> 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.<p>This is difficult to parse. It looks like they're saying:<p>1. operating costs were too high<p>2. we don't know what is in store for lyft/uber, scooters, etc<p>3. there aren't places to park and charge the cars
Ouch. 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.<p>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?
Very 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.<p>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").<p>Yet these businesses failiures become eminent once you realize that they aren't even viable in cities with less than 2M people.<p>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.
Big 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.<p>I was really hoping this model was going to see wider adoption and private car ownership would begin its ride into the sunset.
Too 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.
I’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.<p>All the key folks are based in Berlin.<p>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....<p>From San Francisco? Maybe.
From Berlin? Hardly.
With a European corporation supervising... Better off lighting the cash on fire.
What a bummer, these car share services were incredibly useful in Seattle. I've been a huge fan throughout the evolution of car sharing here.<p>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.<p>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.<p>Enter ReachNow. The competition was exactly what Car2Go needed. ReachNow added an airport drop point quickly, then Car2Go finally added their own airport drop.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
As 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.
If 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.
Used 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!
Share Now (DriveNow) also leaving UK market.<p><a href="https://www.drive-now.com/gb/en/now/important-update" rel="nofollow">https://www.drive-now.com/gb/en/now/important-update</a>
Sad. 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...
They 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.<p><a href="https://www.chicagobusiness.com/transportation/twenty-one-charged-car2go-car-sharing-fiasco" rel="nofollow">https://www.chicagobusiness.com/transportation/twenty-one-ch...</a>
These 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.
Man, this is super frustrating. These were great in Seattle - last forever on ReachNow before they were folded in to Car2Go, then Car2Go into ShareNow...<p>Made living here much easier for when I just needed a quick vehicle rental.
A friend of mine worked for Car2Go during one of the freak snowfalls in Seattle.<p>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.<p>The overtime, and the various surprise costs of single night probably wiped out months of profits in the city.
Such 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.<p>Sure, all the cars smelt of weed and the seats were covered in dog hairs or french fries, but the convenience!
Wonder if it has to do with the actual cars themselves to some degree ... <a href="https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a27310639/smart-fortwo-discontinued-usa/" rel="nofollow">https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a27310639/smart-fortwo-dis...</a>
<a href="https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/18/21028517/sharenow-car2go-leaving-north-america-bmw-daimler-cities-date" rel="nofollow">https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/18/21028517/sharenow-car2go...</a> has a bit more background.
Sad to see this but to note out some recent things in the carsharing industry:<p>- Tiny EV carsharing companies like Bollorè are parterning with US cities like Los Angeles: <a href="https://www.eenews.net/stories/1061603873" rel="nofollow">https://www.eenews.net/stories/1061603873</a> , I'm guessing between the cheap small EV, city partnership, they're trying to optimize for nearer term profitability & business sustainability.<p>- On the opposite end, Lyft piloting rentals in SF: <a href="https://blog.lyft.com/posts/introducing-lyft-rentals" rel="nofollow">https://blog.lyft.com/posts/introducing-lyft-rentals</a>
I'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.
In 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.
This 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)_/¯
I 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:<p>When I need a car for 1 full day or more, I go to Avis/Budget/etc. They charge per day.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
Used 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).
Consider 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.<p>If one of these reasons goes away it might become much less attractive to them.
A 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.
Car 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.<p>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.<p>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.
I 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.<p>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.
I 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.<p>Parking in London is very bad but Florence is insane.
Really 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.<p>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.
I 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.<p>However, Car2Go was a luxury option. Far more expensive than CommuneAuto. Hard to see it as anything but a convenience for rich urban yuppies.
Good 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.
Honestly, 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.
Car2Go 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!
They're also pulling out of London. Good, I say.<p>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.<p>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.<p>I threw my driveNow card in the trash the same day.<p>Fuck this company. Good riddance. Besides, the future for urban mobility is electric bikes not derivative electric car sharing.
I 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.