Sharing Knowledge about Sharing EVs: A Policy to Pursue

The ultimate goal of this collaboration is to demonstrate the ‘success factors’ of EV car clubs in towns and villages, their potential to reduce car ownership / use in more car-dependent communities, and how they are best supported by policymakers. By synthesising evidence from the electric car club trial in Oxfordshire and data secured from an operator working in various smaller communities nationally, as well as developing relationships with other policymakers, operators and communities with shared EV projects, this project aims to give local policymakers and car club operators confidence to support and scale shared EVs in smaller settlements. 

An electric car club trial was set up at a number of the public car-park-based charging hubs across Oxfordshire that were installed as part of the Park and Charge project. Following ongoing discussions between the Park and Charge partners, the policy partner at Oxfordshire County Council negotiated with car club operators to trial electric car clubs in over half the Park and Charge hubs, plus Redbridge Park and Ride in coordination with Oxford City Council. Dr Hannah Budnitz won funding from the OPEN Seed Fund to support the launch, map public interest and identify data sources for monitoring that were included in MOUs, including car club utilisation, charge point utilisation by the car club vehicles, and membership. 

Dr Hannah Budnitz will use the collected monitoring data, as well as data from the main car club operator on their car clubs nationally, which has been shared to allow benchmarking to evaluate the trial as it reaches its conclusion in April 2024. An event will then be held at the University with all partners, operators, community groups from around Oxfordshire and other interested parties to help all those involved in EV sharing across Oxfordshire and those who have expressed interest to learn together and consider the lessons from related projects, as well as the trial after almost a year of operation. 

Dr Hannah Budnitz and the policy partners will also run a workshop at the Transport Practitioners’ Meeting in Manchester in July 2024 to help other policymakers and practitioners around the country understand how electric car clubs might work in their towns and villages.