Car & Away: Voi and Karshare Team Up to Encourage Car Sharing and Micromobility in Bristol

At Karshare we understand the importance of not only sharing cars, but the importance of switching shorter car journeys for alternate modes of transport as well. Our key mission is to help create a world where we never have more cars than we need, and it’s because of this that we’re very proud to be partnering with Voi in Bristol.

Who Are Voi and What Do They Do?

Voi’s mission is to provide sustainable and inclusive last-mile mobility solutions, enabling people to move freely while at the same time helping cities reach their 2030 climate goal.

They do this by providing shared Voi e-scooters and e-bikes to cities across Europe where residents can easily rent these using the Voi app. They were the 1st European scooter operator and have created a growing community of over 6,000,000 riders already. Voi partner with cities and communities to champion a transition towards shared, multimodal and zero-emission mobility, which is where Karshare comes in.

How Do Voi and Karshare Work Together?

Voi recently stated that 39% of their users are replacing short car journeys with an e-scooter or e-bike, which was music to our ears. By encouraging people to switch out shorter car journeys for alternative modes of transport, this means that a shared car can be used by someone else for a journey where a car is needed.

For instance, if you’re a car owner on the Karshare platform and have a long rental coming up, you can look to use alternate modes of transport during that period of time where your car is being rented by someone else. Ian, a car owner in Bristol has said “If we’ve got a good rental coming up, it means we have to think of something different – whether that’s jumping on a scooter or cycling.” So rather than canceling the rental and missing out on earning some money from sharing his car, Ian has chosen to increase his use of alternate modes of transport instead, using services like Voi!

On the flip side, if you use Karshare to rent cars from your community, then you might find yourself needing to get to that car’s location - this is where Voi comes in handy. Voi lets you pick up their e-scooters and park them in one of Voi’s hundreds of parking zones dotted across the city. This means you can easily hop on and scoot your way over to the Karshare car, park your Voi scooter and start your car rental journey.

Discounts for Bristol Residents

If you’ve walked around Bristol city centre recently, you’ll have likely spotted a bright coral Voi scooter on your journey! An estimated 900,000 of the 2.5 million Voi journeys in Bristol have replaced short car journeys, contributing towards the reduction of an estimated 480 tonnes of CO2. Having a big community of car sharers in Bristol, Karshare is excited to promote this partnership to Bristol residents, making their car-sharing journey easier and more sustainable.

E-scooters cost £1 to unlock and 20p for every minute used, but you can also purchase daily passes should you want to use the scooter for a longer length of time.

Voi are offering Karshare renters who join Voi 15 minutes of free riding with the code KARSHARE15MIN. If you’re already signed up to use Voi, then you won’t be missing out as you can receive 20% off your next ride using code KARSHARE20.

We’re very excited to be teaming up with Voi in Bristol. Together, we hope to alter the way that car ownership is viewed and make the switch to car sharing easier through the use of micromobility.

Find out more about Voi Scooters here.

About Car & Away

Car & Away are a peer to peer car sharing platform who launched at, and in collaboration with, London Gatwick Airport in December 2017. Car & Away enables car owners to make money from their car whilst it is parked at airports by renting it out to incoming passengers. The business has been launched at London Gatwick Airport, working in partnership with Gatwick Airport Ltd, Rentalcars.com, Octo, RAC, and Allianz.

Car & Away are creating a 'virtual car park' for Gatwick. This allows airports to re-sell car parking spaces at times of peak capacity and so avoid the CAPEX costs of building a new car park. This is ’smart parking’ in every sense; recycling car park spaces and in parallel reducing the need for traditional rental car fleets.

With a score of 9.8/10 Car &Away is rated number one (out of 76) on Trustpilot in the parking category and number 3 (out of 176) in the car rental category. Car & Away was selected for Founders Factory’s travel tech accelerator program, backed by easyJet.