Life after Zipcar: run the car club on vehicles you control
Zipcar closed its UK operation at the end of December 2025, following Getaround, Karshare and Ubeeqo out of the market. If your organisation relied on a car club that has gone (or you are wary of relying on the ones that remain), there is a model that cannot leave you stranded: your own vehicles, running as the shared fleet.
Why the car clubs left, and why it matters for what you choose next
The operators that exited all shared one feature: they owned the metal. Depreciation, weak EV resale values, insurance, parking and permit costs, and congestion charging all sat on their balance sheets, and when those costs rose faster than utilisation, the model stopped working. Members and partner organisations lost their scheme overnight, through no fault of their own.
Kerbway is built the other way round. We own no vehicles. We put keyless access, in-app booking and full reporting on the fleet you already run, owned or leased (or sourced through our vehicle-supply partners), run it as a service in the Kerbway app, and leave control exactly where it was: with you. The cost shocks that broke the car-club model cannot break a scheme that runs on your own assets.
Two models, one decision
The car-club model that just failed
- The operator owns the vehicles and carries the costs that forced the exits
- Their brand, their members, their pricing on your streets and sites
- You rent access; the data and the scheme belong to the operator
- If the economics stop working, the operator withdraws and the scheme vanishes
The Kerbway model
- Your vehicles, owned or leased: Kerbway is the technology and service layer
- One app for the whole fleet: keyless access, booking, driver checks, reporting
- You keep the data: utilisation, cost, CO2 and miles for every trip
- Open idle vehicles to staff out of hours and to the public, with car-sharing insurance, for revenue
From stranded to live again
Tell us what you had
Members, vehicles, bays, obligations. We map what the old scheme did so nothing is lost in the switch.
Fit keyless access to your fleet
We retrofit hardware-agnostic IoT to vehicles you own or lease, so there is no wait for an operator to allocate cars.
Go live under one app
Drivers verify once, then find, book and unlock from their phone. You watch utilisation, cost and CO2 from one dashboard.
Frequently asked questions
Why did Zipcar close in the UK?
Zipcar closed its UK operation at the end of December 2025. Like the operators that exited before it, it owned its vehicles, so depreciation, weak EV resale values, insurance and permit costs all sat on its balance sheet.
What is the alternative to a traditional car club?
Running the shared fleet on vehicles you own or lease. Kerbway supplies the app, keyless access, booking, driver checks and reporting: the same self-service experience, without an operator’s balance sheet in the middle.
We lost our scheme: how quickly can we be live again?
Weeks, not months. We map what the old scheme did, retrofit keyless access to vehicles you own or lease, and former members verify once in the app.
Could Kerbway withdraw the way Zipcar did?
The scheme is anchored to your assets, not ours: Kerbway owns no vehicles, so the scheme, the data and control of the fleet stay with you whatever happens.
Lost your car club? Let’s replace it properly.
Book a call and we’ll walk through what your old scheme did, what your own fleet could do instead, and how quickly it can be live.