CAR SHARE TO BEAT RISING PETROL COSTS

BRITS are trying everything to cut down their fuel usage, including getting rid of the second car, using bicycles and walking where possible.

So now is a great time to take advantage of services that maximise car use to make money.

Hiyacar.co.uk enables you to rent your car out by the hour to local people who don’t have their own vehicle. It says that users can make up to £650 a month and cars are rented out for between £2 to £5 per hour.

If you drive to work every day, you can share that journey with people going in the same direction, and get part of your petrol costs paid, through the carpooling site blablacar.com.

For one-off trips cross-country there are ride-sharing sites such as liftshare. com and gocarshare.com. Liftshare says its members save around £1,000 a year by using the platform. If you live in London, joining a car club such as zipcar.com can make sense. It pays for fuel, parking, congestion charge and insurance. Membership costs from nothing to £15 a month and rates vary from £5.50 per hour to £79 per day depending on your membership.

Outside London, you can rent vehicles through Enterprise Car Club from £3.23 per hour.