Zipcar, the pioneering car-sharing service that started in Cambridge 26 years ago, is cutting its local ties.
Avis Budget Group, which bought Zipcar in 2013, is closing the company’s local headquarters and laying off 126 people, including 65 in the Boston area, Avis said in a letter to Mayor Michelle Wu last week. Zipcar’s operations will be headquartered at Avis’s Parsippany, N.J., offices. The layoffs are effective in the first half of April.
“This action reflects a change in how Zipcar’s corporate teams are structured and aligned going forward and does not represent a closure of the Zipcar business,” wrote Pamela Perry, vice president for human resources, Americas, in the letter. “Zipcar’s brand, product, members and service will continue without disruption.”
Zipcar will continue to have regional field and fleet operations teams based in Boston, Avis said in a statement. The cuts don’t affect the availability of vehicles in the Boston market, the company said.
“Zipcar remains fully operational and members should expect the same service and experience they rely on today,” the statement said. “We are committed to managing this transition responsibly and supporting our employees throughout the process.”
The cuts follow the company’s decision last year to pull out of the United Kingdom market, where it had been a leading car-sharing service since 2006.
Zipcar started in Cambridge in 2000, later moving its headquarters to Fort Point in Boston. Cofounders Robin Chase and Antje Danielson wanted to create a car-sharing service like those in Europe that helped urban dwellers avoid purchasing a vehicle that would only be needed for occasional trips. They both left the company years before it was purchased by Avis.
Zipcar has had its ups and downs since Avis took control, undergoing mass layoffs in 2017, before seeing a surge of business at the beginning of the pandemic. Before the 2017 layoffs, the company employed about 300 people in Boston.
Over the past few years, Zipcar had been adding more electric vehicles after a successful pilot started in Boston in 2022 with just 10 EVs.
The layoffs were reported earlier by the Boston Business Journal.
Aaron Pressman can be reached at aaron.pressman@globe.com. Follow him @ampressman.