Would you join an Electric car club?

What is an Electric Car Club? See an example for YouTube below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnfXMpXdD2k

50% of Hungarton Residents have completed a survey expressing their interest in Electric Car Clubs. Tilton residents are completing their survey. Now Houghton residents are invited to catch up with our own survey. Your Houghton on the Hill Residents Survey link is:

https://forms.gle/YqzVY15krJv7a3hJ9

The survey takes about 5 minutes to complete, but why should you? The basics of Electric car clubs can be summarised as:

• The community secures one or more electric cars (grant funding available).

• The cars are available to hire by members of the club, for a small fee, similar to bus-fares. Typical uses are going to work, shopping, attending appointments and social travel.

• Cars are booked on-line, collected from a central point and returned and plugged in to charge at the end of hire.

• Volunteers can use the cars to give lifts to other community members, comparable to Houghton Helpline.

• It is cheap, flexible transport for those who do not have a car.

• It is much cheaper than running a second car, for those who sometimes need one.

Experience from Electric Car Clubs across the country shows that one electric car can replace up to 20 conventional cars. Apart from the reduction in parking issues and pollution, this is a huge saving in the carbon footprint of the community. Clubs work best with multiple cars, providing more reliable availability, and can expand according to demand.

The survey, the first of its kind in the UK, aims to identify the need for electric car clubs that could help communities tackle the decline in public transport and reduce their carbon footprints. Green Fox Community Energy Co-operative (Green Fox), a Leicester and Leicestershire based community energy organisation have recently been working with Hungarton Parish Council.

Looking at the bigger picture, Green Fox would like to determine the number of community groups and Parish Councils across Leicestershire that might be interested in starting an electric car club for their community and explore ways in which the clubs could be delivered and supported. Given positive evidence of demand in the community, your Parish Council would consider how it might promote the project.

Ian Hill, Houghton Parish Council.