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I was quite disappointed that Car2Go didn't work out - it was a car rental service similar to e-scooters, park anywhere, pay by the minute. They used Smart cars

I was quite disappointed that Car2Go didn't work out - it was a car rental service similar to e-scooters, park anywhere, pay by the minute. They used Smart cars, which were fine (they were owned by Daimler), but it would have been a great system even with cheaper cars and disallowing highway use. Seeing cars like this makes me wish someone would try it again but with a different fleet.

paxys 5y ago
Car2Go didn't work out because keeping their cars well-distributed throughout the city was an impossible problem to solve. Because of the "park anywhere" feature they would all naturally cluster at a few hotspots very early in the day and stay there. A by-the-minute car service is pointless if I have to take a taxi to get to the car.
- etskinner 5y ago
  Assuming that a large part of the reason they 'stay there' early in the day is because people are at work, doesn't that mean that they'll naturally be distributed back to where they were when people return home? Traditional rental car services seem to have figured out how to make it work, why can't pay-by-the-minute places do the same? Something like demand-based pricing seems like it would work well for this.
  - paxys 5y ago
    Most of these cars were used exactly for this purpose. In Seattle they would drive people from all over the city to Amazon's offices (in South Lake Union) in the morning, and back in the evening. However, the cars being used twice a day for 10-20 mins isn't exactly a winning business model for the company.
- Matthias247 5y ago
  Evo in Vancouver&Victoria (https://evo.ca/ https://evo.ca/) has the same model, but seems to work out. Up to now I was always able to find a car in 10min walking distance. But obviously there's some clusters of them at more frequent visited destinations.
- kennywinker 5y ago
  In Vancouver we have a local service (evo) that was competing with car2go, but since car2go pulled out they seem to be doing quite well. I suspect the reason car2go "failed" was that it was more about pushing the smartcar into the north american market that was fairly reluctant to buy smaller cars, than it was about actually providing that service. When smartcars showed they weren't going to take off here, they had no reason to keep it going.
  - ianbicking 5y ago
    Yeah, I've heard the theory car2go was all an attempt to advertise Smart cars, which I thought was weird... I liked the car2go service but I would never want to buy one of those cars, they drove like crap. For the purpose of getting around they were fine, but nothing more. Are Smart cars always that crappy, or were the models used for Car2go particularly inferior? I'm not sure what the transmission was, but it wasn't a normal automatic - you could feel it go into neutral (losing power) and then engage at a higher gear.
    - zubiaur 5y ago
      It was an automated manual transmission. You described exactly what it was happening. The car was disengaging the clutch, changing gears, after witch it would reengage the clutch. It was crap.
      - B1FF_PSUVM 5y ago
        Amusingly enough, when they do it with _two_ manual transmissions, angels start to sing their praises - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-clutch_transmission https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-clutch_transmission (Not kidding, that's what Porsche uses, also F1 cars etc, last time I looked)
        frosted-flakes 5y ago
        Dual clutch transmissions are not uncommon in production cars today. VW calls them DSG (direct shift gearbox), Audi S-Tronic.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  > A by-the-minute car service is pointless if I have to take a taxi to get to the car. I had the same problem when I was considering using Zipcar to visit Santa Cruz from San Francisco. I had no problem paying Zipcar's rate for the time it would take to travel. But Zipcar charges you for the time between when you take the car out of its designated parking spot and when you return it to the same designated parking spot, which completely defeats the purpose.
  - frosted-flakes 5y ago
    It would be better if you could return it to any empty Zipcar stall, the same way rental bike work. The app could let you claim a spot ahead of time, so that it's not taken by someone else by the time you get there.
  - cinquemb 5y ago
    I used zipcar when I was in college, super convenient to have in providence without having to buy or take a car to school (esp for international students). Was much better to lock it in for days rather than by the interval they had (i think it was 30 min, but this was over a decade ago for me). Though I can see how it would be less so if you only need to go from point a to b and not back to a.
criddell 5y ago
Without big regulatory changes around private ownership, cars like this one make me think that the idea of a massive shared fleet is doomed if self driving becomes a reality. When cars become mostly about tech, tech will do what it always does - get cheaper and better. The total cost per trip will drop through the floor. People will buy more cars and urban sprawl will go crazy. If I could send out my car without a driver to run errands for me, I would do it all the time. Lots of stores already have curbside delivery set up so it would be easy to adapt that for driverless cars. There are other effects as well. For example, if accident rates plummet, car insurance will get cheap and that industry will implode.
- Dylan16807 5y ago
  The wear on a car costs about as much as paying someone to drive it. The costs can only go so low, and the cost of personal ownership is still going to be higher than a fleet because the car sits around more. And if they're so cheap I'd still expect to see instant rental/taxi fleets. As for people buying more cars, so many people already have cars that I don't imagine that having a huge effect. So overall I disagree with your conclusions.
  - slackstation 5y ago
    The wear on electric cars is significantly cheaper. No pistons, no oil, no gears, no transmission, no exaust system, no series of gaskets for the coolant to flow through the engine block. In fact, electric motors only have metal to metal contact at bearings, the actual forced produced is without metal to metal contact. Fleet prices for electric cars today are already significantly cheaper. In the future, probably more so.
    - the_pwner224 5y ago
      This doesn't invalidate your point, but the motors in electric cars are also liquid cooled just like ICEs. The system is a bit simpler since you're cooling a motor and not an engine, but ultimately it's a water cooling system and needs gaskets etc.
ABeeSea 5y ago
They killed themselves when they converted their fleet from Smart cars to full-sizes Mercedes. The new fleet was impossible to park. It was such an obvious mistake even at the time. Their users loved the smart cars. https://www.geekwire.com/2017/car2go-dropping-smart-cars-seattle-fleet-favor-high-end-mercedes-benz-models/ https://www.geekwire.com/2017/car2go-dropping-smart-cars-sea...
- mschild 5y ago
  Anecdotal, but I've used Car2Go extensively and HATED the smart cars. Always felt like they would fall apart the next time I accelerated. Car2Go (Mercedes) merged with DriveNow (BMW) and are now called ShareNow. VW also runs a service called WeShare. Its somewhat successfull in Germany. I regularly use them in Berlin. ShareNow also only uses VWs electric cara. Mostly last gen VW Golf-e but recently also some ID.3 cars.
  - llampx 5y ago
    I also use ShareNow in Berlin. Another competitor is getaround, formerly Drivy, which is an Airbnb for rental cars.
  - flemhans 5y ago
    In Denmark, ShareNow's fleet is mostly BMW i3.
  - petre 5y ago
    Actually the Smart chasis is pretty well designed, like a roll cage with plastic panels. It would certainly not fall apart but feels that way because it's small, not very well sound proofed and they put the engine inside (!) the habitacle.
cmckn 5y ago
I was surprised when they shut down, because it seemed to work well in Denver. There was always a car within a couple blocks, and it was so much cheaper and nicer than Lyft IMO. I once drove a car2go from downtown to my apartment near the university. This was after they started using Benz instead of Smart cars. I parked it outside and went and took a nap, had dinner, etc. About 6 hours later I left the apartment and noticed the car was still out front…running. I had put it in park and forgotten to turn it off. Customer service gave me a bit of a deal on the cost I’d racked up. I still laugh about it.
lima 5y ago
Car2Go is still around in some European cities!
asdff 5y ago
They had those at my uni, and during football games people would get drunk and flip them onto their roof or push them into the lake
cgy1 5y ago
Car2Go pulled out of Minneapolis-St. Paul because the state classified them as rental cars and therefore charged really high rental tax rates intended for gouging travelers that rent cars at the airport.
throaway46546 5y ago
I don't understand smart cars. My friend had one and I said something to the effect of "at least it gets good gas mileage". I was shocked to find out he was getting roughly the same gas mileage as my old Honda Civic. What is the point if it doesn't even get good gas mileage?

paxys 5y ago

Car2Go didn't work out because keeping their cars well-distributed throughout the city was an impossible problem to solve. Because of the "park anywhere" feature they would all naturally cluster at a few hotspots very early in the day and stay there. A by-the-minute car service is pointless if I have to take a taxi to get to the car.

etskinner 5y ago
Assuming that a large part of the reason they 'stay there' early in the day is because people are at work, doesn't that mean that they'll naturally be distributed back to where they were when people return home? Traditional rental car services seem to have figured out how to make it work, why can't pay-by-the-minute places do the same? Something like demand-based pricing seems like it would work well for this.
- paxys 5y ago
  Most of these cars were used exactly for this purpose. In Seattle they would drive people from all over the city to Amazon's offices (in South Lake Union) in the morning, and back in the evening. However, the cars being used twice a day for 10-20 mins isn't exactly a winning business model for the company.
Matthias247 5y ago
Evo in Vancouver&Victoria (https://evo.ca/ https://evo.ca/) has the same model, but seems to work out. Up to now I was always able to find a car in 10min walking distance. But obviously there's some clusters of them at more frequent visited destinations.
kennywinker 5y ago
In Vancouver we have a local service (evo) that was competing with car2go, but since car2go pulled out they seem to be doing quite well. I suspect the reason car2go "failed" was that it was more about pushing the smartcar into the north american market that was fairly reluctant to buy smaller cars, than it was about actually providing that service. When smartcars showed they weren't going to take off here, they had no reason to keep it going.
- ianbicking 5y ago
  Yeah, I've heard the theory car2go was all an attempt to advertise Smart cars, which I thought was weird... I liked the car2go service but I would never want to buy one of those cars, they drove like crap. For the purpose of getting around they were fine, but nothing more. Are Smart cars always that crappy, or were the models used for Car2go particularly inferior? I'm not sure what the transmission was, but it wasn't a normal automatic - you could feel it go into neutral (losing power) and then engage at a higher gear.
  - zubiaur 5y ago
    It was an automated manual transmission. You described exactly what it was happening. The car was disengaging the clutch, changing gears, after witch it would reengage the clutch. It was crap.
    - B1FF_PSUVM 5y ago
      Amusingly enough, when they do it with _two_ manual transmissions, angels start to sing their praises - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-clutch_transmission https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-clutch_transmission (Not kidding, that's what Porsche uses, also F1 cars etc, last time I looked)
      - frosted-flakes 5y ago
        Dual clutch transmissions are not uncommon in production cars today. VW calls them DSG (direct shift gearbox), Audi S-Tronic.
thaumasiotes 5y ago
> A by-the-minute car service is pointless if I have to take a taxi to get to the car. I had the same problem when I was considering using Zipcar to visit Santa Cruz from San Francisco. I had no problem paying Zipcar's rate for the time it would take to travel. But Zipcar charges you for the time between when you take the car out of its designated parking spot and when you return it to the same designated parking spot, which completely defeats the purpose.
- frosted-flakes 5y ago
  It would be better if you could return it to any empty Zipcar stall, the same way rental bike work. The app could let you claim a spot ahead of time, so that it's not taken by someone else by the time you get there.
- cinquemb 5y ago
  I used zipcar when I was in college, super convenient to have in providence without having to buy or take a car to school (esp for international students). Was much better to lock it in for days rather than by the interval they had (i think it was 30 min, but this was over a decade ago for me). Though I can see how it would be less so if you only need to go from point a to b and not back to a.

criddell 5y ago

Without big regulatory changes around private ownership, cars like this one make me think that the idea of a massive shared fleet is doomed if self driving becomes a reality. When cars become mostly about tech, tech will do what it always does - get cheaper and better. The total cost per trip will drop through the floor. People will buy more cars and urban sprawl will go crazy. If I could send out my car without a driver to run errands for me, I would do it all the time. Lots of stores already have curbside delivery set up so it would be easy to adapt that for driverless cars. There are other effects as well. For example, if accident rates plummet, car insurance will get cheap and that industry will implode.

Dylan16807 5y ago
The wear on a car costs about as much as paying someone to drive it. The costs can only go so low, and the cost of personal ownership is still going to be higher than a fleet because the car sits around more. And if they're so cheap I'd still expect to see instant rental/taxi fleets. As for people buying more cars, so many people already have cars that I don't imagine that having a huge effect. So overall I disagree with your conclusions.
- slackstation 5y ago
  The wear on electric cars is significantly cheaper. No pistons, no oil, no gears, no transmission, no exaust system, no series of gaskets for the coolant to flow through the engine block. In fact, electric motors only have metal to metal contact at bearings, the actual forced produced is without metal to metal contact. Fleet prices for electric cars today are already significantly cheaper. In the future, probably more so.
  - the_pwner224 5y ago
    This doesn't invalidate your point, but the motors in electric cars are also liquid cooled just like ICEs. The system is a bit simpler since you're cooling a motor and not an engine, but ultimately it's a water cooling system and needs gaskets etc.

ABeeSea 5y ago

They killed themselves when they converted their fleet from Smart cars to full-sizes Mercedes. The new fleet was impossible to park. It was such an obvious mistake even at the time. Their users loved the smart cars. https://www.geekwire.com/2017/car2go-dropping-smart-cars-seattle-fleet-favor-high-end-mercedes-benz-models/ https://www.geekwire.com/2017/car2go-dropping-smart-cars-sea...

mschild 5y ago
Anecdotal, but I've used Car2Go extensively and HATED the smart cars. Always felt like they would fall apart the next time I accelerated. Car2Go (Mercedes) merged with DriveNow (BMW) and are now called ShareNow. VW also runs a service called WeShare. Its somewhat successfull in Germany. I regularly use them in Berlin. ShareNow also only uses VWs electric cara. Mostly last gen VW Golf-e but recently also some ID.3 cars.
- llampx 5y ago
  I also use ShareNow in Berlin. Another competitor is getaround, formerly Drivy, which is an Airbnb for rental cars.
- flemhans 5y ago
  In Denmark, ShareNow's fleet is mostly BMW i3.
- petre 5y ago
  Actually the Smart chasis is pretty well designed, like a roll cage with plastic panels. It would certainly not fall apart but feels that way because it's small, not very well sound proofed and they put the engine inside (!) the habitacle.

cmckn 5y ago

I was surprised when they shut down, because it seemed to work well in Denver. There was always a car within a couple blocks, and it was so much cheaper and nicer than Lyft IMO. I once drove a car2go from downtown to my apartment near the university. This was after they started using Benz instead of Smart cars. I parked it outside and went and took a nap, had dinner, etc. About 6 hours later I left the apartment and noticed the car was still out front…running. I had put it in park and forgotten to turn it off. Customer service gave me a bit of a deal on the cost I’d racked up. I still laugh about it.

lima 5y ago

Car2Go is still around in some European cities!

asdff 5y ago

They had those at my uni, and during football games people would get drunk and flip them onto their roof or push them into the lake

cgy1 5y ago

Car2Go pulled out of Minneapolis-St. Paul because the state classified them as rental cars and therefore charged really high rental tax rates intended for gouging travelers that rent cars at the airport.

throaway46546 5y ago

I don't understand smart cars. My friend had one and I said something to the effect of "at least it gets good gas mileage". I was shocked to find out he was getting roughly the same gas mileage as my old Honda Civic. What is the point if it doesn't even get good gas mileage?