The concept of rent-as-needed city cars is slowly taking off, and Daimler is getting into the act with its car2go “mobility concept.” The company is deploying a fleet of 300 specially-eqiupped smart fortwo cars within the city of Hamburg. Daimler has teamed up with rental car company Europcar for the new venture.
Customers will be able to rent the smart fortwos within Hamburg’s central zone, a 65 square kilometer area, either spontaneously or by booking in advance. They pay a one-off registration fee of 29 euros (about P1730), then pay a fee of 29 euro cents (about P17.30) per minute or a maximum of 14.90 euros (about P854) per hour. The price includes fuel, insurance, and parking fees. The per-hour fee may seem steep, but fuel and parking fees in Europe cost an arm and a leg.
car2go Hamburg GmbH will provide a large number of marked parking spaces in private car parks, so customer’s won’t have to wait for a parking space. The difference from a traditional car rental is that the car2go vehicles can be found and rented immediately by customers throughout the operating area, without the need for reservation. Customers can take a one-way journey within the zone and just leave them in any public parking space or city-managed car park.
Daimler says that the smart car2go edition is the world’s first series-produced carsharing model. The car’s telematics controls systems such as the immobilizer. Propulsion is by gasoline engine with auto start/stop system. Electric power is being considered for a future edition. The car2go also has a roof-mounted 100-watt solar panel to power the telematics, charge the car’s battery, and keep it cool while it is parked.
The city’s Senator for Urban Development and the Environment, Anja Hajduk, says, “car2go is a good option for people who mostly use other forms of transport but still want to use a car from time to time. car2go can play an important part in making Hamburg’s traffic more environmentally compatible and more suitable for urban life.”
Hamburg follows the cities of Ulm, Germany, and Austin, Texas in fielding the system. In Ulm, 20,000 customers have signed up and since 2009, traveled more htan 4 million kilometers, on 350,000 journeys.
We think it’s a great idea for well-behaved and generally law-abiding cities. The only missed opportunity is that Mercedes could have fielded the S-Class instead, and called the service S-CarGo.
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