This is MONEY, By Lee Boyce, 12th December 2011

An easyCar service which will allow motorists to rent out their car when they are not using it is set to launch next year and could provide an extra source of income for hard-pressed households.

The car club, which will be an arm of the easyCar business, has been set-up by Easyjet founder Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou and lastminute.com founder Brent Hoberman.

It will allow people to use smartphone apps to book slots in their neighbours' vehicles.
The pair said the venture will give car owners a cheaper alternative to traditional car rental and help people with cars make cash from hiring them out.

The full details have yet to be announced, but car owners will be able to set the price of their car and when it is available to be hired.

EasyCar will insure the vehicles during the time they are hired out and the cars will be fitted with automatic entry and tracker systems.

The website, which is currently without a contact telephone number and is yet to respond to an e-mail This is Money has sent, hasn't made it clear if those who put their vehicle up for rent will need to inform their insurance firm, or if it will have an impact on their insurance costs.

It currently reads on the website: 'If you are interested in making money from your car when you don't use it, enter your email and we will send you more information before launch!'
The Association of British Insurers (ABI) said that anyone considering doing this should talk to their car insurer and check fully with easyCar as to the insurance implications.

According to the easyCar website, the insurance cover supplied with the booking includes a collision damage waiver, third party liability insurance and theft protection cost and waives financial liability to pay for any damage caused to the vehicle during the period of hire. With this comes an excess if anything did go wrong.

For an additional daily rate, those that rent the car can reduce the excess exposure to nil with a zero risk option excess insurance policy.

This will cover those who rent out the car for up to £3,500 for any single incident or £5,000 for a series of incidents during any single vehicle rental agreement for the reimbursement of the excess applied by the car rental company.

The company claims its new business model is greener than traditional car hire, citing figures that show car sharing could get 10 cars off the road for each vehicle contributed to easyCar and would reduce personal car emissions by 40 per cent
Sir Stelios said the new scheme 'could prove to be the future of car rental and ownership in cities of the future.'

He said: 'Rather than having to buy the cars to be rented and pay the ownership costs, this business model relies on the fact that there are plenty of under-used cars on the road already and that is lazy capital that can be put to work again.'

And with the economy in the doldrums, Mr Hoberman said 2012 would be 'the right time' to launch the scheme.

The car club scheme is believed to be similar to ZipCar, which recently took over the UK's Streetcar - other than the fact that easyCar will not own any of the vehicles it rents out.
It aims to test the first 1,000 cars this spring in the London area.