Zipcar to provide car sharing technology services for the City of Boston

By Chris Reidy , Globe Staff

Zipcar Inc., the Cambridge-based car sharing system, said it is teaming up with the City of Boston to help the city’s fleet of vehicles gain efficiencies and savings.

Under a program called “FleetHub,” a number of city-owned vehicles will be equipped with Zipcar’s proprietary car sharing technology for use by city employees.

Through the program, the city will be able to combine vehicles that were once dedicated to individual city departments and create an interdepartmental fleet that city employees can share, in part by using Zipcar’s self-service online reservation system, Zipcar said in a press release.

The program will also help efforts to modernize the fleet with alternative fuel and hybrid vehicles, the release said.

The program will initially be launched as a six-month pilot, and the city plans to extend the program to more vehicles following successful implementation; Zipcar was selected to be the program’s technology provider through a competitive bidding process, Zipcar said.

Zipcar noted that its technology has already been adopted through similar initiatives in Washington, D.C., and Chicago.

With about 650,000 members, Zipcar maintains a car-sharing network of 9,000 vehicles in a number of urban markets and college campuses in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom.