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News, Transportation

90 Days In, Seattle’s car2go Membership is Blowing Up

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To get some perspective on the 18,000 new car2go members in Seattle — after just 90 days — take a look at how the company grew in its North American home base, Austin, Texas. Ten months after opening up membership to Austin residents (a previous pilot program was aimed only at city employees), the car sharing service had 15,000 members. After three years, Austin has just over 20,000 members.

“Seattle is one of our fastest-growing cities in North America,” said a delighted-sounding Katie Stafford, car2go’s spokesperson, noting that in their “mature” markets (this is early on in car2go’s expansion, so mature means over a year old) membership ranges between 20,000 and 25,000.

Seattle’s fleet of 330 Smart fortwo cars (all gas engined, no electrics yet) is fully deployed, renting out at $0.38 per minute, with a cap of $13.99 per hour so that you don’t shoot yourself when trapped on Mercer. Already Twitter is ringing out as people wonder where “their” car2go went, especially when downpours start.

Even CHS blog’s editor got caught short on Black car2go Friday:

We created a short car2go #protips list, but we left off the importance of a reservation in high-demand times. Car2go’s reservations are a little different than what you might expect. You can reserve a car for up to 30 minutes before you need to drive off (which can lead to playing car2go roulette if you want to gamble on a closer car showing up). You aren’t charged for the reservation time unless you miss it (you can’t cancel one once it’s started), so there’s little downside — as opposed to the showdown that jseattle outlined above.

This month, car2go plans to expand its service area, with the help of the City Council’s Tom Rasmussen. “The demand for car2go in Seattle has been so overwhelming,” said Rasmussen, “that I will soon introduce legislation to accommodate its expansion into West Seattle and Southeast Seattle.” That will mean Seattle car2go members will have 52 square miles to tool around in, which Stafford says is exactly what they’re doing. One of the most popular uses for the cars, besides commuting, she says, is exploring other Seattle neighborhoods.

The goal of car sharing is find the best ratio of members’ usage to the size of the fleet, so car2go is not hurrying to throw more cars at the issue of shortages; the network, they say, tends to send the cars where they’re needed, over time. That said, as they eye Seattle’s adoption rate and the expansion of the home area, they’re keeping the possibility of extra cars on the table. In the meantime, keep tweeting. Their social media group is watching 9 to 5, and are keeping track of where the cars aren’t.