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Gatwick Airport has partnered with electric car-sharing company BlueCity to make it easier for passengers and staff travelling to and from the airport.
The point-to-point service will allow BlueCity customers to collect vehicles from the airport and then drop them off at dedicated charging bays in and around London.
Five car-sharing-only charging points will be installed at the airport in the coming months, with five cars available initially, although a spokesman for the airport told BusinessCar extra vehicles can be added should demand exceed supply at any given time.
Gatwick claims the pay-as-you-go scheme is a first for a UK airport, and said it will help it to cut its carbon footprint in half by 2020 as it aims win the battle for approval for an extra runway from the Government against arch-rival Heathrow.
BlueCity uses dedicated vehicles specifically intended to be shared.
"We have designed our car for car-sharing, so it's not really a car you would like to buy," Christophe Arnaud, managing director of BluePoint London told BusinessCar earlier this year. "It has been designed to be robust, to be able to have up to 20 or 30 different persons driving the car a day. On average we have 10.
"Seats need to be robust.,Eeverything needs to be robust.;Iit's like the 'Boris Bikes' [London's bicycle hire scheme]:.yYou don't really want to buy a Boris Bike -- that's the idea."
Gatwick also currently offers eight charging points in its short-stay car parks, allowing free use for up to four hours.
"Gatwick is at the forefront of driving greater sustainability into aviation, and aims to be the UK's most sustainable airport by 2020," said Guy Stephenson, Gatwick Airport's chief commercial officer. "A key component of this is reducing the carbon footprint of surface access, and this unique electric vehicle partnership with BlueCity is an example of how Gatwick Airport intends to make this a reality."
"This innovative new car- sharing service also gives additional sustainable transport choices to 42 million passengers now travelling through Gatwick each year, plus more than 21,000 people employed across the airport campus. We're sure it will be very popular," he added.
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