Low mileage, several careful renters ... will car-sharing ever get into top gear?

Spotify did it for music. Netflix did it for films. For people in big cities, the app economy promised to do the same for cars: making a life without ownership of a couple of tonnes of metal possible.

- Jasper Jolly

Businesses such as Zipcar, Enterprise Car Club and Share Now offer app-based car rental by the hour, while the likes of Hiyacar, Turo and Getaround have opened up the ability to rent neighbours' cars. During the Covid pandemic - and the easy money bubble - it seemed their time had come.

Yet there are signs the momentum is slowing. San Francisco-based Turo last month abandoned plans to float on the stock market. Getaround, based in the same city, announced it was shutting down its US car-sharing operations to focus on Europe. And the valuation of the US's Zipcar, the world's biggest car-sharing company, was quietly downgraded this month by its owner, Avis Budget.

This reporter's household is one of the 42% in London without a car. The public transport network in the capital has been good enough for long enough that tiresome people who insist owning a car is pointless in London were once the butt of a joke in the zombie comedy Shaun of the Dead back in 2004.

That film was made four years after Zipcar was founded and three years before Apple's iPhone paved the way for the mobility app revolution. Now there are enough shared cars in London to give residents several nearby options for electric cars to pop to the shops or vans for house moves.

Izzy Romilly, the sustainable transport manager for the green group Possible, has campaigned for a reduction in car use in cities, particularly by replacing shorter journeys with walking or cycling. "It can be quite daunting to give up your car," she says, but adds that people in cities who give up car ownership experience "unexpected benefits" including better health and less stress as they walk or cycle more.