urbanMSP

I worked for Car2Go last year. If there is a pool of cars anywhere, we would send people out to move them around. So hopefully they still do that but idk

so... I'm just signing up for car2go, and looking at the map for the first time... Anyone know why Deja Vu is a restricted area? LOL. there's only a few restricted areas in the city (marquette ave, 2nd ave, the U of M...) seems kinda weird, right? I mean, the area of the map that's excluded doesn't even include any on-street parking, just Deja Vu's building...

That is strange. It also includes the parking lot behind Deja Vu, so I guess it prevents people from ending trips there? I'm not sure what differentiates it from all the other parking lots that don't have to have restricted areas, though.

Interesting article on a pilot project going on in Kansas City. Uber meets commuter van.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovatio ... 19/?no-ist

Car2Go area update:

http://communications.car2go.com/ov?mai ... S-161119IJ

Car2Go area update:

http://communications.car2go.com/ov?mai ... S-161119IJ

Obviously they know better than me, but some of those areas are strange. Like why end at York (or Zenith maybe?) in South Minneapolis, but then bump out to France on the west side of Cedar Lake? Are there really that many more users in those weird pockets back there than at 50th & France?

I just received a postcard from Revl, a (new?) luxury car-sharing service.

You get unlimited* miles and hours for $250 per month. All the cars are BMWs, Mercedes, etc. I guess this is appealing to the young rich millennials?

*You're allowed 500 free miles and 50 hours per month before they charge you extra

Just got an email that Car2Go is suspending service in the Twin Cities at the end of the year...

They cite high rental car taxes, but I have to imagine ridership just didn't pan out, especially given that they shrunk their service area.

That's a bummer. I'd have to imagine that the added costs introduced by winter operations play into it as well, but it's always fun to blame it on taxes instead.

Huge bummer. I used at least a couple times a month for short gap fillers between transit and home. Looks like I'll be doing more Lyft and Uber.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I can actually believe the taxes argument, though potentially not as a near-100% reason. Our taxes are higher than many (though certainly not in the clear-cut upper tier), and I always did notice it seemed to add a bit to my bill. But also, Minneapolis and St Paul are not super dense, and we have fairly high vehicle-ownership rates. I would imagine if we had access to the data, we'd see trips-per-member and/or trips-per-vehicle are below average for their service model. Pair them together and maybe those cars would be better used somewhere else.

I don't know if this contributed to their demise, but I also thought the distribution of cars was uneven. I used it all the time when I lived in Marcy Holmes because I could typically walk outside and find one within 1-3 blocks. They were frequently right outside my door. But I've used them maybe twice since I moved to Whittier. They're almost never to be found, despite this being an incredibly dense location. You'd think it would be prime (or at least as prime as Marcy Holmes) as an audience to target. But, alas, that wasn't the case. I used Uber and Lyft a lot more often because of that.

The taxes don't seem that high here at MSP. A bit higher but not drastically so. Denver seems to have higher taxes and they have Car2Go (and I think it's still going there as well.)

I'm with RailBaronYarr on this - it's not (just) the taxes. The chart Roper shared on Twitter makes it pretty clear that MN isn't that far off from other cities. The real problem is the usage rates are too low (and perhaps winter-related challenges played a lesser role).

Honestly, I kinda regret ever signing up. Sticker shock every damn time I used it. When I still lived in CARAG, we walked to Lunds one time and Car2Go'd home with our groceries. It cost me like $8 to drive a mile. Other times I racked up short trips that cost $15+ just because I got stuck in heavy traffic. I can't speak for everyone, but when the prices are that high, why not just get a Lyft/Uber/cab for about the same cost? I took a Lyft from Mortimer's at Lyndale/Franklin to my house (Ericsson neighborhood), and it was a little under $10 before tip.

Exactly. I've used it only a few times, because unless you're going a fairly long way on the freeway, it's not much more expensive to Uber instead. (And then last weekend, when I had to get to DT StP and procrastinated too long to get a train, I got locked out by a PIN snafu and ended up Ubering anyway, and paying C2G $4 for the privilege. I should try to get that refunded.)

That being said, the most frequent flight I take gets into Terminal 2 at 11:20 on Sunday night, when the train leaves at 11:33 and then not again until 12:25. I've always caught it so far, but it's been nice to know that Car2Go was an option if I needed it.

Silpohat's critique of the service is spot on. I live at the junction of three state highways and ended up using it as a way to get to and from downtown saint Paul and places just outside downtown Minneapolis. Short trips or in congested conditions are expensive.

The 22% tax rate is outrageous. I'm disappointed urban legislators couldn't get a car sharing exempted from the rental car tax.

Car2go San Diego announced today they're shutting down

And San Diego has an 8% tax rate, per that Twitter post. I'm not buying the high taxes argument at all.

As for the "Why Car2Go is almost as expensive as Uber, even though you're driving yourself" aspect: Uber is losing unreal amounts of money to be as cheap as it is.

So the "problem", it turns out, is that Car2Go is a direct subsidary of Daimler AG (makers of Mercedes, Smart, etc.) and not a Silicon Valley startup with access to billions of venture capital. Daimler is a for-profit corporation with stockholders to answer to and cannot take the initial heavy losses that Uber/Lyft's tech billionaires can.

This hasn't been stated as much, but part of the reason that Car2Go even exists in the US is that Daimler had thousands of unsold Smart ForTwo cars just sitting around. They had already built all these Smart cars built to US specs, but nobody wanted to buy them. Sales of Smart cars in the US have been abysmal at best.

I forgot who said it (it popped up on my Twitter feed) but someone pointed out that Daimler uses Car2Go for carbon offsets.