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Comment by ianbicking | Hacker News Reader

I was quite disappointed that Car2Go didn't work out - it was a car rental service similar to e-scooters, park anywhere, pay by the minute. They used Smart cars, which were fine (they were owned by Daimler), but it would have been a great system even with cheaper cars and disallowing highway use.

Seeing cars like this makes me wish someone would try it again but with a different fleet.

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Car2Go didn't work out because keeping their cars well-distributed throughout the city was an impossible problem to solve. Because of the "park anywhere" feature they would all naturally cluster at a few hotspots very early in the day and stay there. A by-the-minute car service is pointless if I have to take a taxi to get to the car.

In Vancouver we have a local service (evo) that was competing with car2go, but since car2go pulled out they seem to be doing quite well. I suspect the reason car2go "failed" was that it was more about pushing the smartcar into the north american market that was fairly reluctant to buy smaller cars, than it was about actually providing that service. When smartcars showed they weren't going to take off here, they had no reason to keep it going.

Yeah, I've heard the theory car2go was all an attempt to advertise Smart cars, which I thought was weird... I liked the car2go service but I would never want to buy one of those cars, they drove like crap. For the purpose of getting around they were fine, but nothing more.

Are Smart cars always that crappy, or were the models used for Car2go particularly inferior? I'm not sure what the transmission was, but it wasn't a normal automatic - you could feel it go into neutral (losing power) and then engage at a higher gear.

It was an automated manual transmission. You described exactly what it was happening. The car was disengaging the clutch, changing gears, after witch it would reengage the clutch.

It was crap.

Amusingly enough, when they do it with _two_ manual transmissions, angels start to sing their praises - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-clutch_transmission

(Not kidding, that's what Porsche uses, also F1 cars etc, last time I looked)

Dual clutch transmissions are not uncommon in production cars today. VW calls them DSG (direct shift gearbox), Audi S-Tronic.

I drove a Smart for a few years. One feature of the computer controlling the transmission was that it's supposed to "learn" your driving and adjust its shifting accordingly. Mine always ran pretty darn good. I could also put the gear shifter into manual mode where it would only shift when I told it to, and it was much faster on the shifts.

The mother-in-law also had one. Hers drove like crap, much like you're describing. It's annoying to ride with her no matter what she drives. We'd do the reset procedure on hers and it would behave a bit better for a couple weeks.

I suspect the computer would have a helluva time guessing what to do next if there's a different driver every day.

It shifts like crap. We also have this transmission on an older Civic and I find myself giving up and switching to manual whenever I need to overtake or drive up a hill. Just give me a stick and a clutch or at least a sequential manual like the older convertible Smart has. My partner has developed bad urban driving practices such as accelerating and then immediately braking at a red light that could be clearley seen in order to compensate for the gearboxes' crappy behaviour. DSG double clutch is a dream to drive in compared to an automatic manual. I haven't used CVT but other drivers seem to have issues with that too.

I heard the diesel’s were better, but I can’t confirm that firsthand since all the car2go ones were gas. They rolled out some all-electric ones towards the end and those drove quite well with none of the jerking and rocking

It's basically a manual transmission that's automatically controlled. More efficient than a classic auto with a torque converter, but the shifts won't ever be as smooth (nor the acceleration from standstill.)

Assuming that a large part of the reason they 'stay there' early in the day is because people are at work, doesn't that mean that they'll naturally be distributed back to where they were when people return home?

Traditional rental car services seem to have figured out how to make it work, why can't pay-by-the-minute places do the same? Something like demand-based pricing seems like it would work well for this.

Most of these cars were used exactly for this purpose. In Seattle they would drive people from all over the city to Amazon's offices (in South Lake Union) in the morning, and back in the evening. However, the cars being used twice a day for 10-20 mins isn't exactly a winning business model for the company.

Evo in Vancouver&Victoria (https://evo.ca/) has the same model, but seems to work out. Up to now I was always able to find a car in 10min walking distance. But obviously there's some clusters of them at more frequent visited destinations.

> A by-the-minute car service is pointless if I have to take a taxi to get to the car.

I had the same problem when I was considering using Zipcar to visit Santa Cruz from San Francisco. I had no problem paying Zipcar's rate for the time it would take to travel. But Zipcar charges you for the time between when you take the car out of its designated parking spot and when you return it to the same designated parking spot, which completely defeats the purpose.

I used zipcar when I was in college, super convenient to have in providence without having to buy or take a car to school (esp for international students). Was much better to lock it in for days rather than by the interval they had (i think it was 30 min, but this was over a decade ago for me).

Though I can see how it would be less so if you only need to go from point a to b and not back to a.

It would be better if you could return it to any empty Zipcar stall, the same way rental bike work. The app could let you claim a spot ahead of time, so that it's not taken by someone else by the time you get there.

They killed themselves when they converted their fleet from Smart cars to full-sizes Mercedes. The new fleet was impossible to park. It was such an obvious mistake even at the time. Their users loved the smart cars.

https://www.geekwire.com/2017/car2go-dropping-smart-cars-sea...

Anecdotal, but I've used Car2Go extensively and HATED the smart cars. Always felt like they would fall apart the next time I accelerated.

Car2Go (Mercedes) merged with DriveNow (BMW) and are now called ShareNow. VW also runs a service called WeShare. Its somewhat successfull in Germany. I regularly use them in Berlin.

ShareNow also only uses VWs electric cara. Mostly last gen VW Golf-e but recently also some ID.3 cars.

In Denmark, ShareNow's fleet is mostly BMW i3.

I also use ShareNow in Berlin. Another competitor is getaround, formerly Drivy, which is an Airbnb for rental cars.

Actually the Smart chasis is pretty well designed, like a roll cage with plastic panels. It would certainly not fall apart but feels that way because it's small, not very well sound proofed and they put the engine inside (!) the habitacle.

I was surprised when they shut down, because it seemed to work well in Denver. There was always a car within a couple blocks, and it was so much cheaper and nicer than Lyft IMO.

I once drove a car2go from downtown to my apartment near the university. This was after they started using Benz instead of Smart cars. I parked it outside and went and took a nap, had dinner, etc. About 6 hours later I left the apartment and noticed the car was still out front…running. I had put it in park and forgotten to turn it off. Customer service gave me a bit of a deal on the cost I’d racked up. I still laugh about it.

Without big regulatory changes around private ownership, cars like this one make me think that the idea of a massive shared fleet is doomed if self driving becomes a reality.

When cars become mostly about tech, tech will do what it always does - get cheaper and better. The total cost per trip will drop through the floor. People will buy more cars and urban sprawl will go crazy.

If I could send out my car without a driver to run errands for me, I would do it all the time. Lots of stores already have curbside delivery set up so it would be easy to adapt that for driverless cars.

There are other effects as well. For example, if accident rates plummet, car insurance will get cheap and that industry will implode.

The wear on a car costs about as much as paying someone to drive it. The costs can only go so low, and the cost of personal ownership is still going to be higher than a fleet because the car sits around more. And if they're so cheap I'd still expect to see instant rental/taxi fleets.

As for people buying more cars, so many people already have cars that I don't imagine that having a huge effect.

So overall I disagree with your conclusions.

The wear on electric cars is significantly cheaper. No pistons, no oil, no gears, no transmission, no exaust system, no series of gaskets for the coolant to flow through the engine block. In fact, electric motors only have metal to metal contact at bearings, the actual forced produced is without metal to metal contact.

Fleet prices for electric cars today are already significantly cheaper. In the future, probably more so.

This doesn't invalidate your point, but the motors in electric cars are also liquid cooled just like ICEs. The system is a bit simpler since you're cooling a motor and not an engine, but ultimately it's a water cooling system and needs gaskets etc.

Yeah, people too often say things like "there's no gaskets" or "there's no gears or oil". There are gaskets, there are usually gears, there is usually a lubricant oil in the gearbox. But the temps and pressures on the cooling systems are much lower, the gearboxes are fixed gear ratios, and there's no waste carbons in the oil dirtying it. So the service intervals of all of these are much longer than any regular ICE vehicle.

Most electric cars still have a gear box with gear oil lubricating it. They're usually fixed gear ratios so the wear and tear is much lower (not sliding gears around but on cars it's not normally the motors directly connected to the wheels.

> so many people already have cars that I don't imagine that having a huge effect.

Instead of one car per adult, it'll be one car per person once the kids get to primary school age in suburban families.

There are a lot of elderly and disabled people would own cars if they were self-driving and a bit cheaper than they are now. Many people currently using public transport might switch, too. That group might use shared cars, but the others are unlikely to.

The effect might be bigger than one would think.

Edit: the effect on traffic volume and congestion will be bigger. Freed from the burden of driving, commuters will be able to live further away from their jobs. Empty cars will be a significant fraction of vehicles on the road.

> Instead of one car per adult, it'll be one car per person once the kids get to primary school age in suburban families.

I was actually thinking that it would reduce car ownership. If I could commute and then send the car to home so that my wife could commute to her workplace, I definitely would! It would require syncing on who uses the car when, but at a more granular level compared to now ("I'm taking the car today" vs "I'm taking the car between 8-9am").

I expect the opposite. With self-driving cars the cost of an Uber drops significantly. Instead of more cars we will end up with less cars at higher utilization. Why would you personally own a car when Uber is 10x cheaper for all use cases of a personal vehicle?

I'd be more worried about what happens when all cars are controlled by 2 massive tech companies.

At least in the US, people generally aren't all that price sensitive about their car. They spend a lot more money on cars than they strictly need to and I don't expect that to change. There are exceptions though (NYC is a big one).

If anything, the kinds of personalization you will be able to do with something like the car in the article are pretty big. I could see people buying them like they buy their phones. Pay $200 / month and get a new car every two years.

> Why would you personally own a car

For me, it's because shared cars are usually nasty inside. Plus, the pandemic has me thinking about the safety of shared spaces. My car is an extension of my home and I feel safe in it.

> what happens when all cars are controlled by 2 massive tech companies

Why would the car companies even sell cars for shared use? Setting up a company like Uber has never been easier and it's getting more easy all the time. Why wouldn't the car companies create their own car share services?

Automated driving will also prompt new, more agile forms of package delivery (imagine a package being shepherded from the Amazon warehouse shelf to your door with zero human participation) which will undoubtedly result in more vehicles on the road.

I am a car owner, but I'd seriously consider eliminating it if other options were convenient and cost effective. I've had my car for just about 15 years now. I am waiting for an electric option that will be a suitable replacement.

Car2Go pulled out of Minneapolis-St. Paul because the state classified them as rental cars and therefore charged really high rental tax rates intended for gouging travelers that rent cars at the airport.

They had those at my uni, and during football games people would get drunk and flip them onto their roof or push them into the lake

I don't understand smart cars. My friend had one and I said something to the effect of "at least it gets good gas mileage". I was shocked to find out he was getting roughly the same gas mileage as my old Honda Civic. What is the point if it doesn't even get good gas mileage?

Car2Go is still around in some European cities!

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