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Article and photos by Gerry Frechette
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Car2Go Vancouver
Vancouver, British Columbia – Being a city with no shortage of officially encouraged alternatives to the privately-owned, single-occupant vehicle, it is no surprise that Vancouver was chosen by Mercedes-Benz Canada to be the first Canadian city to have the Car2Go free-floating car sharing service, joining Ulm and Hamburg in Germany, and Austin, Texas.
There were already two car sharing outfits in Vancouver, but the Car2Go program differentiates itself with unique attributes. The Car2Go member can access a car “on demand” within the current service area in and near downtown without a reservation, find the nearest car with the aid of GPS technology, drive it anywhere and be billed by the minute, and leave it in a designated Car2Go parking spot or in any available public parking space including “permit only” parking within the defined area – and walk away.
The process involved for joining the program is pretty well laid out on the web site at Car2Go.com, including the necessity of arranging for the government insurance agency, ICBC, to forward a copy of your driving record; but what we wanted to know is how the member actually interacts with the cars on a day-to-day basis, and what technology is incorporated to ensure a smooth, worry-free experience for both sides of the relationship. To that end, we spent half a day with a car, looking at all that is involved with driving one.
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The Smart Fortwo Car2Go editions are specially designed for car sharing. They are fitted with solar cell roofs, designed to ensure that the telematics system and the windshield card reader, which is always on, don’t drain the battery. The service was launched on June 18, 2011 with what was to have been 225 vehicles, but several were heavily damaged during the Stanley Cup riots a few days prior.
Once the new member jumps through all the application hoops, he or she is sent a Radio Frequency ID card in the mail. The card can be used to put into service any car that is available. To find a car, members phone the call centre, or go on the web site car2go.com and click on CarFinder. There are apps available for smart phones, too, that will locate a car and allow you to make immediate reservations. At this writing, there is no official Car2Go app, but there are several third-party apps by independent developers for iPhone and Android. If you have forgotten where you have parked, you can enter your reservation code, and the app will show you where your vehicle is, based on the GPS coordinates. You can get a list of all the official parking spaces, too. And, if you happen to be walking by a car that is available, you can just take it and go. In other words, the service is location-based, so it is available when and where you want it. As soon as you know you need a car, you can look to find the closest one. The GPS locating system allows any car to be located wherever it is, even if it isn’t in a designated reserved Car2Go spot.
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So, once a car is found and if it is available, the windshield reader will state that, and tells the Car2Go member he or she can take it right away if desired. The RF member card is held next to the windshield for a second, and the account details are pulled up and the door unlocked. Once inside, the system asks for a PIN number, for security reasons. If the membership card is ever lost, nobody else can drive on that account. It will ask the member to accept the terms and conditions of use, and state whether the car has any physical damage on it. If it does, and it is damage that makes the car undriveable, you would be connected by phone to the call centre, and they will find you the next closest car to drive. Next, the member is asked to rate the vehicle’s cleanliness, both interior and exterior. If a member says a vehicle isn’t clean, when they are finished with it, Car2Go will go and clean it wherever it is.
Only after going through all that can the ignition key be removed from its holder next to the touch-screen. When the key is taken out, more instructions will show on the screen, and the car can be started. The GPS system can be set for the desired destination, and the radio is pre-programed to CBC Radio 2, although there are seven other FM stations available. There is no AM radio available at the present time, but car2Go is said to be working on that. So, no talk or traffic radio, but finally, you are ready to go for a drive!
The flexibility continues out on the road. You can drive somewhere to go shopping, for example, end the rental for two hours, then start another rental when you are ready. Anytime you stop the car, you have the choice to stop being billed, but if you choose “end rental,” it’ll ask a last question – was there any damage to the car while you were driving it? At this point, you might check to see if there are any cars nearby before ending the billing, and if not, maybe just choose to keep the original car when you are shopping. If you have ended the original rental, and come out from shopping and there are no cars there anymore, you can check the app on your smart phone to see where the nearest one is, and hope that it isn’t too far from the curb you are impatiently standing on.
So, what happens when you are ready to return a car, and there isn’t a designated Car2Go spot available? There are options available within the City of Vancouver. On Granville Island, the car can be parked in any three-hour parking spot and left there indefinitely. In Downtown, Yaletown and Gastown, there just isn’t a lot of on-street parking available. Car2Go has a deal with Easy Park parkades, which offers two locations with unlimited overflow rooftop parking, at Richards and Georgia, and on Cordova in Gastown.
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Not only that, but they have an agreement with City of Vancouver, which allows members to leave vehicles, when finished with them, in any residential permit parking spot, or in a spot where it says no parking except for residents of the block. There is a special decal on the windshield of each car allowing them to be parked in any of those spots. And of course, a car can be left in any regular on-street parking spot that isn’t metered. So really, Car2Go has got the bases covered, so that no member has to spend much time looking for a parking spot when the time comes to walk.
What happens when a car is dropped somewhere with an empty gas tank? At a certain point, when the tank is under 20 per cent full, the car will be put in service mode, which means no one can use it. And then the Car2Go service team will go out and refuel it. But if you go on a longer trip, say, to Whistler, you are likely to need to fill up. There is a credit card in the car which will allow you to purchase gasoline, and Car2Go will pay for it, because that is included in the cost. The time taken to refuel the car will even be credited with free driving minutes.
One might wonder, how do cars get moved from all the non-Car2Go parking spots, back to the official spots? The city is split into grids, and when the number of cars in a certain grid gets low based on a pre-determined allocation, car2Go will relocate the cars to where they are needed. The objective, obviously, is to make the service as seamless and hassle-free as possible.
It’s difficult to compare costs with the other car sharing outfits, because it depends on the circumstances of the trip. Research shows that folks usually average 22 minutes per trip, so based on that, Car2Go is lower cost because they bill by the minute, while others bill by the hour. The maximum daily rate is $65.99, which is comparable to other providers. The hourly rate is $12.99, which can be slightly higher, but there are many variables based on usage. The minute rate is 35 cents, so at the point where the hourly rate is cheaper (approximately 37 minutes), you would be charged the hourly rate.
That, in a nutshell, is how the Car2Go program works for both the member and the company. Technology has been put to good use to ensure that the driving experience is a good one. There was a glitch that caused a service outage at the end of July, but it was short lived, and the company notified its members right away both at the outset and when it was resolved.
Given how many of the blue-and-white smarts you see in Vancouver, the program has gotten off to a good start, and it is only a matter of time until other Canadian cities get their own version of car sharing, untethered.
