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Share Now, formerly Car2Go, is leaving North America
- didibus 7y agoThat's really sad, now I might have to buy a car even though I need it very rarely.
- bowmessage 7y agoThink they overextended themselves with the luxury fleet of Mercedes and BMWs. Worked pretty well with cheaper smart cars, IMO.
- crooked-v 7y agoI used it back when it was the Smart cars specifically because they were extremely easy to park anywhere, so the nicer cars were actually negative value for me even before considering the higher rates to use them.
- mhd 7y agoThey're owned by Daimer and BMW, so the cost of the cars isn't as big a factor. Also, for long-running services, the initial costs aren't that important anyway if the cars are more durable. In Germany, almost all cabs used to be Mercedes. (I remember the whole cinema laughing in Collateral when the Jamie Foxx character presented his business outline for his luxury cab service)
- wnevets 7y agoIsn't the quality of BMWs different in Germany than in NA?
- jeffwilcox 7y agoQuality is all great, but options, configurations, even engine choices vary. In Europe they are much more a la carte - cloth seats, etc., available, making them the standard cars in many ways at any price point. In the US and other "luxury" targeted markets, the country only offers certain premium configurations or bundles, such as how nearly all BMWNA cars have the "premium package", etc., significantly raising the MSRP to hit those premium luxury categories.
- Scoundreller 7y agoIt’s really funny to watch N. Americans buy BMWs with substantially larger engines than Germans, even though N.A. speed limits will top out at ~100 or ~110km/h. Even BMW Canada has some smaller base engines available than BMW USA. (Reduced stroke volume on the n52).
- vkou 7y agoThat's because cars are primarily a conspicuous consumption status symbol, and only secondarily a useful tool. It's also why a lot of people buy pickup trucks that they never haul or tow anything with, over SUVs - the latter aren't 'cool'.
- Scoundreller 7y agoI get most of that, but it’s a bit more complicated: BMW/truck makers could sell the smaller engine for proportionately less money, but they don’t because it would make the vehicle too available. Or just make up close enough numbers and most won’t care. 99% of bystanders won’t know the difference. BMW doesn’t follow its numbering scheme for engines anyway (The 323 had a 2.5L engine.)
- magduf 7y ago>It’s really funny to watch N. Americans buy BMWs with substantially larger engines than Germans, even though N.A. speed limits will top out at ~100 or ~110km/h. That's not why Americans like big engines. American driving styles resemble drag racing: they like to take off from stop lights, even though their ultimate speed isn't as high as on German autobahns.
- Scoundreller 7y agoIunno, SUV drivers seem to like big vehicles more than performance. I’m with you on pickups though, gotta have a Duallie V8 just in case you install a 5th wheel one day.
- usrusr 7y ago
- mhd 7y agoI guess a BMW in California is a lot better after the first year, because it hasn't been through the shitty German weather... Different factories have different failure rates, but Germany ain't even leading here (and believe me, there's no inherent "German engineering" factor separating someone working in Lower Bavaria than someone from South Carolina). Apart from minor details like bumpers and first aid kits, the cars should be pretty much the same wherever you go. Would be pretty bad from a marketing perspective if the quality varies too much, never mind that with global logistics, minimizing differences is pretty much the core value. Or in other words: The cars are overpriced rust all over the world.
- bearcobra 7y agoEven without considering the higher cost to manufacture a Mercedes/BMW vs Smart/Mini, those "lesser" brands were often more convenient since they made it easier to find parking.
- superfrank 7y agoI'm not sure it does. Lime had their LimePods car share program which used Fiat 500s and they shut down their program as well, although they wouldn't comment on the economics or the program (https://www.geekwire.com/2019/lime-shutters-limepod-raising-questions-viability-free-floating-car-sharing-model/ https://www.geekwire.com/2019/lime-shutters-limepod-raising-...). In Seattle, over the past few years, we've had car2go, ReachNow, and Lime all attempt the on demand car sharing and all three have eventually shut their programs down. Only ZipCar has managed to stick around, but their pricing model is a bit different and requires a monthly subscription. Based on that, my gut says that this no subscription, hop in, hop out car sharing just doesn't make money no matter what car is being used (although I'd be curious to see it tried again with fully electric cars).
- sukilot 7y agoLime has two main problems: * The app is terrible, and devotes too much UI space to spamming ads for other products while user is trying to give Lime money. * They kept responding to low utilization by raising prices to the point where it's not notably cheaper than taking a cab.
- clairity 7y agoprice/cost is a real issue, even with electrics, if bluela[0] in LA is any indication (indianapolis has the similar blueIndy). it's an all-electric car service rented by the minute, and developed by bolloré, a french conglomerate, in collaboration with ladot. bluela is riddled with problems[1], and for many use cases, it's not cost-competitive[2]. it's basically only economical for 15-minute point-to-point trips directly from and to charging stations (which have limited coverage, all near downtown). by my (very rough) estimation, such services become attractive when they're dockless and the cost gets to $3/hr for 3-5 hour rentals (the sweet spot for most errand-running and visitation trips). otherwise, you can often find rental car deals at ~$20/day. -- [0] https://www.bluela.com/ https://www.bluela.com/ [1] not dockless, unpredictable availability (both cars and charging spots), limited range, dirty cars/chargers, frequent breakages, poor UX (both app and car), convoluted rental process, payment issues, uncaring customer service, etc. [2] 20¢/min (≃$12/hr) with a $60/yr membership (also has a low-income tier at 15¢/min)
- djsumdog 7y agoI didn't know they had BMWs. I've only seen the Mercedes. Did they get those from the old/defunct ReachNow program BMW was trying out in Seattle?
- bowmessage 7y agoHmm, I may have conflated the two services in my mind after this news broke last year: https://www.geekwire.com/2018/bmw-reachnow-merger-daimlers-car2go-approved-u-s-regulators/ https://www.geekwire.com/2018/bmw-reachnow-merger-daimlers-c...
- jbverschoor 7y agoYou couldn't use the european membership anyway, so it was useless to me. Edit: also ending in: London, Brussels and Florence
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- emptybits 7y agoOuch. Regular car share user here, sometimes multiple times per day. The sheer number of cars that Car2Go/"Share Now" had (approx 700 here in Vancouver, I think) usually made it my first choice, with Evo a close second. Did not see this coming. Is it possible this is another rebranding/acquisition exercise (like the Car2Go->ShareNow transition), or is the fleet gone for good?
- gnabgib 7y agoSurprisingly close to their departure from Calgary, Austin, Chicago, Denver & Portland.. one wonders why they didn't just do it all at once. I wonder where all the used cars go.. literally disappeared overnight (no small feat), surely enough surplus to upset secondhand prices. https://blog.car2go.com/2019/09/27/important-update-car2go-north-america/ https://blog.car2go.com/2019/09/27/important-update-car2go-n...
- abawany 7y agoI am very disappointed about their departure, especially after all of the nonsense promises related to their merger with BMW's ReachNow. I asked their Twitter account re. used cars and they gave me conflicting information: one said that the Mercedes are leased from the parent company and sent back while the other (more recently) said that I should check local auction houses since that's where they dispose of them.
- giarc 7y agoI suspect one answer may be for the Smart Fortwo and the other for the more recent Mercedes sedans. The Smart cars likely don't have much residual value.
- abawany 7y agoThe first answer last year said that the Smarts are sold locally and that the Mercedes are sent back to the parent company. My recent question, asked when they were leaving Austin, was specifically about the Mercedes and they stated that they sold those locally.
- mynameisvlad 7y agoI'm not surprised. They killed off the BMW service across North America a few months ago, as well as the Mercedes/Smart service in a bunch of cities across North America. The writing was on the wall after that.
- bthrn 7y agoShame. I used this a lot. Perhaps they're not willing to lose money with the hopes of one day being profitable, like ride sharing companies.
- tobib 7y agoYou mean ride hailing?
- bthrn 7y agoSame thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ridesharing_company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ridesharing_company
- sukilot 7y agotobib was disingenuously challenging the term "sharing"
- tobib 7y agoThat page actually explicitly says otherwise in the context of Uber/Lyft which I'm assuming OP refers to. > In January 2015, the Associated Press Stylebook, the collective that sets many of the news industry's grammar and word use standards, officially adopted the term "ride-hailing" to describe the services offered by Lyft and Uber, claiming that "ridesharing" doesn't accurately describe the services since not all rides are shared, and "ride-sourcing" only is accurate when drivers provide rides for income. While the Associated Press recommended the use of "ride-hailing" as a term, it noted that, unlike taxis, ridesharing companies cannot pick up street hails. However, the Associated Press has also used the term ridesharing as well. While "ride sharing" sounds nice, because, you know, sharing is good, that's not what Uber and co primarily do. They offer "pool" versions, sure, but the number from 2016 I found said those account for only 20% of all rides. Sure, you could say I'm being pedantic but I do think "sharing" is a different concept and has a positive connotation that might be deliberately being used here. There are "ride sharing" companies out there where people actually share a ride to the same or similar location.
- Xavdidtheshadow 7y agoBig bummer, I loved this service when traveling in the PNW. I could be in Portland for a week and instead of needing to rent a car for the whole time, I had unfettered access on demand and only paid for what I needed. Being able to park it anywhere for free was a big bonus as well. I was really hoping this model was going to see wider adoption and private car ownership would begin its ride into the sunset.
- reaperducer 7y agoIs there no ZipCar in Portland? When I lived in Seattle I didn't need to own a car because ZipCar filled in the gaps where transit wasn't appropriate.
- breck 7y agoWhen I lived in Seattle I had ZipCar and Car2Go. I used Car2Go a lot more because you could leave the car anywhere (you didn't have to return it to the same spot) so you could do 1 way trips.
- coryking 7y agoAlso no annual fees. Just a setup fee... which if you waited for a sale or coupon was waved.
- JohnFen 7y agoYes, ZipCar is in Portland.
- pathseeker 7y agozipcar you have to return to predefined locations. Not really the same use-case.
- reaperducer 7y agoAh, thanks. I didn't realize that you could drop Car2Go vehicles elsewhere.
- thbr99 7y agoGood riddance. They had very bad customer service at least in Montreal. It was worse than Communauto. I was also skeptic about the safety of their soapbox shaped small cars & their safety during winter riding conditions.
- mfcl 7y agoHow did you come up with the opinion that their customer service was bad? It is not my experience with them. > Good riddance. Like they deserve to have to stop their service in NA? > soapbox shaped small cars Smart cars.
- freeone3000 7y agoFor me in Montreal, it took a WEEK for my account to be verified! Nobody I could talk to could explain why, and for English I was transferred over to Toronto support, who were understandably confused at my address! And at the end, I got a $12/hr rental for a SmartCar that can't handle plowed roads, when a Honda Accord from Avis costs me $35 for the entire day. Service is useless, good riddance.
- mfcl 7y agoWas it difficult to get service in English? I remember now that I never got service in French. When I called, I would press the button for French and always get an anglophone speaker. But that's a problem I get with most companies. I still don't agree with the good riddance. That's not what it means.
- thbr99 7y agoProbably car2go offices in Montreal had the infamous Québec customer service attitude. Communauto is still surviving because they are backed by Québec govt paid for by the tax payers. Services such as Communauto and Teo Taxi should not be funded by tax payers. I mean take a look at Communauto website & app. Can't they do better ?
- Pezmc 7y agoUsed to use Car2Go all the time on holiday, recently had major problems re-activating my account after they became Share Now. Staff still answered the phone as "Drive now", it was a very confusing experience, which concluded with "wait 7 days for a human to review your account". Perhaps if they made sign up easier, they wouldn't be struggling!
- johannes1234321 7y agoIf they make signup simpler they have more stolen cars: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20434719 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20434719
- sukilot 7y agoIf you believe that Uber+Lyft survives by VC subsidies and drivers spending their wages on car TCO, making the driver essentially free to users, it makes sense that car-shares can't be price-competitive and turn a profit.
- CalRobert 7y agoShame. They're how we were car free in San Diego for a year. Horrendously buggy though and stranded us a few times.
- yellow_postit 7y agoToo bad, this was really useful in Seattle to get to and from the airport. They really struggled to keep the cars clean in my experience. Just about every ReachNow/Car2Go/ShareNow I got into reeked of smoke.
- jsight 7y agoI used it twice while in Seattle and was surprised by how dirty both vehicles were. I suspect that wasn't helping them any.
- jbkrule 7y agoWas it actually cheaper than Ubering? I always felt that the price was very similar and Ubering removed the need to be the driver. Only ever used Car2Go when I actually needed the car space.
- yellow_postit 7y agoIn my use case it was consistently 20% cheaper than the Uber/Lyft equivalent.
- bootlooped 7y agoI thought you got a lot for that 20% though: Don't have to walk to wherever car is parked Don't have to drive Don't have to park car Don't have to walk from parking spot to actual destination
- martinald 7y agoPlus no risk of getting speeding/parking tickets, and if you are in an accident no insurance hassle to worry about (I assume the car sharing services have some sort of excess if you get into an accident).
- giarc 7y agoRecently car2go added a $1/ride fee that was for insurance. If you reached 99 trips in a year, you didn't have to pay that fee (or similar).
- nostromo 7y ago> The decision to close North America was made based on two extremely complicated realities. The first being the volatile state of the global mobility landscape, and the second being the rising infrastructure complexities facing North American transportation today - such as a rapidly evolving competitive mobility landscape, the lack of necessary infrastructure to support new technology (including electric vehicle car share) and rising operating costs. This is difficult to parse. It looks like they're saying: 1. operating costs were too high 2. we don't know what is in store for lyft/uber, scooters, etc 3. there aren't places to park and charge the cars
- reaperducer 7y agoIt's certainly written very carefully to avoid saying anything. My interpretation is much simpler: "We can't compete, so we're leaving."
- chiefalchemist 7y agoRight. Because immediately after they said this. My read is, they expanded too fast. The fear of them being too late drove them to be too soon. > "Moving forward, SHARE NOW will focus on the remaining 18 European cities. We, along with our shareholders, believe these markets show the clearest potential for profitable growth and mobility innovation."
- maxerickson 7y agoThis previous article mentions a bunch of services stopping: https://www.autonews.com/mobility-report/car2go-latest-short-term-car-rental-service-pull-out-major-us-cities https://www.autonews.com/mobility-report/car2go-latest-short... "It's not worth trying to run this business" can be the same thing as "we can't compete", but it isn't necessarily the same thing.
- microtherion 7y agoOr maybe… "we prefer not to compete against competitors burning VC money".
- dang 7y agohttps://www.theverge.com/2019/12/18/21028517/sharenow-car2go-leaving-north-america-bmw-daimler-cities-date https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/18/21028517/sharenow-car2go... has a bit more background.
- rb808 7y agoThey had some incident earlier in the year where 100 Mercedes went missing in Chicago. I can't find the article that described it but apparently it was a wild night. https://www.chicagobusiness.com/transportation/twenty-one-charged-car2go-car-sharing-fiasco https://www.chicagobusiness.com/transportation/twenty-one-ch...
- cgy1 7y agoThey pulled out of Minneapolis a few years ago in part because the state wanted to charge them the state rental car tax of something like 14%.
- mml 7y agothose things were hilariously dangerous in the snow/ice. tons of fun :). I miss them too.
- pathseeker 7y agoIn Austin, the cost of Car2go was nearly 1:1 with Uber/Lyft for all of the short trips I would use them for (~5 mile trip). Given the hassle of finding parking, I ended up rarely using it.
- vkou 7y agoA friend of mine worked for Car2Go during one of the freak snowfalls in Seattle. That night, over a hundred C2G vehicles were left stranded and abandoned, all over the city. Many of them ended up in fenders, while the rest had to be manually retrieved, and re-parked by C2G agents. The overtime, and the various surprise costs of single night probably wiped out months of profits in the city.
- shepardrtc 7y agoThey didn't charge the customers that did that? From what I remember, they were seemed pretty clear in agreements that you would be charged if you violated anything.
- brundolf 7y agoThese worked pretty well in Austin. A few years ago my car had problems and I spent about six months commuting via bus and taking these guys the rest of the time. They had a deal with the city where downtown you could park them in any street spots for free, and they were all smart-cars so they didn't take up much space. Downtown, by a decently-central apartment complex, etc. there were almost always cars available in a reasonable walking distance.
- hello_friendos 7y agoI think a true car share coop model works better than a private business that doesn't have roots in the city they are operating in. The model in my city is expanding rapidly. basically you buy a share into the coop for $500 (you get this money back if you decide to leave) and then you get discounted fares for the vehicles.
- pmontra 7y agoWhat service is that, in which city?
- cbowal 7y agoNot OP, but Modo [1] in Vancouver, Canada has exactly this model with a $500 refundable buy-in. [1] https://modo.coop/ https://modo.coop/
- jholman 7y agoI've been a CAN/Modo member for well over a decade. Having to return the car makes it drastically inferior to car2go/evo for most purposes. Definitely superior for doing a home depot run or helping someone move, though.
- badwolf 7y agoSad. I was a mega Car2Go fan/user here in Austin. Haven't owned a car in over a decade. Car2Go really made it so much easier for quick grocery trips/etc...
- fh973 7y agoConsider that car sharing, when run by one of the car manufacturers like BMW, DB or VW might be a way to tune financials (overproduce and dump) and their fleet mileage numbers by producing more small cars. If one of these reasons goes away it might become much less attractive to them.
- jsight 7y agoHonestly, after all the reshuffling and shenanigans around Reach, sharenow, etc, this seems pretty predictable. They never seemed to have a real strategy or goal beyond hoping to ride some PR wave.
- Tiktaalik 7y agoReally frustrating for Vancouverites since the service was enormously popular here, but probably suffered in other parts of NA due to competition from Uber/Lyft which likely contributed to this pullout. Of course now Vancouver is finally getting a ride hailing service in Lyft, but that won't replace the different sort of service that Car2Go offered.
- cbhl 7y agoI feel like political opposition at the municipal level was also a factor. For example, San Francisco never gave any of the car-sharing services the ability to let renters park "anywhere" in the city.
- dorfsmay 7y agoNot sure, the city of Calgary did try to work with car2go and yet it was one of the first city they pulled out of.
- nikon 7y agoShare Now (DriveNow) also leaving UK market. https://www.drive-now.com/gb/en/now/important-update https://www.drive-now.com/gb/en/now/important-update
- Klonoar 7y agoMan, this is super frustrating. These were great in Seattle - last forever on ReachNow before they were folded in to Car2Go, then Car2Go into ShareNow... Made living here much easier for when I just needed a quick vehicle rental.
- elandrum 7y agoDon't let public companies become your city's transit.
- woodpanel 7y agoVery early adopter here (and little later even snapped a developer job there). Very sad to see, but if you were an insider I think it was clear for at least 5 years now, that this business was not going to last. The sharing economy to me, looks more like a sustainability-simulation of its business models, driven by yield-seeking funds and millenial-pockets which, freed of the burden to buy property, are open to add hefty premiums to their every day expenditures (e.g. "checkout that new roastery run by that reknown barista"). Yet these businesses failiures become eminent once you realize that they aren't even viable in cities with less than 2M people. Daimler/BMW is just facing up to this reality. If car2go were VC funded, we would see more money being thrown at this bottomless pit.
- duhi88 7y agoDid previous generations not go out to eat? Or did they save money by going to Applebee's and Red Lobster over smaller, local options?
- enjo 7y agoIn my experience, growing up in the 80s, people went out FAR less than people do today. Food in general was seen in a very different light. Food was just a thing that you did a couple of times a day. There was very little cultural importance placed on it. At least for the people I knew (I did grow up spending a year or two in 9 different cities).
- woodpanel 7y agoI don't understand your point. Feel free to elaborate! If you mean the Roastery example: it is just one example of "premiums" urban millennials add to their expenditures. Short-Renting a car or ubering around isn't cheap in the long term either. But while I'm at it: Whenever my first-world-native colleagues discuss things like, whether coffee should be made in an Aeropress or a Hario Syphon, for hours, it usually takes a glimpse towards my second- or third-world born colleagues faces to find confirmation, that this is just first-world nonsense.
- 7y ago
- dgudkov 7y agoI used car sharing in Toronto a lot including Car2Go. A couple years ago Car2Go left Toronto. As they explained it - they failed to get the city's permit for free unlimited street parking. However, as I see it the real reason was that they couldn't compete with Uber: When I need a car for 1 full day or more, I go to Avis/Budget/etc. They charge per day. When I need a car for 2-5 hours I get a Zipcar. They charge per hour. Daily rates are somewhat high compared to Avis/etc. Before Uber, when I needed a short ride (up to 30-60 minutes) I would typically take Car2Go. They charged by minute which made sense for short rides. However, per hour their rate was higher than Zipcar. When Uber appeared, it became a more convenient choice for short rides. Just summon it, and get going. No need to go find a Car2Go on some side street. No need to deal with unlocking, locking, parking, refueling, etc. Maybe, if Uber wasn't subsidized it could've been a less attractive option and Car2Go could have a chance to stay. But with the current Uber pricing, Car2Go simply has no business.
- jbverschoor 7y agoProblem is parking. Without free parking it’s useless. And for certain rides it’s simply more convenient and quicker
- dgudkov 7y agoZipCar solved the problem with parking by getting fixed spots in public parking lots. I don't see why Car2Go couldn't go the same way.
- lasky 7y agoI’d been wondering when they would finally shut the doors in the US. I’d used the product quite a lot in Europe - worked especially well in Berlin. Was very difficult to use in the cities here in the US, and I found the UX to be consistently so bad I often gave up. All the key folks are based in Berlin. Seems very naive to think you can launch a mobile app based logistics business, dependent on UX fussy millennials, while managing a fleet of high maintenance automobiles, consistent and scaleable cloud infrastructure, that needs to grow geographically in cities across NA, AND fight and broker deals with municipalities along the way.... From San Francisco? Maybe. From Berlin? Hardly. With a European corporation supervising... Better off lighting the cash on fire.
- enjo 7y agoIn Denver it was a really excellent way to get around... until they ditched the easy to park and abundant smart cars for the much more limited numbers of Mercedes. Then the price creeped up to the point that it was price competitive just to take an Uber. The move from the smart cars was understandable as they basically didn’t work in the snow but it did ruin the utility of the service the other 350 days a year.
- lasky 7y agoWhen you could get one, having a SmartCar was the cat’s pajamas in a city. I heard they worked well in DC for awhile too.
- coryking 7y agoLet’s all be honest though. Those smart cars are total garbage. Horrible gearbox. Was like riding a go cart. Which... while I say they are garbage in that I never would own one. They were actually kind of fun to drive for a 10 or 15 minute trip.
- smashah 7y agoThey're also pulling out of London. Good, I say. I was an evangelist for this service until the day I drove around the block to show it off to a friend, literally parked it in the exact same spot I found it, then got a parking ticket a whole month and a half later. They purposefully waited till the discount period was over then charged me extra and when I demanded they delete all of my personal and payment data they wouldn't do it. I threw my driveNow card in the trash the same day. Fuck this company. Good riddance. Besides, the future for urban mobility is electric bikes not derivative electric car sharing.
- jonbaer 7y agoWonder if it has to do with the actual cars themselves to some degree ... https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a27310639/smart-fortwo-discontinued-usa/ https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a27310639/smart-fortwo-dis...
- jen20 7y agoThey haven't been using those in the US for a while, at least in Austin - they all got replaced by four-seater Mercedes Benz cars over the last couple of years.
- 2ion 7y agoWhich is good. Smarts are of horrible quality. At least the combusting ones.
- coryking 7y agoDunno why the downvoted. Smart cars are objectively bad cars. For a similar price you can get much better cars like the Honda Fit. However, they did have their charm when you were getting charged per minute driving them. Handled like a go cart. Gas is either 100% or 0% and you just modulate the brakes.
- ollie87 7y agoDepends where you live I suppose. A Jazz (what it's called in the UK) starts at £15k, a Smart back before they went electric only in this market was well under £9k.
- freeone3000 7y agoThey used those in Montreal, and yeah, they were not effective on even freshly plowed roads.
- ficklepickle 7y agoCar shares are quite popular in Vancouver, probably because we only just got Uber/Lyft. Personally, I prefer to drive myself, so I haven't been missing ride sharing. We do have a local car share company here that appears to be thriving. It's run by BCAA, which already provides roadside assistance so there is some synergy there. They used a car share platform provider called vulog. They have recently disrupted traditional car rentals, in my opinion. They dropped a 200km limit per trip, so you can take them anywhere for $90 CDN per day, including fuel and insurance. It is as cheap or cheaper than a traditional car rental without all the hassle.
- seltzered_ 7y agoSad to see this but to note out some recent things in the carsharing industry: - Tiny EV carsharing companies like Bollorè are parterning with US cities like Los Angeles: https://www.eenews.net/stories/1061603873 https://www.eenews.net/stories/1061603873 , I'm guessing between the cheap small EV, city partnership, they're trying to optimize for nearer term profitability & business sustainability. - On the opposite end, Lyft piloting rentals in SF: https://blog.lyft.com/posts/introducing-lyft-rentals https://blog.lyft.com/posts/introducing-lyft-rentals
- ckorhonen 7y agoSuch a shame - Car2Go was so useful here in NYC, great for short local hops or if you ever had the need to go further afield and didn't want to deal with the subway. Plus the Smart Cars were great for city driving. Sure, all the cars smelt of weed and the seats were covered in dog hairs or french fries, but the convenience!
- pcdoodle 7y agoUsed them here in MPLS until they pulled out. I was able to replace car ownership with their network of smart cars. Even as a heavy user in the winter, my spend was less than $300.00, never paid for parking, no insurance, no fuel. It was such a great idea. I would have paid more (it was like 0.35 per minute or $12 per hour).
- angry_octet 7y agoI think this is mainly down to US cities (and Toronto because ??!) still seeing Car2Go as a revenue opportunity, rather than a way to reduce congestion and allow people to get occasional car mobility. However, Car2Go was a luxury option. Far more expensive than CommuneAuto. Hard to see it as anything but a convenience for rich urban yuppies.
- hakanensari 7y agoA very abrupt turn (in London). Just a couple of weeks ago, they announced two-week rentals, and now they’re leaving.
- mh8h 7y agoOH: I bet they changed the name to escape the Car2Gone meme.
- jeffnappi 7y agoThis is sad. I had been a user of car2go and then ShareNow in Seattle and was quite happy with the service. I was basically renting a car for 24 hours once a month or so... I guess that's not the model they expected. Not a huge deal, I can easily replace them with traditional rental cars (Avis, etc) and Zipcar. Folks in the USA are too addicted to owning their own depreciating under utilized cars for now. Perhaps they will eventually become rational ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- medievalMoose 7y agoI used this a few times in Chicago. Always found it was easier to use mass transit to get around in town, and cheaper to use legacy renters for longer trips to see the family (100mi+ roundtrip). I assumed they would benefit grocery gap neighborhoods, but cars tended to cluster in places with high competition & logistical substitutes. Is their service more commonly used inter-city in Europe? I always thought intra-city driving was more of a hassle than in the states.
- reeddavid 7y agoWhat a bummer, these car share services were incredibly useful in Seattle. I've been a huge fan throughout the evolution of car sharing here. Car2Go launched in Seattle in 2012. The model was innovative (one-way trips! park almost anywhere for free!). But they had poor reliability. I think the cars were connected via some German cell plan with internationally roaming on T-mobile, and the failure rate (unable to access the car, "phantom" car not really at location) was 5-10%, which is pretty bad. Car2Go was also very unresponsive to customer needs. They refused to create an airport drop point (such a great and obvious use case!) and seemed unconcerned by their poor reliability. Enter ReachNow. The competition was exactly what Car2Go needed. ReachNow added an airport drop point quickly, then Car2Go finally added their own airport drop. ReachNow was plagued by long transaction times (e.g. 2 minutes of wait time from unlock to engine start – this is a LONG time when someone is waiting for your street parking spot). They finally fixed their startup times on many of the vehicles. Then Lime entered with LimePod, which was the low-price option but with fewer cars. In total, there were well over 1K cars between all the services, and availability was great. When ReachNow consumed Car2Go, I was worried things were going to go downhill due to lack of competition. Then they shut down ReachNow and started a confusing rebrand, then Lime left, and now Car2Go / Share Now is leaving. I wish they would have first tried charging enough to make it a viable business. I wonder how much higher the prices would need to be.
- coryking 7y agoIt was over when they dumped those crappy smart cars. Those cars were the worst but they were perfect for the service. Easy to park and easy to find. And driving them was like driving a go cart. You either had full gas or no gas. I think what did them in was Uber and lyft. The cost for either is only slightly more and you don’t have to worry about parking or unlocking the car.
- mns 7y agoAs a person from Europe, in the hometown of DriveNow, which now they are killing to be absorbed by the former car2go, now Sharenow app, I really don't see them succeeding in Europe either. I used DriveNow a lot, mostly because of their packages and the better app and UX, but now that they merged, the prices are insane compared to SixtShare and the usability just seems very bad. It's a shame that before there was more competition (even now in Germany SixtShare seems like the better choice), but now that BMW and Mercedes joined forces, the new prices make the service useless.
- rusticpenn 7y agoI find stadtmobil to be the cheaper alternative and better.
- neuronic 7y agoI use ShareNow daily, because I enjoy it. They will not last in Europe, deep in the red. Operating costs far exceed what people would be willing to pay for a ride. Essentially you have to provide people with brand new cars all of the time, they have to be clean, filled up and evenly spread throughout the business area. None of these are cheap to realize.
- asdff 7y agoCar2Go briefly deployed on my campus years ago. They'd frequently end up on their roof or in the lake after the bars close. Not sure why they pulled out!
- heisenbit 7y agoI think it was Mercedes and/or VW which recently said their new e-car is not going to the US some time and Europe is first. This was surely driven by CO2 fleet averages which are going to cost billions of Euro in 2020. Small sharing cars will help to bring it down so deploy them where it matters financialy. Parking in London is very bad but Florence is insane.
- s_dev 7y agoA few years ago they took over a taxi service in Ireland called MyTaxi. It was originally Hailo. They rebranded it "Free Now" -- people are still years later angry at the change. All it brought was confusion to the brand.
- PedroBatista 7y agoSociety is rarely prepared for the infinite wisdom of your average marketing dept.
- aldanor 7y agoThat's one of the worst brand names ever. "Free Now", seriously... Everyone I know still calls it mytaxi or hailo.