Share Now, formerly Car2Go, is leaving North America
share-now.com
share-now.com
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
"We can't compete, so we're leaving."
My read is, they expanded too fast. The fear of them being too late drove them to be too soon.
> "Moving forward, SHARE NOW will focus on the remaining 18 European cities. We, along with our shareholders, believe these markets show the clearest potential for profitable growth and mobility innovation."
https://www.autonews.com/mobility-report/car2go-latest-short...
"It's not worth trying to run this business" can be the same thing as "we can't compete", but it isn't necessarily the same thing.
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."
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.
Across the street from my house, it's fine to park in the evenings, and a tow zone during the day. People would leave Car2go cars parked there all the time, and, with it being so uncertain when the next person would get the car, those puppies were like manna from heaven for the city impound lot's balance sheet. Someone on my block tried putting their car up Getaround, too, but that ended right quick.
In many of the cities I've lived in, street parking is also odd/even in the winter in the denser parts of town where Car2go makes sense. Parking is less brutal further out parts of town, but I imagine actually finding and getting yourself to a car starts feeling like more hassle than it's worth. Seems like it could easily escalate into a choice between no customers at all, and customers who tend to produce negative revenue.
I think it has more to do with the fact that most people in America own cars and only rent if they need a car long term.
Recently, I tried to return a car only to see the parking space being taken up by an unauthorized car (all the more aggravating as my car was electric and should have been recharged overnight). I was advised to find a legal parking space where I could leave the car for 12 hours or so — which turned out to be a significant hassle. I was essentially unable to find a spot and ended up parking in my own driveway.
Zipcar in the US does this for awhile now. It's ok, but means you can't do point to point as easily. So if you drive somewhere, do something for hours, you have to hold the reservation the whole time and then drive back when you're done.
It's useful for many things, but the pricing doesn't work for everything.
Free parking is now a significant policy hill to die on for a loud, politically vocal portion of the population, even in places like NYC where they are a minority. Any giveaway of free parking, whether it be for dedicated carsharing spots, a bike corral, a bus lane, to free up spots by making people pay for usage, or to reduce double parking by delivery vehicles, is equivalent in these peoples’ eyes as personally driving a bulldozer to eminent domain their living room, despite the fact that the street is a notionally public realm. And at the scale of local elections with such low turnout that margins are measured in the hundreds of voters, pissing these people off is something you do at your own peril.
Some jurisdictions, as it is, do not spend nearly enough money on street maintenance and upkeep, and changing parking is a fear that other issues will pop up and be ignored.
And in some cities, streets are actually not managed by the city but by the state, and good luck getting a state DOT to do anything even a hairline outside of the box.
There's an interesting tension there. I imagine that paving and maintaining streets wide enough to allow for free street parking is a massive drain on the city's street budgets. And, considering that, in my city, an annual on-street parking permit costs about the same as 1 week of off-street parking on the private market, it's probably being provided at a massive discount just on the basis of land value alone.
Combine the two, and it would seem that you've got what amounts to an absolutely massive taxpayer-supported hand-out. Which I could swear is exactly the kind of thing that Americans are supposed to hate the most.
Most cities are far behind on maintenance on many of their roads. Modifying the free parking might also result in people asking to fix the other things wrong with the road, and before you know it you're Seattle spending $12M per mile to reconstruct the road from curb to curb. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/12-...
1. We don't know what mobility technologies to invest in (electric cars, scooters, electric bikes, who knows what else)
2. Increased hassle building out in US cities in general (you can look at comments around Google Fiber as well).
3. Lack of any investment from civic actors on developing support for bikes / scooters / electric / etc.
Basically, there are a lot of imaginable futures for urban mobility and there are no real signals in the US market about where things are going to end up. Uber / Lyft / the scooter folks / Tesla are all pushing their things but there's no real direction or leader and as a result cities are largely staying out (even failing to build obvious projects like bike infrastructure and public transit to urban cores).
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There is not much the government can do to fix this. One of the few things government could do to help - increased police presence and general law enforcement - has been rejected by inner city politicians. Police often find themselves at odds with the political leadership of major American cities. It's a shame, but that's politics.
Ultimately it's a cultural issue that the people themselves need to figure out. If they stopped having kids so young and women weren't forced to raise their children alone, things could improve.
I’m still amazed when the privileged few sit on HN and espouse views like this. There’s an obvious answer and it’s probably the only reason you’re here - education. You’ve likely had access to decent or great education throughout your life. Your government could easily change its priorities and fund education, healthcare and social programs to correct these problems, but they don’t. Also, when you say it’s a ‘cultural’ issue, your suggesting it’s inherent to the people it affects, and given that they are largely black and ethnic people, it has a whiff of racism.
Also has nothing to do with race. There are different cultural issues that afflict every community across America and the world.
There are things that can be done, but there's no solidarity and a legacy of racism.
It sounds like there is no empathy in your speech, as in if someone took a wrong turn then they deserve to suffer for not having lived a perfect life with perfect choices.
A decent society would look at these problems and fix them in multiple levels: better education and support for teens to not get pregnant, opportunities for those with kids so young to be able to change their lives so they don't perpetuate a cycle of misery.
This is a failure of American society, its values and your comment just make it clear what is wrong in the public mind and discourse about these issues, these people are also people, unfortunately growing up in much worse conditions than you probably have and this, in the US, will completely impact the rest of their lives.
So please, think about the bigger picture here, use some empathy and stop perpetuating this idiotic "individual responsibility" discourse.
Do you have some actual peer reviewed studies on poverty that argue this or is your view into this issue based entirely on David Brooks columns?
.. but it is "normal"? It's been like that for years. America just doesn't fix "local" problems, even if they're on a huge scale. That's how Puerto Rico managed to be without electricity for three months. This is what you get when you have a party that believes government is inherently bad: you get a failed state.
How come other countries look so much better being on pretty much the same level of society and culture?
Who else can fix an issue on this scale? Or does it mean society needs to come to terms with it and accept it like some force of nature?
As to why it chooses to do that, it looks like the crime in Chicago isn't an issue that affects marginal voters. Or that crime is endemic all the way up in Illinois; four of the last eight governors have been jailed for corruption, and that appears to be a cross-party problem.
It took Federal prosecution to get Al Capone, after all.
[0]: exaggerating for effect, but it's hard to describe it otherwise when comparing to any other developed nation.
People, including drug addicts and mentally ill (which largely comprise the homeless population), have a fundamental right to living on the streets in squalor.
Reagan began the process of "deinstitutionalization" which involved shutting down mental institutions and throwing their wards on the street. In theory, they were supposed to be sent to homes and provided publicly funded caregivers to help them be more independent or whatever. But they never actually bothered to hire the caregivers and, in fact, cut the budgets for all public health and mental health services dramatically.
Consequently, you've got a bunch of people with undiagnosed (or diagnosed) mental illnesses running around untreated. There is no public health system so they can't afford the treatment or medications even if they know they need them. There are no facilities in place to protect those who might be a danger to themselves or others. And even the homeless shelters are so full up with addicts and, sometimes violent or dangerous, headcases that otherwise healthy or stable homeless people are scared to go there, putting them at risk since they're actively avoiding the places that might have resources and support to help them get on their feet.
But people earning more than $250k a year pay like, 2% less in taxes so I guess it evens out or something.
In the last few years of its existence I used it maybe once (if at all, honestly I don't really remember). It simply got killed by Uber and Lyft. Uber and Lyft are just generally much more convenient, and I don't remember the cost being that different.
"Local" is a bit misleading - they're indeed based here, but they also serve Quebec City, Ottawa, Toronto, Halifax, and over in Europe, Paris. (Service details vary by location outside the province of Quebec.)
But I doubt that they will come back....
Before that I used the service a lot, I’d just hop in a car and go do stuff, changing my plans on the go, and know I’d get the best deal. After I had to plan things very precisely and hope for no randomness (heavy traffic, no parking, friend taking too long to come outside) and often it was less hassle and as expensive to take an Uber. I used to use them maybe once a week, then after all that I dropped to once every few months. But that’s just me..
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?
Also Evo has even less of an incentive now to fix their broken Android app.
None of this stops me from renting a car (except maybe the map), but I don't think they understand that their mobile app is literally the first thing people look at when they hear about Evo, and if it's bad, many of them won't use it. Especially in Vancouver. Have you seen how many front-end developers there are in this city? A decent mobile app is worth a year's marketing budget for a service like this.
On some level, I'm excited for them because it's nice that the local company has this opportunity to win hearts and minds, but they definitely need to figure some stuff out.
I wonder how easy it'd be to reverse their API and make a mobile app less terrible than you describe. :P
https://blog.car2go.com/2019/09/27/important-update-car2go-n...
Evo now doesn’t face major competition, which I worry about. I like their service, but it definitely seems like they’ll jack up the price.
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.
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.
Their model is quite different than car2go's, which involved buying cars, keeping them safe and running, etc.
Anything real like cars on the road seemingly goes belly-up within a few years unless VCs throw money at it for no reason other than hype.
I don’t think Getaround or Turo will last much longer without a lot more VC funding.
I never hosted but I used it a few times, and I have a few friends who host, so my experience is obviously anecdotal but I've only heard good things..
The only people who make money (like real money and not pretend “profit” that doesn’t account for everything I listed) are people who buy cars specifically to rent out on Turo. They don’t get attached to any of the cars because those things will get fucked.
Which is exactly what rental companies do. If Those private individuals can be any cheaper than Hertz & co with their huge discounts, it's just VC money being thrown at it, not a sustainable business model.
They won’t factor in the costs of a crash, or reduced life, or if the insurance companies catch up then the additional insurance cost.
Turo’s profit lies in having unsavvy hosts pick up these costs.
Honestly, the handful of hosts I've worked with are basically operating their own rental businesses and simply preferred Turo's deal vs. franchising with one of the big names.
I dunno, this all feels like edge cases and not the kind of thing the average person would do. Or if a Turo member did this, they would get away with it once, and then be banned from the platform.
These all sound like ridiculous scenarios out of a bad cop show. Do you have any evidence that this has happened to any Turo hosts?
If this was the norm, these services would not exist.
The deal with Daimler and BMW doing this is also to attract future generations of buyers. It is said that users of "car sharing" are younger folks (not necessarily my observation, but what do I know) ND the hope is that when they become older, get married, get children and need their own car at fixed in the premium brands. No idea if that equations works out, though.
I was really hoping this model was going to see wider adoption and private car ownership would begin its ride into the sunset.
[1] obviously not killer enough.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Also, for long-running services, the initial costs aren't that important anyway if the cars are more durable. In Germany, almost all cabs used to be Mercedes. (I remember the whole cinema laughing in Collateral when the Jamie Foxx character presented his business outline for his luxury cab service)
In Europe they are much more a la carte - cloth seats, etc., available, making them the standard cars in many ways at any price point.
In the US and other "luxury" targeted markets, the country only offers certain premium configurations or bundles, such as how nearly all BMWNA cars have the "premium package", etc., significantly raising the MSRP to hit those premium luxury categories.
Even BMW Canada has some smaller base engines available than BMW USA. (Reduced stroke volume on the n52).
It's also why a lot of people buy pickup trucks that they never haul or tow anything with, over SUVs - the latter aren't 'cool'.
BMW/truck makers could sell the smaller engine for proportionately less money, but they don’t because it would make the vehicle too available. Or just make up close enough numbers and most won’t care.
99% of bystanders won’t know the difference.
BMW doesn’t follow its numbering scheme for engines anyway (The 323 had a 2.5L engine.)
That's not why Americans like big engines. American driving styles resemble drag racing: they like to take off from stop lights, even though their ultimate speed isn't as high as on German autobahns.
I’m with you on pickups though, gotta have a Duallie V8 just in case you install a 5th wheel one day.
Americans want big engines so that they get moderate acceleration at the semi-idle throttle levels that allow their automatic transmission to stay in the quiet low rev range. Never saw anything in terms of "taking off" that could not have been handled by an engine half the size at full throttle on manual in high gear/low rev (most economic way to drive a given ICE) or by an engine quarter the size driven at low gear, high rev (most economic way to reach a given performance level of you can size the engine to fit).
Perhaps I was at the wrong coast?
It's a little better nowadays in many western US states, 75-80mph limits are common on rural interstates.
We also have lots of roads with literally nothing and no one for, in some cases, hundreds of miles so it really makes no difference whether there's a speed limit or what it is.
Different factories have different failure rates, but Germany ain't even leading here (and believe me, there's no inherent "German engineering" factor separating someone working in Lower Bavaria than someone from South Carolina).
Apart from minor details like bumpers and first aid kits, the cars should be pretty much the same wherever you go. Would be pretty bad from a marketing perspective if the quality varies too much, never mind that with global logistics, minimizing differences is pretty much the core value.
Or in other words: The cars are overpriced rust all over the world.
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).
* 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.
it's an all-electric car service rented by the minute, and developed by bolloré, a french conglomerate, in collaboration with ladot.
bluela is riddled with problems[1], and for many use cases, it's not cost-competitive[2]. it's basically only economical for 15-minute point-to-point trips directly from and to charging stations (which have limited coverage, all near downtown).
by my (very rough) estimation, such services become attractive when they're dockless and the cost gets to $3/hr for 3-5 hour rentals (the sweet spot for most errand-running and visitation trips). otherwise, you can often find rental car deals at ~$20/day.
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[1] not dockless, unpredictable availability (both cars and charging spots), limited range, dirty cars/chargers, frequent breakages, poor UX (both app and car), convoluted rental process, payment issues, uncaring customer service, etc.
[2] 20¢/min (≃$12/hr) with a $60/yr membership (also has a low-income tier at 15¢/min)
None of these are cheap to realize.
https://www.chicagobusiness.com/transportation/twenty-one-ch...
> 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.
Made living here much easier for when I just needed a quick vehicle rental.
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.
Sure, all the cars smelt of weed and the seats were covered in dog hairs or french fries, but the convenience!
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.
- Tiny EV carsharing companies like Bollorè are parterning with US cities like Los Angeles: 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
Edit: also ending in: London, Brussels and Florence
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.
If one of these reasons goes away it might become much less attractive to them.
Everyone I know still calls it mytaxi or hailo.
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.
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.
Parking in London is very bad but Florence is insane.
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.
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.
Like they deserve to have to stop their service in NA?
> soapbox shaped small cars
Smart cars.
I still don't agree with the good riddance. That's not what it means.
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 ?
That said it wasn’t common that I needed to contact them so this frustration didn’t come up too often even as a $200+/month customer over the past six or so years.
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.