Car2gone: Rideshare company announces Portland exit

So sad. I have never owned a car, but may be forced to buy one after this news.

this was great option for me. We are a one-car family. I commute by bike, but occasionally need to drive to job site or pick my daughter or something big and Car2Go was was my back-up. I preferred the old smartcars with the bike racks, but the mercedes are better than having to get an Uber or Lyft account. Ugh. I wish Portland would get serious about transit!

They should have used Toyotas.

Car2go, Reachnow, and the now closing offspring Sharenow were experiments by two big German Automakers to find a new market for their cars. Now that the worldwide auto business (as well as truck business in Daimlers case) has turned soft they are cutting their losses and getting out because they don’t have the excess cash to pour in to it.

I’m in the same boat as many people who have depended on car2go and ReachNow along with TriMet and biking as an effective way to keep ours a one-car family. We used the car-sharing services with some frequency, and it appears many others did too; I’m honestly shocked that this wasn’t enough to sustain a business. Something doesn’t add up, given the apparent popularity of these services.

And yes, we’ll likely be forced to buy a second car now.

My family went car-lite a little over a year ago and we signed up for both Car2Go and ReachNow at that time. We used it only twice (and one time was just to see how it worked.) But still, this loss has me feeling a little exposed.

The infrequency of using it means we’ll still push on with 1 car for the household. But I’m pretty bummed about this.

the switch from SmartCars to larger, wider sedans was definitely when I stopped using them. I hate driving and I hate parking even more, and the bigger cars were just so much harder to manuever. (They’re still small vehicles! I’m not saying they’re behemoths! I just…prefer a bike.) They had less visibility and were more difficult to adjust for my short stature.

I tried driving one of the new cars once and never again. I wonder how many others were in my same boat?

Well there’s still Zipcar, Getaround, and Turo; all cheaper options than Car2Go.

I am sad to hear that Car2Go is leaving though because they’re the only company that offers one-way trips. But they also didn’t have service where I needed it, as I usually only need a car to drive outside of downtown. I think I used their service 6 times in 8 years of being car-less. By comparison, I use Getaround about 5 times a year.

I am sad but not surprised…the shift from the useful and highly visible Car2Go Smart Cars was a big hit to the system and me. I have been a car-lite since 1988 and a Vancouver-Portland car share user since 2000 through most of the industry services: Car Share Portland => Flexcar + U-Haul => Zipcar + Car2GO …I guess now I am just Zipcar [& Hui (Honolulu)] customer. I loved the one-way option. We early car share managers and innovators and customers dreamed hard to get to oneway rentals as a service. I guess one step forward and two steps back… ;-(

After checking out the Car2Go website it seems they are doubling down on the top tier of mobility cities (what does that say about Portland, and even Chicago etc.?) and also shifting to Canada, it seems.

“We are now refocusing our efforts and our resources on the cities that present the clearest path to free-floating carshare success: New York City, Washington D.C., Montreal, Vancouver and Seattle.”

The whole tech enabled transportation sector is found to be way in front of their skis. Uber/Lyft drive like lost, incompetent tourists and they had to lie and deceive municipalities to even participate. The scooter thing distributes toys in sidewalks through out the city and now the car sharing is collapsing. I don’t think any of these enterprises being able to operate in the black. Recent science news articles reveal that autonomous vehicles have yet to perfect “seeing” which means that vulnerable road users have another threat to their existence.

From my perch Tech is just another bunch of self serving shysters lying to skim money from the unsuspecting populace.

Car2Go and ReachNow are owned by Daimler. Daimler also owns Moovel, which designs and runs the TriMet app and a lot of other mobility tools, including, I believe carshare and bikeshare programs overseas. With the exit of the Daimler luxury-car carshares from Portland, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a) a lower-end vehicle carshare product from Daimler/Moovel, b) entry into the market by lower-end carshare, like Enterprise Carshare, or c) a local start up using re-built previous generation Priuses for a Portland-only green-focus carshare.

By the end of our attempt to sign up we weren’t sure if it was a car share or a phishing operation. Months after giving up we can’t get off their email list either.

Good riddance to bad rubbish.

My car subscription entails a $52 insurance bill, $50 for gas, and an average $100 for maintenance. The car is a mere 20 feet from my door and is always available. The car is well maintained, clean, and comes with a child seat. The service allows me to drive into the country anytime I want with no additional fees.

Nearly every time I see a car2go it’s speeding and/or being driven recklessly. IMO their per minute pricing encouraged this behavior. Good riddance.

Umm, folks on this thread: Check it out and you will find Car2Go had the same parent company as Mercedes and Smart — and ReachNow had the same parent company as BMW. This suggests they were looking for ways to get revenue for their own cars that weren’t selling. They didn’t have the option of choosing Toyotas or what not.

Mike Quigley
He’s talking about the have-nots. Not the haves.Recommended 4

I heard what you saying as families are pushed further out and I also see the opposite which H,K is sharing: Childhood friends who grew up in Portland live in surprisingly affordable, relatively speaking, multifamily rentals where single family, detached housing had existed for decades previously. Richmond neighborhood is just one example that comes to mind.

My point is that these are not well paid transplants from elsewhere but Portland-born adults who are able to remain here due to the rapid expansion of new housing choices. Had the explosion of development not occurred they would have been displaced. Both haves and have-nots benefit from increased housing choices and overwhelmingly new multifamily units tend to be close in locations with correspondingly short commutes.

I liked Car2Go and used it occasionally, but I always thought it weird that Car2Go’s service area was so small AND was focused on downtown and inner SE Portland, areas already well-served by TriMet, Uber, Lyft, scooters, and other options. I live in fairly dense suburb of Portland with a neighborhood core, and I wrote to Car2Go several times to suggest they locate 4-5 cars in a “hub” in the neighborhood core. But the one time a Car2Go rep deigned to answer, he provided nothing but bureaucratic clap-trap that was probably written by a computer.

Also I hated Car2Go’s pricing by the minute, which encouraged speeding and raised my blood-pressure. They could have used a much-less-stressful distance-based pricing model. Oh well – nice try.

A Reddit user suggested that “selling” cars to Car2Go was a way to game CAFE results, and with the policy changes at the EPA, this strategy went from a net positive to a net negative. Uncertain if that was just speculation or if they were certain about that, but it seems plausible.