Major carsharing service shutting Boston office and laying off dozens of staff

The car-sharing company Zipcar will close its Boston headquarters, ending local operations in the place where it was founded.

Its owner, the car rental company Avis Budget Group, said it is “consolidating Zipcar’s headquarters” into its global home base in Northern New Jersey “as part of a broader effort to enhance Zipcar’s long-term operational effectiveness.”

“As a result, Zipcar will no longer maintain a separate corporate office in Boston,” a spokesperson for Avis Budget Group said Monday.

The company plans to lay off 65 employees in Boston by April, according to a notice it filed with Massachusetts state officials last week.

Zipcar was founded in Cambridge in 1999 and debuted there and in Boston the next year. The company expanded in the years that followed and by 2009 was the world’s largest car-sharing service, according to NBC News. Avis bought Zipcar in 2013.

“Zipcar was founded in Boston and the city has been an important part of its history since then,” the company spokesperson said. “This consolidation reinforces Zipcar’s foundation and positions the business to continue serving members reliably well into the future.”

The move will not affect service for Zipcar’s members, the spokesperson added.

In addition to the 65 Boston-based employees, the company will lay off approximately 61 remote workers elsewhere in the country, the Boston Business Journal reported.

Zipcar’s regional field and fleet operations teams will remain in Boston and other cities after the headquarters closes “to support members and day-to-day service without interruption,” the Avis spokesperson said.

Brian Shortsleeve, a Republican candidate for governor, said Zipcar’s move was the result of Massachusetts’ taxes and regulations on business.

“Massachusetts is becoming a place where even homegrown success stories can’t afford to stay,” he wrote in a post on X.

The announcement came the same week that Panera Bread said it would lay off 92 employees at its bakery in Franklin and that life sciences company Thermo Fisher Scientific said it would lay off 103 employees and close a facility, also in Franklin.

The Campbell’s Company also said Thursday it would close the Hyannis manufacturing plant of the beloved Cape Cod potato chip brand. The company will lay off 49 people, it said.

“These are not isolated decisions. They are rational business responses to a state that has become increasingly expensive, unpredictable, and hostile to employers,” said Paul Diego Craney, executive director of the Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance, a conservative business organization. “High taxes, crushing energy costs, and rigid Net Zero climate mandates are making it harder every day for companies to justify staying in Massachusetts.”