AlphaCity, the company carsharing service from 1 euro per hour

For businesses, the mobility of their employees, products and services is vital. Having modern and suitable means of transport is as necessary for their business as optimising their costs.

Sharing the use of a car has become a mobility alternative for many citizens when managing their journeys around the city, and that is why the trend of carsharing is winning over more people every day, with a growing number of brands operating this service. But carsharing has more formats than the already well-known car rental by the minute, open to anyone who wants to sign up with one of the existing companies.

In the business sphere, carsharing also exists, and it is the main leasing service operators that offer this service. They usually offer it to companies within their general fleet leasing contracts, but more and more, these operators are experimenting with new service formats, such as the one offered by AlphaCity, the corporate car-sharing service created by Alphabet.

Corporate carsharing

AlphaCity is a corporate carsharing service that makes a fleet of high-end vehicles available to companies so that employees who do not have an assigned company car can use them to travel for both professional and personal reasons. This type of service allows employees to have mobility, and their companies to save up to 40 percent on their transport costs (taxis, metro, buses, etc.), with time savings on top.

AlphaCity lets you rent a Mini for 1 euro per hour or a BMW i3 for 3 euros per hour. But AlphaCity is more than a simple carsharing system within a single company for the exclusive use of its employees. AlphaCity has developed a very interesting service that makes the cars of a fleet available to many companies sharing the same area. This fleet is not assigned to any particular user or company, but consists of vehicles available in a car park of a business centre for use by any employee of any company signed up to the service. To do so, it is enough for the company and the employee to be registered and to book the vehicle either through the system’s online platform or by phone. To open the car doors or start the engine, the vehicles do not require a key. A personal RFID card enables use of the vehicle. It comes with all the services: comprehensive insurance with no excess, a 24-hour support and assistance phone line, and more.

This AlphaCity system was already operating at the Torre Iberdrola in Bilbao and at the Parque Científico y Tecnológico de Bizkaia, where 219 companies and 8,200 employees enjoy this service. And more recently, the business parks of Las Mercedes, Avalon and Avenida de Bruselas in Madrid, where more than 6,700 workers can use AlphaCity vehicles, being able to rent a Mini for 1 euro per hour or an electric BMW i3 for 3 euros per hour, paying only for the time of use with no fixed costs, rates that make it a clear alternative to options such as taxis or pay-per-kilometre schemes.