Greenwheels placed the two-thousandth car sharing in the Netherlands in 2020, in the year that the company also celebrated its 25th anniversary. A result to be proud of. But Greenwheels is far from grown. Most Greenwheels shared cars can be found in Randstad, with Amsterdam as the leader. But the company is working hard on an advance outside the Randstad area.
Director Andrew Berkhout: “Our promise is a shared car for everyone. So we also look outside the big cities where there is a need for shared cars. ”
The new year has only just started, but Greenwheels continues to grow. In the first quarter of 2021, the company expects to place 120 new cars throughout the country. In the past year, the company comfortably exceeded the threshold of 2.000 shared cars. To be precise, 31 Greenwheels shared cars drove around the Netherlands on 2.050 December. Shared cars that companies use exclusively for their employees are not included, these were 787 cars. In the year 2020, 313 new shared cars were installed. The number of Greenwheels users also increased significantly (35%). Among existing users, Greenwheels saw the average duration of a trip increase significantly (27%), as did the number of kilometers of a trip (9%), partly due to corona.
Also outside the Randstad growth for partial transport
Some of the 313 newly placed shared cars were parked in municipalities where several Greenwheels shared cars were already driving. For example, 46 cars were placed in Rotterdam, 44 in The Hague and no fewer than 70 shared cars in Utrecht. But many new municipalities were also added, such as Sneek, Harlingen, Leimuiden, Weert, Stein, Oosterhout (NB), Beek-Ubbergen and Doorn. Greenwheels is therefore also growing outside the Randstad area, in order to be able to serve the whole of the Netherlands with partial transport.
Serving outdoor areas
In the early years, the company grew especially fast in the large cities, where shared transport has contributed to mobility issues for many years. In cities, cars take up a lot of public space, space that can also be used for other things. Greenwheels wants to make cities more livable by reducing the number of cars on the streets. Research * (* Source: Goudappel Coffeng research December 2018.) shows that every Greenwheels car installed causes 11 cars to disappear from the street. Greenwheels reports this on them website.
Andrew Berkhout: “We only place a shared car on the street if we use it to get other cars off the street. It must make sense to place a car. So far it has mainly made sense in urban areas. But if we want to live up to our promise, 'a car for everyone', then we must also serve those rural areas 2, where the demand for shared transport is also increasing. Operationally, this requires more of us, for example we have our cars washed by colleagues on an electric cargo bike in the larger cities. In less densely populated areas, such matters require different solutions due to the greater distances. But we also want to fulfill our pioneering role there, by expanding to new areas and by stimulating the Dutch even more to participate in the sharing culture ”.
Photo above: Image bank Greenwheels.
Also read: The Greenwheels car-sharing company celebrates its 25th anniversary
