          Honestly the reason to use such a service in lieu of owning a car is a combination of the day-to-day lack of need to own a car based on how one lives and wants to live, not having a safe, reliable place to store a car when not using it, and the general expenses of owning a car over the term.

          In the country or the suburbs, one's day-to-day life might well require using a car if one is going to be able to really go anywhere, at least in a reasonable amount of time. Likewise one might well have plenty of space

  • Figure out who is reaping the benefits from the cost of living crisis facing the UK, US, CA, and others.

    Close or nationalise their harmful "business" and get average people back on track to prosperity and improving the quality of life for each successive generation. Because not doing that is dumb, it's a path straight to revolution.

    • You aren't going to like the answer. The economy needs two things, capital and labour. It produces two things, consumption and more capital. Don't look at the wealth distribution. That's the ownership of the means of production. Honestly do you think your company would produce more or less if it was run by the government?

      The crisis is because the boomers figured out how to funnel all the consumption to them. They did this by restricting new house building to push the value of their homes up. They

      • Elon Musk doesn't eat 2000x what you eat, his vacations and housing isn't 1000x yours. He took nearly every penny from Zip2 and invested in what would become paypal. He then took most of that money and invested it in Tesla (and a little in SpaceX and some other ventures). If you had a magic wand to turn his and every Billionaire in the USA's wealth (5.7T) into consumption that would cover the US federal deficit for almost 3 years. But you would also lose all the means of production those people owned. All the jobs they employ.

        I agree with a lot what you said but this is a false choice. Those jobs, those companies and that capital doesn't dispensary when Elon Musk is'nt a billionaire and only is still a very wealthy man. Even using him as an example. The $44B for Twitter, did he take the majority or even a plurality of his own wealth to do it? No, he went out and found investors and took out loans against his wealth (which are tax loopholes) who then funded that. Same with all his ventures and really any billionaire, it's one

      • Elon is that you?

      • They did this by restricting new house building to push the value of their homes up.

        I don't get this where you and other post this......I see new houses and neighborhoods being built up ALL over the places I live and visit here in the US.

        There is a fuck ton of land around and people are building houses in masses.....

        the US is HUGE...maybe you need to get out a bit and travel outside your 20 mile circle you currently burrow down into.....?

    • What if it's the government itself?

      • It's not though. But if it were, that's solvable through reforms initiated with democratic representation. Assuming the people of the nation actually care enough to run their own government. Of course that only occurs when people actually have power and representation. Perhaps that can be solved by removing a class of people with more money than everyone else and who are getting much more "representation" than the average.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The UK just agreed a "deal" with the US where the cost of medication will rise by at least 25%. The cost of living crisis is not going away, it's getting worse.

  • I did the maths on the BBC article and it turned out that they made something like £76 REVENUE per customer per year. God knows what the actual profit was per customer. You'd literally do better just selling oranges by the side of the road.

    They were clearly just haemorraghing money from the start and it just never took off.

    I know of only one couple who ever used them and they lived a weird lifestyle. Lived in a stupidly expensive part of London and had to get a Zipcar or similar to even go gr

    • I suspect a lot of those 650k customers were just paying the monthly fee and rarely using the cars if the overall yearly revenue was only circa £50M. The local car club where I live is CoWheels and it seems to be doing ok and currently expanding, so there's definitely a market for this.

      The main limiting factor for car club coverage is population density. For it to work you really need a good few cars within a few minutes walk of your home, and have good public transport. I have 5 cars availa

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