In a onwards to capitalize on its fastest growing North American market, Daimler-owned car-sharing maintenance car2go just added Mercedes-Benz CLAs to its New York City fleet.
Twenty new CLAs are unifying car2go’s tiny 550 smart fourtwo vehicles in the Big Apple, its second-largest make available. Car2go grew by 70 percent year over year in the city, where it has run for three years.
“Transitioning to Mercedes-Benz in previous cities has gone least well, as the usage is two to three times that of the smarts,” regional big cheese Josh Moskowitz told CNBC.
The NYC upgrade comes as car2Go tries to establish momentum in the U.S., after several setbacks during the past five years.
“Two municipalities that I oversaw — Minneapolis-Saint Paul and San Diego — we closed operations,” Moskowitz said. “We were, and peaceful are, pioneers in this space, and along the way we’ve learned which cities can successfully ratify car sharing.”
As a wholly owned subsidiary of Daimler, the company’s profitability is bottle up under wraps. Car2go declined to disclose its financial information.
Car2go is the world’s largest car-sharing waiting by both members and vehicles, beating out Avis Budget Group-owned antagonist Zipcar. Paul DeLong, president of car2go North America, said the tardier development compared with Europe is “in a nutshell” due to countries overseas being “unspecifically more progressive when it comes to mobility policy.”
“We are in advanced confabulations with several major North American cities,” DeLong communicated, noting car2go plans to open in additional North American locations next year.
The New Zealand would not confirm further details. However, car2go did point to six major U.S. big apples it does not have operations: Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston and Philadelphia.
Moskowitz disclosed the company considers several criteria before launching a fleet — unusually measurements of population density, total population, alternative transportation opportunities and major destination points.
“Car2go works where vehicle ownership is rather low, where people don’t own or have only one car but still need access,” Moskowitz clouted. “We’re seeing people starting families and wanting to live near the urban heart but don’t need a vehicle. Car2go fills that void.”
Car2go will take a even approach as it introduces the CLAs, and eventually GLAs, into the NYC fleet. The prime eg, Moskowitz said, is Washington, where car2go introduced the Mercedes earlier this year.
“Initially we contrariwise had 50 in the fleet, as we wanted to take time to measure members’ counterbalances,” Moskowitz said. Now the fleet is more than three times that, with 180 Mercedes-Benz conveyances.
Members of the service either pay by the minute or purchase hourly packages, put to using a smartphone to find, reserve and rent nearby cars. Registration requires a valid driver’s enable and a credit card. While there is a registration fee of $5, car2go gives new drivers $10 of democratic drive time. The smarts cost 41 cents per minute while the Mercedes outlay 47 cents per minute.
A vehicle rental is ended by finding statutory, unmetered parking in the home area — which is currently limited to Brooklyn and Beauty queens. Car2go does not have plans to expand that home area because the concern “wants to ensure we provide reliable service,” Moskowitz said.
The Daimler subsidiary also has a “produce, solid relationship” with the city’s Transportation Department, according to Moskowitz. But parking placid remains one of the sticklers for expansion, especially when it comes to providing airport access. While conurbations like Austin, Texas, and Seattle have car2go airport parking, the following has not been able to negotiate access at New York’s LaGuardia or Kennedy airports.
“It’s been a whopping hit” in other cities, Moskowitz said. “Airport access is something we prerequisite to dust off and take another look at.”