Electric transport hire public survey shows potential for future scheme
Released On 28th Jun 2021
South Somerset District Council is committed to be carbon neutral by 2030, and during the last financial year, the council delivered over 40 green projects which included the roll out of three Rapid Chargers in three of the SSDC car parks closest to the A303 and the roll out of the DfT e-scooter trials in Yeovil, Crewkerne and Chard.
To complement these projects, a survey was undertaken to find out the potential for an electric car and bike sharing scheme.
Existing electric car and bike sharing initiatives across the UK are already proving successful, and we wanted to find out if this could benefit our communities as another great way to provide cleaner air, reduce carbon emissions and increase the share-economy. Shared electric car and bike schemes are proving to save drivers money, reduce congestion and pollution. They’re also helping to reduce car ownership, as many electric car/e-bike-share scheme members are finding the ease of hiring an electric vehicle is much more cost efficient and better for the environment than owning one they rarely need to use.
We wanted to find out how South Somerset residents felt about an electric car and e-bike sharing scheme and recently conducted a survey with Co-Cars to measure interest and what demand might be.
A total of 192 people responded of which 172 were residents, 17 were businesses and the remainder were a resident with a business. Of these, 88% owned petrol or diesel cars with 8.3% owning an electric car or hybrid. The survey results showed the following views: -
On a scale of one to ten (one being not interested, 10 being extremely interested) the average score was 7.7 where respondents said they would be interested in joining such a scheme, with a score of 6.6 agreeing with the vision that the electric car club should be locally owned & community-supported. Overall, 60% said they would use the scheme for shopping, running errands and day trips. Over 20% said they could see themselves using the service several times a week and almost 30% thought they’d book an electric-car or electric-bike at least once a week. 81 people said they thought this scheme could enable them to not buy or own a car and 70 people were interested in an electric-bike scheme with another 48 saying they might be.
Based on these results, there may be viability for an electric car and bike share scheme trial to happen in South Somerset which may be dependent on on-street charging coming in to the residential areas. Some electric-car share schemes include the charging infrastructure, and hopefully the next step of the County EV Charging Strategy will start to identify suitable on street charging installations to support community access to EVs. If you missed taking part in the survey but are interested in an electric car and bike share scheme please email ssdcenvironment@southsomerset.gov.uk
Councillor Sarah Dyke, South Somerset District Council portfolio holder for Environment, said: “The results of the electric vehicle sharing survey are very encouraging, and will be invaluable for opportunities to create local electric vehicle sharing schemes. We are committed to be carbon neutral by 2030, and finding solutions to accessible, sustainable transport will play a big part in achieving this.”
