Taking a Car2Go electric smart in Madrid

Talking about Madrid and sustainable mobility is talking about private vehicles sharing. In the two wheels (light) mobility a bicycle service we will talk about in next articles, on the other hand electric car mobility offers different options, the most visible: CAR2GO.

A very easy service. Once our driving license is checked we register a valid method of payment, normaly a credit card, we download the APP in our mobile phone and we are ready to use the CAR2GO fleet.
Its not necessary going to their HQ because of some other business agreements to offer a more simple way to check our docs.

Driving CAR2GO in Madrid is very easy, you open the booking APP to check the map and choose one car, you go near the car and the security system unlock and finally you valídate the characteristics of the car (the car is ok and not damaged, you say yes to the hq) and register your pin to drive. Very easy and well explained all over the website with some videos.

When you sign the contract of the CAR2GO car-sharing you begin a global relationship with this service. A user of the Madrid service can drive all over the cities where the CAR2GO system works. Reading the legal docs you will find reference even to gas system cars as not all cities have the 100% electric cars as used in Madrid. In Madrid you have the permission to park in the blue line and green line parking zone, stronglty regulated and license yearly fee needed to park with combustión cars. But with the electric car you can park for free. This advantage and the car model,  the smart two pax tiny car. help you in mobility, usability and parking. You need to know about the limits of the system. Obviously the car has a range and conditions that limit the use but the solution they found WORKS.

How does it works? How are you able to find the fleet easily and near you?

Battery limit to rent a car is 20%, under that number the car2go staff goes to recharge this unit. You will not be able to rent this one. And talking about parking allowed zone you need parking, free of charge in the street or as said before, blue or green line zone.

If you park into a mall for example, you will go on paying the rent till you exit. Scheduling of these business could make unavailable a car (you would pay the rent for an entire day). This is the method for you to be able to find cars available in your zone. We suggest you to open the APP several times, and you will see the cars and their evolution while being rented and their changes. It is a very dynamic flleet. And: the system is working very well.

Drive XP

Very nice driving system, easy to use and so light and confortable you will enjoy driving. The braking pedal is nice avoiding transitions between fossil and electric cars. Perhaps you will be able to change your image about EV if you test this car.

We did review the car system of Car2go, perhaps ideal use is point to point, near driving.  We book a car and began to go driving again and again. Better you be fast in the booking APP. Our testing was a complete 100% Perhaps you need a first “no troubles about the expense” sesión for you to review slow the security systems and validation (no flaw because of the last user you don’t report for example).

VIDEOS in car2go webpage help you a lot. We need to be ready to use a first twenty minutes slow review to read, review and drive an electric car that will be the more easy and adictive.

Timing is well detailed in the APP billing with time moving and time stopped for your review. You must learn to go inside and outside with calm. Remember the procedure to leave the car that is not the same than freezing the car for you to be sure it will be there when you finish your checkpoint of the route (in places difficult to get another one) because if you leave the car it will be closed in seconds in order to be more cheaper but anybody would rent it.

Anywhere in the Car2Go zone you just 1.Take phone and open APP 2. Book a car  3. Drive! Being smart (as the car) to review the parking possibilites. Your work season will be cheap and fast with a good work thanks to not paying tax system of the parking (you have an electric car in a sustainable mobility friendly city).

We solve now some frequently asked questions with their tech team. Their Business Development chairman in Spain and Portugal, David Bartolomé is pleased to answer your questions.

About the crew, “we have about 600 employees all over the world. Car2Go is always evaluating other big european cities to grow.” As you see they will answer our questions talking about ALL the company not onliy Madrid zone as it’s a more bigger transport project.

About the crew profiles. “The university prepare a good staff of new workers. New profiles are being created of course, but not all we need are new, its a nice puzzle of different “traditional” and “new” works, all of them helpful in the Car2Go system as in other of the new business like Google, Apple, Airbnb, Spotify."

We said before the fleet is important but recently has grown and always talking about global transport network they answer about their material resources “Car2Go is available in 30 cities in the world, including cities of Europe, North-America and recently Asia, China. Car2go has about 13.700 vehicles, 1.360 are electric vehicles. Madrid has for our customers 500 electric smartfortwo. The service began November 2015 with 350 vehicles, recently upgraded to 500.”

“Now Car2go is working to offer the best service in Madrid. We are always developing new ways to launch the service in other big cities of Europe and all over the world. After Madrid, we launched in Chongqing, China. We are about to launch the service of Car2Go in Bruselas in October 2016. Belgium will be the tenth country were Car2Go developes a zone with our fleet.”

We prefer electric cars so we ask for these models, Madrid vehicles are no longer manufactured. “Effectivelythe  smartfortwo 451 is no longer in production but the model 453 is available. In some cities, for example in Chongqing, Car2Go owns 400 smartfortwo gas cars (model 453). For the moment the smart is not available in electric versión, but the new version will be available very soon. In Summer car2go will begin to offer other Mercedes-Benz vehicles in our fleet. The first will be Berlín with 300 new Mercedes Clase A 85, Clase B 115, GLA 50 and CLA 50.  Other cities will join Germany and other Europe countries during the next year. Car2Go in Madrid has an electric fleet. There are no plans to include Gas Mercedes-Benz vehicles in the cities with electric fleets."

In the past there have been various problems with vandalism. Car2Go vehicles where broken but it seems to end. Is the people understanding the usefulness of carsharing and its possibilities or still misunderstanding of a part of society?

“Customers of the Car2Go fleet in Madrid are more than 63.000 as we published recently, it shows that the society understands the benefits of a flexible carsharing system without fixed stations to rent a car. Needs of the people are changing. In the future much more traffic and people will be living in the metrópolis. Now more than a half living in cities. Gas pricing rise, hard parking, expense and no eficiency of the prívate vehicle and at the same time hoping to have an on demand flexible mobility and the importance of the individual mobility all of this show that Car2Go is the Daimler solution designed to the urban mobility modern troubles. The company not only wants to maintain individual and accesible mobility, but also flexible and sustainable."

"Months ago we had some vandalism in Madrid. Management of a vehicles fleet available on the streets means things like that happen sometimes. In Madrid were specific organized acts. No other incidents in recent months. In general, Car2Go customers take care of the car in all aspects.”   

"In fact, when you use the car the first thing you do is a report about any trouble with the car in order to avoid the responsability of any damage or incident of previous customer use of the vehicle. As we prepared this report we reviewed some vehicles, in general in a good state and the one we rented showed Little damage because of massive use of the fleet."

Car2Go business model is fully applicable in other cities. We ask David, when are you going to “jump” to other cities or what do you need to do it?

“Car2Go is always making evaluations of european cities, always when they have a mobility model designed to have benefits of a free-floatingcarsharing offered by Car2Go. Other interesting factors include, for example, the situation and parking regulation, the city infrastructure and transport interchange.”

Finishing… Days ago I register myself in the service as a customer in the book fair, while in the queue hearing people comments, sometime ago they said the service where PC available, after only APP available with 30 minutes to the rent, and now 20 minutes before the rent is the limit for your booking that talks good… the fleet works or even not?  Understanding that the Car2Go Mobility model is working and growing we expect to see a bigger Car2Go Madrid Zone. But perhaps you think you wouldn’t be able to give a good service or uneconomical. The question would be … How do you study the Car2Go zone inputs to grow or management?

“We have a big demand of the Car2Go Mobility Model in Madrid. So, we decided to reduce the allowed booking time to only 20 minutes to make it more available for all of the customers. Car2Go is an OnDemand CarSharing, many of our customers use the service spontaneously. We work hard to offer the best service and we always evaluate the situation before the next step. Of course, customer suggestions are very important for Car2Go. We evaluate Car2go zone and population density in different zones.”


NUMBERS…

How much to rent a car?

19 cents by minute. Even if your car is stopped. Perfect to get a car fast in difficult hours and short routes.

Fine print?

Contract easy to read and transparent you can review it into the website. We will make you two suggestions: Read the car review protocol to be followed before and after the use and when an accident occurs. It’s not your car, you must follow a procedure of the Car2Go system to get a good full insurance service, but you will pay till 500 euros when you cause an accident. As you must not pretend to do with the CarSharing vehicle what you never do with your own car.                

Gas in contract?

Note that you can hire the service in any city in the Car2Go global project. So it is interesting having in mind perhaps contract for cases where no electric cars are available and only fossil fuel vehicles, review conditions.

In conclusion

We encourage everyone to include in their traditions on visits to Madrid thanks to the facilities that gives us Car2Go service a little walk (or two…three…) in electric car-sharing service. Of course, be careful, you get used to good and then not want to return to combustion.