Fed up with seeing cars and taxis carrying single passengers, and leaving all the other seats empty, the owner of an Oxfordshire taxi firm has come up with a novel idea to help people nip about town — and leave a lighter carbon footprint.

George Raithby, 39, who has run Thame Taxis for the past seven years, has introduced the Solocar to Oxford, a service he calls the Eco-Smart Travel Solution.

The service, which began on May 1, offers a low fuel-consuming Smart Car and a smartly uniformed driver to take you wherever you need to go — at a highly-competitive cost.

Mr Raithby said: “I have been thinking of introducing this for a long time and it has taken me three years to get the necessary licences. But now we have four Smart cars positioned in strategic places in Oxford to be booked at short notice.”

The Smart cars are licensed as hire-cars in South Oxfordshire, which means they cannot be hailed in the street like taxi cabs.

Instead, potential passengers must ring the office in Thame to book a ride.

Mr Raithby reckons that the Solocars offer a more environmentally-friendly service at lower cost — which he says is unusual, since many eco-friendly things cost more.

He said: “The fares are about 20 per cent cheaper than rivals’. A trip to Heathrow from Oxford for instance is £48. It is a micro chauffeur service, but of course, we can only take one passenger at a time.”

When dreaming up the idea, Mr Raithby made a study of customers who used Thame Taxis and came to the conclusion that about 70 per cent of passengers travelled solo, leaving three seats in the taxi empty.

He said that response to the Solocar so far had been good but he was really taking a ‘softly, softly’ approach to the new business, concentrating at the moment on marketing.

Mr Raithby acknowledged that the sight of Smart Cars taking up cab ranks at, say, Oxford station, could annoy other taxi drivers, but added that train passengers could telephone from the train and have a Solocar waiting for them when they arrived.

o Contact: 0800 334 5684 Web: www.solocar.co.uk