Aberdeen Car Club

Overview

This consultation seeks to help inform the next Aberdeen Car Club contract. Aberdeen City’s Car Club - launched in 2012 - provides pay as you go, on-street car rental to the people of Aberdeen. This affords members access to vehicles without requiring ownership of a private car.  

The current contract, to run a Car Club in Aberdeen using the on-street bays provided by the Council, was won by Co-wheels in 2017 for a period of up to 5 years, comes to an end on 31st March 2022. We are therefore looking to tender the next contract this year, with bidders invited to bid to run the service from 1st April 2022. 

To inform the specification for the next contract, we are inviting members of the public and organisations to comment on the car club operation in Aberdeen, to find out what works well, what could be improved and whether there are other things which people would like to see incorporated into Aberdeen’s Car Club. We are just as keen to hear from members about their experience as we are from those who haven’t joined up to see if anything could encourage greater membership. In addition to the service run by Co-wheels, we are aware that other car clubs operate in Aberdeen from other locations and we are keen to hear about these too. 

This consultation runs until 24th October.  

In this context, a car club gives you access to a vehicle without needing to own one. Users join the club and then book the car on a “pay as you go” basis. Typically, car club vehicles can be booked from as little as 30 minutes at a time all the way up to around 2 weeks. Users typically pay an hourly rate and are sometimes charged per mile to cover the cost of the fuel. Insurance, maintenance and breakdown cover are all included. Vehicles are usually picked up from a designated parking bay or zone and usually have to be brought back to the same location. When we refer to car clubs, this is the model we mean.

This model is often known as “car sharing” in continental Europe.

Car clubs in this sense also differ from “owners clubs” or “drivers clubs” where people meet up with fellow car owners and go for drives.

To find out more about what a car club is, and the current Aberdeen operation, please go to www.co-wheels.org.uk  

What happens next

Following the closure of this consultation, all comments will be considered and used to inform the writing of the forthcoming tender.