PricewaterhouseCoopers
next month plans to deploy two electric cars at its London offices from by
Hertz car-sharing subsidiary Connect by Hertz. PwC head of business services
Mark Avery told BTN the vehicles are
intended to reduce taxi journeys as part of the firm's sustainable travel program.
Avery
said he has been examining the idea of car-sharing for more than two years and
now considers it commercially viable as well as environmentally desirable. "We
will have the first corporate electric car club in the United Kingdom," he
said. "We only need to replace two taxi journeys a day to make it
cost-effective. When we looked at schemes like this before, the numbers didn't
stack up."
As part
of the pilot program, PwC will install electric charging points for the
vehicles at its offices on both sides of the River Thames. PwC personnel also
will be able to use 16 charging stations in London opened in April by Connect
by Hertz when it first made electric vehicles available to the public. In
addition, PwC personnel can use another 150 charging points announced on
Wednesday by London Mayor Boris Johnson, part of a plan called Source London.
In all, there are currently 400 charging points in the U.K. capital. The mayor
plans by 2013 to increase the number to 1,300, meaning London would have more
electric charging points than petrol stations.
Connect
by Hertz said it is offering more of its U.K. corporate and university
customers the opportunity to add electric vehicles and charging stations to
their pool fleets. It charges an hourly rental rate of £4 for electric cars,
including insurance, maintenance, cleaning and roadside assistance. There also
is an annual membership rate of £50, currently waived for a limited period.