Who needs a second car? (I do)

So where to start I guess; Most families and most households, if you're more than one person need a second car every now and again. Let's take out the environmental consequences of having a second car and just put in the costs. A car costs, at the cheapest about ￡2k a year to run; insurance ￡500~, then you've got petrol on top of that maybe another ￡500 depending on how much you drive maybe ￡1k. Then you've got the depreciation of the vehicle, MOT, Tax and then if anything goes wrong with the vehicle as well. Add those costs together ￡2k is a minimum amount.

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Now we as a family obviously think about the environmental impact of having a second car and our first car, our family car is an electric vehicle; Skoda Enyaq. As we know when looking at the whole life cycle analysis of an electric car, particularly as we only charge on renewable networks -? it is a third of a petrol/diesel equivalent. Not having a second car brings our footprint down even further on a day to day basis.

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When moving to this small town on the outskirts of Edinburgh one of the things that struck me is we needed to have a car club in our local town. It turns out we actually have a car club! - Enterprise Car Club. I looked into the costs of it. It costs ￡10 per year in order to register. One uploads their driving license. Once approved and they have verified you, you are able to use the car club. Download the app so you can unlock the car through the app. You also lock the car through the app! You pay for the petrol with the credit card that's in the car and you use the car key that's in the car all the time, It is such an easy process.

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This Saturday just been; 20 April 2024 was my inaugural trip in the car club. My other half wanted to go walking in the mountains, so she went off with a mate and went for a walk up Monroe. I had to take the kids to music and to rugby tots and then back home. A simple cycle to and from the car. I rented the car from 8:00 in the morning until 13:00 in the afternoon; bearing in mind this all works as long as the car is available; if the car isn't available there are other places around near you that you'll be able to rent a car. It all went really really well for us, and it cost ￡40 for 4 hours and about 30 miles, this includes the petrol. In my opinion ￡40 is worth it, both environmentally and financially. Why are we not all doing this?

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You could rent one of those four or five times a month and that would still be cheaper than having a second car. So you really can just use it whenever you want. I think the more we all get into the habit of using a car club; the much better it is for our own pockets but also equally for sustainability as a whole. It's a simple, yet effective way for us to manage our impact on a day-to-day basis within our household so hopefully you'll all go off and join a car club instead of having a second car?

#enterprisecarclub #skoda #CarClub #SustainableLiving #CarbonFootprint

Enterprise ?koda Auto