Mobility Concepts
car2go
In the car2go mobility concept launched in Ulm, Germany in late 2008, Daimler is meeting customer demands for flexible urban mobility. The scheme now offers widespread availability of smart fortwo vehicles in a range of cities, in North America as well as in Europe, that can be hired at any time of day or night following initial registration - without a contract, minimum charge or minimum rental duration.
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Innovative car2go mobility concept launched in Hamburg with 300 smart fortwo. |
When they are finished the users can leave the vehicles in any public parking space or in a specially marked car park. Usage is charged on a minute-to-minute basis; this fee covers tax, insurance, mileage, and even fuel.
On registering with car2go an electronic seal is affixed to the customer’s driving licence that enables the available vehicle to be opened. The customer can come by a car2go in a variety of ways. One example is instant rental when passing by: if there’s an available smart, the user can rent it on the spot. The customer simply holds his driving licence against a reader in the windscreen area, gets in, enters his personal ID number into the vehicle and drives off. Available vehicles can be located at any time quickly and easily via the Internet or a smartphone app. | ||||||||||
Due to the high customer take-up the vehicle fleet in Ulm, Germany, and Austin, Texas, was not only increased by 50 percent to 300 vehicles in March 2011, but it was completely overhauled: the smart fortwo car2go edition is the first car-sharing car configured ex-works, fitted with an intelligent stop-start function, newly developed telematics and a solar roof that supplies the electrical consumers with power.
After a good two-and-a-half years car2go can boast impressive figures: car2go has a total of more than 50,000 customers who have taken advantage of fully automatic rentals more than 1,000,000 times. | ||||||||
The expansion of the car-sharing project is therefore in full swing: after Ulm/Neu-Ulm and Austin, Texas, in April 2011 Hamburg signed up and car2go was introduced in Vancouver, Canada, in the spring of 2011. In the second half of 2011 the innovative mobility programme was launched in Amsterdam and Vienna, and at the end of 2011 car2go introduced North America’s first electric car-sharing programme in San Diego with the smart fortwo electric drive. In February 2012, Lyon became the first French car2go city. Since that time, car2go is also in Düsseldorf. At the end of April 2012 the world's largest car2go fleet consisting of 1,000 smart fortwos took the streets of Berlin. | ||||||||
Queries from other cities about this creative, flexible and affordable mobility initiative for tomorrow’s inner-city transport have been received. Overall car2go will operate in 40 to 50 European and numerous American cities in the next five years. In particular the establishment of car2go in Stuttgart as part of a “living lab” will generate experience of a new quality of individual mobility. A joint information and payment system is planned to enable an interface with public transport.
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