First launched with in Ulm, Germany, three years ago, Car2go was successfully rolled out a year later in North America in Austin, Texas. To date, a total of more than 35,000 customers have joined the Car2go programme in Ulm and Austin and there have been more than 600,000 fully automated rental transactions, averaging between 10 and 60 minutes. Car2go was also recently introduced in Hamburg, Germany, and becomes operational in Amsterdam in the Netherlands at the end of 2011.
"We're very excited that Car2go will be making its Canadian debut in Vancouver," said the city’s mayor, Gregor Robertson. "Our goal is to become the greenest city in the world by 2020, and providing cleaner transportation options is a big part of that. We want to ensure that we provide a full range of sustainable transportation options for our citizens, and Car2go's unique car-sharing model is a great fit for Vancouver."
Car2go conducted a trial assessment of its service in Vancouver from June 2010 to March 2011 with select test users from well-known and respected local organizations like Wavefront, the Vancouver Public Library, the Vancouver Film School and Bard on the Beach. The assessment was used to validate and refine business processes and technical systems prior to the large-scale rollout. The strong support for the car2go model throughout the pilot helped cement Vancouver as the first Canadian city for this unique service.
