The firm points to the results of a study performed this year in Vienna, which shows that one car sharing vehicle replaces five private vehicles on average. This results in a total saving of over 44 million private kilometers and 7 metric tons of CO2 through car sharing.

It adds that a survey of more than 4,000 car sharing users in London in April 2016 showed that car sharing can reduce private car ownership by around a third, and that the use of car sharing vehicles enables CO2 emissions to be reduced by more than 30%. 

Sebastian Hofelich, managing director of DriveNow, said: “Car sharing makes an important contribution to the reduction of private car ownership and to the mitigation of urban traffic problems. From the start, our aim was to influence mobility in cities sustainably and to relieve the negative effects of traffic and emission.” 

The firm – whose fleet consists of 20% EVs with plans to extend this further – added that the reduction in CO2 emissions will be further strengthened by the growing share of electric vehicles in the fleet. 

“We are convinced that electric vehicles are the logical extension of the sustainable carsharing idea. Despite the frequent lack of electric infrastructure in previous years, DriveNow has proactively offered one of the easiest accesses to electromobility for a broad target group,” said Nico Gabriel of DriveNow.