UK's City Car Club Gets iPhone Application

More and more cities around the world are looking for ways to reduce the amount of smog created by their citizenry. Getting rid of single occupancy cars is one way that cities like New York and London have landed on in the last few years. Thanks to new M2M technology that has given people more access than ever before to a wide variety of cars, cities like London have managed to come up with a new kind of car sharing program.

 The City Car Club is one such car-sharing program that is taking the program to the next level. The City Car Club is UK’s largest independent car sharing organization that currently boasts more than 29,000 members. The program allows for cars and vans to be made available in more than 16 different cities around the United Kingdom. These cars can be rented for the equivalent of $6 an hour including fuel.

 The program allows for citizens to choose something rather than actually owning a car, if they don’t normally find themselves in need of ownership. This is basically a program that makes it slightly easier to get around town than taking a cab.

 Now the program has gotten incorporation of a new iPhone app that will make using the City Car Club that much easier.  The addition of the application makes booking a car that much easier, since all booking is done online. After booking, members swipe their membership cards over the telematics hardware near the corner of the windshield. That telematics device then sends a signal to City Car Club headquarters, which then unlocks the car.

 The application not only allows booking using an iPhone, but the car that has been booked can also be locked and unlocked using the app. The iPhone application will also help find the nearest City Car Club location and notify members how to get there. The application will also notify a member when their booking is about to start and can offer up the ability to extend the booking time. The iPhone application is available now and an Android application is in the works.