E-Car Club (Mixed-use Electric Vehicle Car Sharing System - Prototype Development Project)

E-Car is the UK’s first entirely electric pay-per-use car club, developed to provide members of
carefully selected communities across the UK with access to full-sized electric cars by the
hour.
Pilot operations commenced in September 2012 and have proven to be an operational success
with over 5000 journeys completed and high levels of customer satisfaction in both consumerled
and business-led (i.e. fleet replacement) schemes. Conventional car clubs have a primary
focus on consumers. E-Car is pursuing a differentiated strategy through focussing on areawide
schemes which combine fleet replacement schemes for corporates, councils and other
public sector bodies with private usage.
The recently completed TSB Proof of Concept pilot developed and demonstrated the electric
car scheduling algorithms which maximised vehicle utilisation by blending weekday business
use with evening and weekend private use. These proprietary algorithms allowed required
levels of vehicle availability to be maintained for both user groups through a combination of
demand matching, smart vehicle allocation and adaptive charging cycles.
However, existing car club IT systems for these mixed-use operations do not operate
effectively with an electric fleet; the recent pilot required manual workarounds that will prove
unviable as the company scales operations.
This development of prototype project aims to iteratively develop and test a new scheduling
and vehicle management system which will allow vehicles to be allocated efficiently at higher
utilisation levels whilst still maintaining the requisite levels of availability.
Successful completion of the project will not only allow E-Car to scale commercial operations
but also accelerate deployment of electric vehicles for business and personal use, support the
development of the UK’s EV supply chain, reduce carbon and particulate emissions, and have
a profound impact on local mobility.