Meet EV Sheeran – the car made to be shared by Ipswich

At the top of Norfolk Road, two electric cars sit tucked into their own reserved bays: an MG4, named MG Hammer, and an MG ZS, better known these days as EV Sheeran. Across town at Ann Street, the pairing is Sparky, another MG4, and Carmen Electra, a second MG ZS.

These are community shared vehicles. 

They are cars that belong to no single household. Rather than buying, insuring, and maintaining a car of their own, residents can book an electric car out by the minute, hour, or day, pay only for the time they use it, and return it to the same spot for the next person. The cars are parked permanently in public bays and available to anyone who signs up to the scheme. 

The whole project is managed by Suffolk County Council, funded collectively by Suffolk's local councils and public bodies through the Sustainable Suffolk partnership.

Earlier this year, Sustainable Suffolk invited residents to get creative with naming its community electric vehicles. More than 250 suggestions were submitted and put to a public vote before a judging panel settled on the winners. Among them: EV Sheeran, a name already phonetically recognisable in Suffolk. 

"The creativity shown by residents across Suffolk has been a joy to see," said Councillor Gerald Kelly, chair of the Suffolk Councils' Environment Portfolio Holders' Group. "From clever puns to names that celebrate local identity, the winning entries have given the vehicles their own personality."

Behind the naming competition sits a bigger piece of infrastructure planning - one inviting Suffolk residents to think seriously about community shared vehicles.

How it works

Joining has been made easy. By uploading a driving license, you can sign up online, where the approval typically takes around a day. From there, an app will show you which cars are free.

Once approved, cars can be unlocked with a phone or a card: tap the windscreen sensor, disconnect the charging cable, and drive. A card kept in the glovebox covers charging costs, so topping up is free.

Pricing runs from £6.95 an hour or £52.13 a day for the standard "Everyday" cars, rising slightly for the larger "Family" vehicles, plus 14p a mile. Suffolk residents get free membership, and insurance is included, with optional extra cover available. There's currently a sign-up offer running too: free membership and £25 driving credit for new members joining before 31 July 2026, with a further £25 for existing members who use the service and refer a friend.

During our time with Ev Sheeran, we drove out to Needham Market Station, one of Suffolk's other Car Club sites, where two more vehicles, Casper and Watt Wagon, sat parked and waiting in their bays.

EV Sheeran, it turned out, is the larger of the two Norfolk Road cars. It felt it: spacious inside, with a dashboard screen showing GPS navigation and nearby charging points. The drive itself was smooth rather than silent — electric cars have the beauty of moving without the strain of a petrol engine working its way through traffic. 

We hit a fair stretch of stop-start traffic on the way, but the battery held its charge without any noticeable dip, and each vehicle is rated for more than 200 miles regardless. Members are not restricted to local trips either; the cars can be driven anywhere in the country.

A car for every household

Families without a car can use one for the weekly shop. Households with one car can book a second for occasional trips instead of buying another. Visitors arriving by train can pick one up for the day.

Suffolk County Council manages the scheme and sets its strategic direction, while Co Wheels, a national car club operator, runs it day to day by handling bookings, vehicle maintenance and customer support on the ground.

"With each Car Club vehicle taking up to 20 private cars off the road, Co Wheels is helping residents reduce congestion, cut emissions and enjoy more flexible, sustainable travel," said Richard Falconer, head of mobility at Co Wheels.

National figures back this up. CoMoUK's 2023 annual report found each car club vehicle nationally replaced between 14 and 32 private cars, with members cutting their own car mileage by 153 miles a year on average.

The Suffolk numbers are still emerging. The council confirmed 634 bookings across the scheme to the end of June, though vehicles were rolled out between June and October 2025, so only three sites have a full year of data. Ipswich's four cars average 10.25 hours per booking, varying by vehicle size. Sparky, the MG4 at Ann Street, has the highest mileage and the most bookings of the four.

The bigger picture

Car clubs are one small piece of a much larger puzzle: transport makes up 30% of Suffolk's carbon emissions, the county's Local Transport Plan shows. That challenge is sharper in rural areas: the same plan estimates 39% of Suffolk's population currently have no realistic alternative to a private car for some or all of their daily journeys, particularly in what it calls "transport deserts" — places where poor public transport and patchy digital connections leave car ownership as the only practical option. Nationally, sales of new petrol and diesel cars end in 2030, with all new cars and vans being zero-emission at the tailpipe by 2035.

The council is backing the wider shift to electric vehicles with infrastructure. More than 6,000 on-street chargepoints are being installed, funded by £5.33m from central government, targeting the roughly 25% of Suffolk households without access to on-street charging. In conservation areas, some chargepoints will lie flat with the pavement and rise only when needed, to protect the look of historic streets.

Nine locations across Suffolk now host car club vehicles, including Ann Street and Norfolk Road in Ipswich, each with two cars. The scheme runs as an 18-month trial per site, and there is no one fixed endpoint for the whole project.

"These aren't just electric vehicles, they're part of everyday life in Suffolk now, shaped and named by the people using them," said Gemma Moran, account manager at Connected Kerb, which provides the charging infrastructure.

The bottom line

Suffolk's car clubs will not replace the family car for everyone; instead, they offer something else worth trying: a low-risk way to get behind the wheel of an electric car, work out whether it suits you, and see what everyday EV driving actually feels like. Sometimes the easiest way to get comfortable with the future of driving is to borrow it for an afternoon, one EV Sheeran at a time.

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