City dwellers of London, Brighton, Southampton, Cambridge, Maidstone and Guildford pay attention - we may have found you a cheaper and greener way of getting behind the wheel. For everyone else, well, this is still worth knowing because Streetcar - already the UK's biggest car rental club - has plans to spread nationwide.
Although it's been established for nearly four years, has 16,000 members and is particularly popular in London, we'd never heard of Streetcar. So for anyone else who doesn't know, it's a self-service car rental club which costs from £4.00 per hour and has 600 vehicles at 400 different locations around the city. These locations vary from on-road parking bays provided by the council, to NCP car park spaces and even private driveways. They're all listed on www.streetcar.co.uk and the chances are there'll be one within walking distance of your house.
It's a big deal because it cures all the headaches of car ownership in the city - you don't have to pay for insurance, worry about storage or deal with the maintenance of your own car. And they won't put you in an old banger either. Streetcar only uses Volkswagens - usually diesel Golfs - but there are also ultra-efficient Polo Bluemotions and a few vans available too, and all are less than a year old.
You book time with your closest car online, and use a special swipe card with a PIN to access it 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Unlike conventional car rental firms, it's all automated, so there's no one to meet, no thousand pound damage deposits, no birth certificates or passports to be photocopied and you can have the car for as little as half an hour.
