Ford’s Go!Drive, one of the company’s 29 mobility experiments around the world, has moved into its second phase in London having trialled a scheme for six months with 100 selected members.
It has initially established 13 hubs which, by the middle of summer, will reach around 20, with 50 cars at mainline stations and selected residential areas.
Cars, either a one litre Fiesta or fully electric Focus, can be called up on demand via a mobile app which asks where you want to collect the car and where it will be dropped off, to guarantee a parking space. The app then serves to unlock and lock the car with a pin number.
Telematics within the vehicle also supply Ford with data such as where a car is at any given time and, importantly, how much fuel/electric charge it has. Technicians tour the capital making sure the vehicles are topped up and that they are clean and undamaged.
The charge for use is currently set at GBP0.17 (US$0.25) per minute although Alicia Agius, Go!Drive project lead, said the scheme is still very much in the experiment stage.
The second stage, which began in early April, will run through the summer. “We are looking closer at the usage to see what journeys people are making, how much time they need the car for, whether they prefer electric or petrol.
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By GlobalData“This will give us a much better feel for pricing structure and whether we would roll out a day rate, or even a weekend rate, for example. It will also give us an idea as to whether people prefer to pre book or pick up a car on demand.”
There has been no big advertisement campaign for Go!Drive in London, new members of the scheme are currently finding it through internet search engines and are signing up at a rate of around 5-10 a day, said Agius.
She added: “We are hoping to have more than 2,000 people by the end of this phase in September. By then we hope to looking at other areas such as multi modality and how Go!Drive can work with other mobility projects.”