Zipcar Inc. and the City of Houston Fleet Management Department have announced that Houston's FleetShare program has expanded to its second location. First launching with shared pool vehicles in the Theater District's Tranquility Garage, it has recently expanded to the City Hall Annex Garage.

With Zipcar, the City of Houston started a new municipal fleet-sharing program called Houston FleetShare in July 2012. Through this program, 50 city-owned fleet vehicles – including 25 Nissan Leaf electric vehicles (EVs) and other plug-in electric and hybrid vehicles – were outfitted with Zipcar's proprietary car-sharing technology, FastFleet, for use by city employees.

"Zipcar is very excited to continue our successful relationship with the City of Houston to bring vehicle sharing efficiencies to city employees," said Michael Serafino, Zipcar vice president of sales and market development.

According to Zipcar, six electric vehicle charging stations have been installed in the City Hall Annex Garage allowing for both EVs and hybrid vehicles to be available. Expansion of the program is the result of a 72% increase of enrolled participants, representing over 7,000 reservations.

"Small individual pools of vehicles have a lot of downtime and then tend to be needed all at once," said Jedediah Greenfield, the City of Houston's public information officer. "With a larger shared city vehicle pool, we can ensure our vehicles are being used efficiently through closely monitoring utilization and streamlining their operation, which ultimately serves the needs of our citizens."