Co-founder of Streetcar Brett Akker said: "Members of our club are expected to rise to a quarter of a million by the year 2012 as more people recognise the environmental benefits and cost savings of joining a car club. "Once they have joined we want to offer the best possible service and our members will be the first Europeans to use this electric technology to hire a car." From only £5.95 an hour a new specially adapted Toyota Prius, which cost £36,000 to make, is available to hire. This adapted Toyota Prius is known as an ‘Amberjac’ and will become one of Streetcar's 1,200 pay-as-you-go vehicles for the club’s 58,000 members. If the experiment proves successful with Streetcar club members, organisers aim to roll out more electrically powered cars across London in order to meet demand.
The Welsh government has been revealed to have spent £5 million on car hire over the last five years. The details came to light after the Welsh Liberal Democrats leader Kirsty Williams used a Freedom of Information request on car hire expenses.
She said: "The Labour-Plaid Government knows very well that spending this amount of money on civil service travel is outrageous".
A spokesperson for the assembly government said: "We are actively considering how we can reduce both the financial and the environmental cost of existing car hire arrangements".
The spokesperson added that Welsh officials worked in sites right across the country and had to travel regularly to meet various companies and organisations.