
Share Now, formerly Car2Go, is leaving North America - kareemm
https://www.share-now.com/ca/en/important-update/
======
nostromo
> 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
It's certainly written very carefully to avoid saying anything. My
interpretation is much simpler:

"We can't compete, so we're leaving."

~~~
mumblemumble
Can't compete with who? Car2go was the last such service with cars available
in my neighborhood.

I had once been an iGo user, but canceled my membership after realizing that
80% of the time I'd either rather take the bus, rather find something else to
do, or rather pay (often less money and certainly less time) for delivery
services, whichever is more appropriate for the situation in question.

I guess you could frame it as, "Can't compete with the fact that Americans who
don't own cars do so because they either prefer other transportation options,
don't have much money, or don't have a driver's license."

~~~
ghaff
I do know people who use short-term rentals. But between subsidized Uber/Lyft
and traditional rentals, it's definitely a fairly niche use case. (e.g. run
out and do a bunch of errands for a few hours)

I remember when Zipcar was a new economy darling with the CEO a common speaker
and panelist at certain types of events. That pretty much ended when Uber got
big.

------
emptybits
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.

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?

~~~
iamspoilt
Also from Vancouver. I thought the service was quite successful here and
didn’t see this coming.

~~~
thebokehwokeh2
I'm sure it was successful in Vancouver. It's elsewhere where it was losing
money.

~~~
zukzuk
In Toronto they got in a spat with the city over street parking and pulled out
about a year ago. Really unfortunate as it was a great service, and seemed
successful in terms of adoption. There's a new one in its place called Commune
Auto, but lacks the visibility, as those little Car2Go smart cars with their
branding really stood out.

~~~
Scoundreller
While that hurt car2go, I think Uber/Lyft would have ultimately killed them in
Toronto anyway.

~~~
slavik81
At least in Calgary, Uber was 2-3x the price of Car2Go. You could get halfway
across town in 15 minutes, and pay ~$7 for the trip if you got one of the
smart cars. It was great. Last time I checked Uber, it was $18 for the same
trip.

------
woodpanel
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.

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
Did previous generations not go out to eat? Or did they save money by going to
Applebee's and Red Lobster over smaller, local options?

~~~
woodpanel
I 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.

~~~
pjc50
Presumably those are your colleagues, i.e. highly paid software developers
with disposable income who already have a good shot at the housing ladder?

~~~
woodpanel
Presumably, a place with well paid software developers is usually crowded with
a lot more software developers. So renting, not a problem. But buying: still
not cheap. Add to this: you don’t buy if you don’t know how long you’re going
to stay.

------
Xavdidtheshadow
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.

I was really hoping this model was going to see wider adoption and private car
ownership would begin its ride into the sunset.

~~~
reaperducer
Is 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.

~~~
pathseeker
zipcar you have to return to predefined locations. Not really the same use-
case.

~~~
reaperducer
Ah, thanks. I didn't realize that you could drop Car2Go vehicles elsewhere.

~~~
ska
That was the 'killer feature'[1] really. They were great for unexpectedly
needing a drive, or driving one way to somewhere you were going to drink (and
cab/uber home) etc.

[1] obviously not killer enough.

------
yellow_postit
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.

~~~
jbkrule
Was 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
In my use case it was consistently 20% cheaper than the Uber/Lyft equivalent.

~~~
bootlooped
I 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
Plus 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
Recently 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).

------
lasky
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.

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
In 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
When 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
Let’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.

------
reeddavid
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.

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
It 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.

------
bowmessage
Think they overextended themselves with the luxury fleet of Mercedes and BMWs.
Worked pretty well with cheaper smart cars, IMO.

~~~
superfrank
I'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-...](https://www.geekwire.com/2019/lime-shutters-
limepod-raising-questions-viability-free-floating-car-sharing-model/)).

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
Lime 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.

------
mns
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.

~~~
neuronic
I 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.

------
sukilot
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.

------
Pezmc
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!

~~~
johannes1234321
If they make signup simpler they have more stolen cars:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20434719](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20434719)

------
nikon
Share 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)

------
badwolf
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...

------
rb808
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.

[https://www.chicagobusiness.com/transportation/twenty-one-
ch...](https://www.chicagobusiness.com/transportation/twenty-one-charged-
car2go-car-sharing-fiasco)

------
bthrn
Shame. 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
You mean ride hailing?

~~~
bthrn
Same thing:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ridesharing_company](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ridesharing_company)

~~~
tobib
That 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.

------
brundolf
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.

------
Klonoar
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...

Made living here much easier for when I just needed a quick vehicle rental.

------
vkou
A 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
They 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.

~~~
2ion
These clauses don't hold up in extreme conditions or when they can't
conclusively prove that it was the customer's fault.

------
ckorhonen
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.

Sure, all the cars smelt of weed and the seats were covered in dog hairs or
french fries, but the convenience!

------
jonbaer
Wonder if it has to do with the actual cars themselves to some degree ...
[https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a27310639/smart-fortwo-
dis...](https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a27310639/smart-fortwo-discontinued-
usa/)

~~~
jen20
They 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
Which is good. Smarts are of horrible quality. At least the combusting ones.

~~~
coryking
Dunno 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
Depends 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.

------
dang
[https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/18/21028517/sharenow-
car2go...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/18/21028517/sharenow-car2go-
leaving-north-america-bmw-daimler-cities-date) has a bit more background.

------
seltzered_
Sad 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)

------
mynameisvlad
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.

------
jbverschoor
You couldn't use the european membership anyway, so it was useless to me.

Edit: also ending in: London, Brussels and Florence

------
pathseeker
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.

------
jeffnappi
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)_/¯

------
elandrum
Don't let public companies become your city's transit.

------
dgudkov
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:

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
Problem is parking. Without free parking it’s useless. And for certain rides
it’s simply more convenient and quicker

~~~
dgudkov
ZipCar 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.

------
pcdoodle
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).

------
hakanensari
A very abrupt turn (in London). Just a couple of weeks ago, they announced
two-week rentals, and now they’re leaving.

------
fh973
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.

If one of these reasons goes away it might become much less attractive to
them.

------
s_dev
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.

~~~
aldanor
That's one of the worst brand names ever. "Free Now", seriously...

Everyone I know still calls it mytaxi or hailo.

------
ficklepickle
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.

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.

------
medievalMoose
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.

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.

------
heisenbit
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.

Parking in London is very bad but Florence is insane.

------
Tiktaalik
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.

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
I 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
Not sure, the city of Calgary did try to work with car2go and yet it was one
of the first city they pulled out of.

------
angry_octet
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.

However, Car2Go was a luxury option. Far more expensive than CommuneAuto. Hard
to see it as anything but a convenience for rich urban yuppies.

------
CalRobert
Shame. They're how we were car free in San Diego for a year. Horrendously
buggy though and stranded us a few times.

------
thbr99
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.

~~~
mfcl
How 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
For 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
Was 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
Probably 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 ?

~~~
mfcl
Yup. That's why I chose car2go in the first place. Communauto looked too
amateur. But maybe it's good enough? I'll try it.

------
jsight
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.

------
asdff
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!

------
smashah
They'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.

------
cgy1
They 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
those things were hilariously dangerous in the snow/ice. tons of fun :). I
miss them too.

------
didibus
That's really sad, now I might have to buy a car even though I need it very
rarely.

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mh8h
OH: I bet they changed the name to escape the Car2Gone meme.

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hello_friendos
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.

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pmontra
What service is that, in which city?

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cbowal
Not OP, but Modo [1] in Vancouver, Canada has exactly this model with a $500
refundable buy-in.

[1] [https://modo.coop/](https://modo.coop/)

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jholman
I'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.

