Drivy, the leading car sharing platform in Europe, has surpassed the two million users milestone.

The growth of 500,000 users in less than a year puts Drivy at the top of any round-trip car sharing network used around the globe in terms of active users.

Paulin Dementhon, the founder and CEO of Drivy, explains: “Last year, we moved from a country to a city model, with a strong focus on convenience and self-service usage through our Drivy Open technology. The strong growth of these last few months proves that this is a relevant strategy.

“Our user base grows significantly, and we’ve served three times more self-service rentals compared to last year. We’ll keep on investing in convenience to provide all our users with an increased freedom to move while using less cars and less public space”.

Katy Medlock, Head of UK at Drivy adds: “Our aim is to make car sharing a quicker, easier and cost-effective means of transport. Having launched in London just six months ago, our growth is proof that city-dwellers have been looking for alternatives to car ownership or considering how to recoup some of the costs associated with owning a car.”

Drivy’s growth has been fuelled by the changes the company brought to its platform to make its car sharing service even more convenient and frictionless.

In the past few months, Drivy turned into a mobile-first platform, with its app becoming the flagship of the service. Today, 60% of the Drivy community uses its smartphone instead of its desktop browser to get the car they need from the 50,000 cars available across six countries. Consequently, the app has been completely redesigned to be in line with Drivy’s new focus on mobile experience and instant car sharing: instead of a list, the cars around you are now located on a map while a one-tap payment button has been added for further convenience.

The latest version of the app will answer one of the main requests of the Drivy community and introduce a dedicated four-hour price offer - allowing its users to get a car for four hours or less, meeting the need for short term rentals.

Significant efforts have also been made to diversify Drivy’s car fleet with more self-service cars equipped with Open technology, available at walking distance instantly and 24/7.

Its growing fleet is owned by a network of locally crowdsourced professional fleet owners that complement Drivy’s traditional peer-to-peer offer. In London, after only six months since the UK launch, 100 cars are dedicated to carsharing and equipped with Drivy Open.

These improvements drastically changed the way Drivy is used in the major cities where the service is available with more than 50% of the trips booked through Drivy being self-served. This figure rises to 65% in cities like Paris or London, with the latter having launched only seven months ago. At a global level, a Drivy Open car is rented every five minutes.

In a bid to make its UK fleet eco-friendlier and provide an alternative to owning a car in London, Drivy is waiving its service fees for any electric and hybrid vehicles signed up to the platform before the end of July until Christmas – rewarding greener vehicle use and ownership. Drivy’s evolution comes in line with the company’s long-term mission: bring fresh air to the cities by improving mobility while using less cars and public space.

Academic studies on car sharing acknowledge that one shared car fulfils the same mobility needs of 10 private cars while freeing nine parking spaces. Drivy therefore seeks to partner with the cities where its service is available to better address the mobility needs of its inhabitants while providing city councils with a concrete solution to fight congestion and pollution.