Setting up a community car club is capital intensive, there are no two ways around that. Some of the other models could allow you to set up a car club with a fraction of the cost and a fraction of the effort. Again – for more on those, have a look at Como report, or refer to the Module on models.
Your biggest upfront expenses will be your cars and your charging infrastructure.
After that, it will depend on exactly the model you chose to pursue. The initial costs could be affected by whether you want to buy into the coop or “just” be a service user.
Ballpark figure though, assuming 2 used cars and relatively straightforward charger installs is around £40k.
As we mentioned earlier, there are ways of bringing those costs down through relationships.
We were not able to negotiate with car dealerships for discounted prices for a community project. This is in part because dealerships are on brutal business models – they make a loss on vehicles sold, instead earn bonuses for volume of cars sold, and then on the servicing. They have little leeway to discount, let alone give away. They are also nervous about the advent of online purchases – as people are increasingly buying their cars online and direct from manufacturers. But it is always worth trying if you have good relationships. The other place you could try is directly with the manufacturers. In our experience this was very formalized and nebulous and didn’t lead anywhere – but if you happen to have those relationships it might be worth flexing them.
Charging installers may be a more fruitful avenue. Charge My Streets took the majority of the burden of installing one of our chargers.