Founded as Collect Car B.V. on 21 June 1995 by Gijs van Lookeren Campagne and Jan Borghuis, who were inspired by car sharing by German students in the 1980s.[7] Now the biggest and most successful carsharing company of the Netherlands, Collect Car B.V., Rotterdam, - better known by its trademark 'Greenwheels' - bought the majority of the shares of StattAuto, a German carsharing company (founded in 1994 as StattAuto Hamburger CarSharing GmbH) in 2004. The car sharing firm received a financial boost by Dutch entrepreneur Eckart Wintzen[8] in 1997.
By the end of 2005, Greenwheels owned 98.5% of StattAuto shares. Greenwheels also operated in London as Greenwheels UK until 1 March 2013.[6] In April 2013 it was announced that a consortium consisting of the Volkswagen Financial Services AG ( 60% ) and the Dutch VW importer Pon Holdings B.V. ( 40% ) acquired an unspecified amount of shares in CollectCar B.V.[9]
Early 2016, the CarSharing company Quicar in Hannover was acquired by Volkswagen Leasing GmbH. Greenwheels will continue 60 Quicar stations from 1 April 2016 and occupy a total of 80 vehicles of the types VW up !, VW Golf Variant 5th generation and VW Caddy .[5]
Locations
Greenwheels has extensive locations in mostly urban centres in Germany and Netherlands. In the UK, operations were only in the boroughs of Wandsworth and Lambeth, and closed on 1 March 2013 because Greenwheels UK "did not have enough members to continue our services".[6]
Greenwheels fleet consists of subcompact (supermini or city car) or compact (compact MPV, leisure vehicles) that are better able to handle the narrow and congested streets found in European cities.[7][10]
In the Netherlands Greenwheels operates with mostly Volkswagen vehicles, VW up!, Variant and Caddy's:[11][12]
In Germany Greenwheels uses Volkswagen vehicles:[13]
