Forget weekends trawling car dealerships looking for that perfect new vehicle. Subscription car services and car sharing apps are on the increase in Britain thanks to the latest technology. Their aim is to make it easier to get from Point A to Point B and to revolutionise the idea of modern car ownership. But what does this all mean for car sales and the big automakers? Katie Gregory has more.  

It's the new movement in mobility. All over London - drivers are jumping behind the wheel of cars they don't own. And it's thanks to a rise in subscription car services and car sharing schemes.

ALAN NASSER ZIPCAR USER "We'll keep using it as long as it works for us - and it works great."

MARIANA FERGUSSON DROVER USER "It's cost-effective, cost cost-effective and over again it really is compared to hiring a car or buying a car."

Whether it's for a few hours or for a whole year, innovative tech-based companies are now finding ways to make it easier and cheaper for people to get on the road.

STEVE FOWLER, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF AUTO EXPRESS & CARBUYER "At the moment the subscription and car sharing scheme is pretty small but it's growing and its growing rapidly as more people realise that's how they want to use cars."

Felix Leuschner is the CEO and Founder of Drover. It's been operating in London for over two years and is now the country's largest subscription car service.

His company is an online marketplace for vehicles - providing subscriptions on behalf of car hire companies, dealerships and manufacturers. And it's all done online for a monthly fee.

FELIX LEUSCHNER, FOUNDER & CEO DROVER "Our market place is set up so that we enable our fleet partners to set their own prices for their cars. We market them as such to our customers. and we basically take a commission on that transaction when that match happens."

DROVER STAFF MEMBER "What we're going to do is just the usual check out."

We're with new Drover customer Mariana Fergusson as she picks up her mini. She'll be using the car for her aged care business.

MARIANA FERGUSSON DROVER USER "I think it's the answer. Really, I think it's an absolutely brilliant concept. It doesn't really make sense for me to buy a car at this stage in our business. Maybe one day I don't know but certainly not for the foreseeable future."

KATIE GREGORY REUTERS REPORTER "Mariana is paying 615 US dollars a month for this Mini and that includes everything insurance, servicing costs, breakdown cover. She'll take it for the month and see how she likes it and then there's always the option to extend, exchange for another model or just hand it back."

While it's hassle free in the short term - users have to weigh up whether it's more cost-effective in the long term. Drover has 2000 active subscribers - Felix says the business is more than doubling year on year at it's current growth rate and has recently partnered with BMW UK to provide vehicles.

FELIX LEUSCHNER, FOUNDER & CEO DROVER "We're now at 60 person business, we have raised £7.5 million to date - but we're barely scratching the surface of what we want to do. We really want to establish subscription as a new ownership category in one of the largest markets in the world. So the car market is over a trillion dollar market world wide - just in the UK over 100 billion pounds - and really the vision is to get over time double digit market share of that market."

Like BMW - other car manufacturers are also jumping on the subscription bandwagon- seeing it as a more flexible offer to the locked in multi-year contracts associated with traditional car leasing.

This month - Jaguar Land Rover UK announced it's own system starting at 1200 US dollars a month for 12 months. And Mercedes is currently rolling out it's subscription service in the U.S. But still official data from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders shows car sales rose in April for the first time in a year - and that trend continued in May.