Car Share
 

I couldn't see any recent threads that were the right place to post this news, and it seemed important enough to create a new thread.

Car2Go/Share Now closing down in North America.

"It’s with a heavy heart that we must share that our last day of SHARE NOW service in North America will be 2/29/20. We are grateful to everyone who has supported us over the years and we regret the inconvenience caused when service ends."

Presumably Modo, Evo and Zipcar will have an opportunity to pick up the slack; other cities will face greater impacts.

That's an unfortunate loss for Vancouver, not only for mobility choice but also a regional office (Car2Go North America was headquartered here).

Evo is probably breathing a sign of relief today, they were struggling and their were rumours they might pull the plug, this news will certainly help their bottom line.

I'm not surprised, given the amount of Evo accidents I've personally witnessed. I'd love to see the ICBC accident claims against them.

I recently had a flawless rental using Enterprise CarShare here in Toronto. AFAIK TO and Vancouver are the only available markets for the service right now.

Wow, I'm pretty shocked. All this time it looked like car share ownership was what most of the major manufacturers were getting into, in order to preserve their brands in some sort of future "mobility as a service" world.

It's not available in Vancouver. Toronto, Mississauga, Oshawa and Waterloo so far.

Looks like it was just another "fad of the month".

I dont think the money is there. Uber lost millions when it tried to roll out a carshare ride hailing program.

Car2go has been around a lot longer than that. I'm sure certain markets (like Vancouver) were better than others.

The money isn't there for Uber yet either, they lose Billions a year.

Autonomous cars will change all that, eventually.

I was surprised when I saw the email

I've always thought that car2go and drivenow did pretty well in markets like Vancouver and Seattle

However, I wasn't surprised when drivenow pulled out of the New York market a few years back prior to the merger to become sharenow given how little care people took of the vehicles; I'd imagine their repair costs were quite high for such a market

Meh, maybe Vancouver just did well because there was no Uber etc. If jlousa is right and Evo is also marginal it might just be the economics of car share doesn't work.

Love it how when Car2Go was some kind of partnership with municipalities but ride sharing it's always some negative spin on them having to change parking signs:

https://www.citynews1130.com/2019/12...lings-arrival/

Interesting to note that Car2go is pulling out of all of North America, and apparently, are even shrinking in Europe; they only intend on servicing 18 cities in Europe, dropping London, Florence, and Brussels.

I would imagine that since Car2go relied very heavily on the Smart cars, and since Smart pulled out of North America, they were struggling to find a suitable replacement vehicle from their Daimler parent company.

The other car share companies don't seem to have this problem; Evo relies on Toyota Prius C's, and Modo and Zip use a variety of vehicle brands in their fleets.

Damn. I think Vancouver was one of the few profitable markets in NA, so maybe someone will take over those vehicles and software. The Car2Go app works better than Evo.

im surprised about this. they seemed to be the biggest in Vancouver. will be interesting who, if anyone, will fill the void.

I can see a scenario where another company like Lime would take on the profitable markets in NA. I know Lime doesn't do cars, but it would be an easy transition.

Also, if Vancouver is profitable (which I think it is), it would be easy for Evo to get investors so they can expand.

Given Evo was not to far from making a similar announcement I don't profitablity was there at all. Now that they have the market pretty well to themselves I expect their prices will rise to the point where they can at least keep operating.
Hopefully city council doesn't get the bright idea to start their own lol.

I guess they need to figure out their pricing compared to Uber/Lyft.