Share our cars

Share Our Cars Share Our Cars Emily Kerr - Share Our Cars

Most people agree that Climate Change

means they should probably use their car a bit less.

But what people systematically underestimate is quite how large the effect of owning and driving a car is. The average guess is that owning a car emits the equivalent carbon per year of about 2-4 flights to Rome.

The actual answer is 20.

And at least 25% of your car’s lifetime emissions were generated before it left the factory, so if you own a car and don’t use it much it is still terrible for the environment.

Back in 2019, the Science Select Committee told MPs that ‘widespread personal vehicle ownership does not appear to be compatible with significant decarbonisation’. And yet few leaders are politically brave enough to openly repeat this obvious fact – we need fewer cars, not just newer cars.

Cars are also expensive – a recent article in Nature showed that people systematically underestimate the costs of car ownership by more than 50%; in fact the average cost in the UK of owning a car is more than £300 per month, or closer to £450 per month for leased models.

So private car ownership is expensive and bad for the environment, but what are the alternatives?

Well, that’s where car-sharing comes in. There are many businesses trying to help people move away from private car ownership. Companies such as Liftshare work with large employers using data mapping to suggest employees who can ride-share together to work. Car-sharing platforms such as UK’s Hiyacar (‘airbnb for cars’) and the US’s Turo allow people to make money from their cars, managing all the bookings and insurance via an easyto-use app.

Car clubs like Co-wheels, Zipcar, and Enterprise allow people to easily book and borrow cars from specific locations. And of course Taxi firms are also a really important part of the solution, especially those running modern and well-used fleets.

I now live in Oxford – with my husband, an academic who was also at BGS with me.

Last summer, I came up with the concept of ‘closed loops’, because I realised there were a lot of cars on the street and thought it should be possible to get neighbours to share their cars with each other. This is a new way of car-sharing: we are using Hiyacar’s platform, but they have ring-fenced our neighbourhood so only people part of the community can see and share each other’s cars.

My family has recently sold our own car, and we just borrow the neighbours’ when we need one. We will lease an EV for two months over the summer holidays (with three kids under the age of six it’s handy for holidays) but I don’t see us owning one again in the future.

To create a viable alternative to private car ownership, we need a high density of cars available for drivers to borrow – a shared car on every corner.

If you need to own a car, you can help right now by making it available for others to borrow when you’re not using it. And as more people start sharing their cars, and as the cost of living and driving go up, you may start to find you could reduce the number of cars your household owns.

Emily Kerr is the founder of Share Our Cars, a campaign encouraging people to rethink car ownership.

Emily Kerr

(1990-1997)

www.shareourcars.com www.shareourcars.com www.shareourcars.com