There’s a new way to get around Reykjavík for residents and visitors: shared electric cars. Transportation app Hopp, which introduced shared electric scooters to the city in 2019, has now added ten electric cars to its fleet of vehicles. Users can rent a car through the app, drive it from A to B, and park and leave it anywhere within the active zone.
“People are calling for a variety of forms of transportation and the environment is calling for us to change our travel habits,” a Facebook post from the company reads. “We believe that the time is now; city residents are calling for diversity in transport, and by offering shared cars, we are bridging a certain gap. People can take public transport to work and then take a shared car if they need to run an errand during working hours. Families can therefore do away with the “extra car” and use a shared car when needed.” The shared cars are also useful for those who do not own a private car but need to run errands that are more difficult to do on public transport or a bike, such as making a trip to big box stores in the suburbs, the company points out.
The Hopp cars cost a flat fee of ISK 300 [$2.33; €2.11] to rent, and ISK 45 [$0.35; €0.32] per minute to drive, meaning a trip between the University of Iceland and the Grandi harbour area would cost around ISK 660 [$5.12; €4.63]. It costs ISK 10 [$0.08; €0.07] per minute to “pause” a rental, for example, to run an errand while the car is parked. Reykjavík Mayor Dagur B. Eggertsson was the first to try one of the vehicles last week, as seen in the pictures below.
