Hyperlocal Mobility

The city of the future will have a sophisticated network of information and mobility synapses. Customized, fully flexible, inexpensive, and environmentally efficient transport systems will become the norm.

Large numbers of creative people live closely together in urban centers and major cities in the United States, Asia, and Europe. These people’s desire for maximum individual mobility on the spur of the moment conflicts with reality in urban areas. Not only are the streets congested and the parking lots full, the subways are packed and people often don’t have enough money to buy their own cars. But there already is a solution that will enable creative urban people to remain mobile in the 21st century. The prototype of this concept is on display in Ulm and Austin.

For almost two years now, Daimler’s car2go project has been intelligently bridging the gap between the needs of urban living and city people’s mobility preferences. Initial results from Germany and the U.S. show that there is great demand for this kind of flexible and spur-of-the-moment mobility. “The basic idea is quite simple – as simple as using a cell phone,” says Robert Henrich, Managing Director of car2go GmbH, a wholly owned subsidiary of Daimler. “I’m standing beside a car. If the vehicle is available, I just hop in, drive off, and don’t need to worry about anything else.”

Results from Ulm

The idea of a fully flexible car rental service that is invoiced by the minute has met with a great response in the area of Ulm and Neu-Ulm (total population about 175,000) in southern Germany. One year after the project began, more than 19,000 people (about one-sixth of all adults with a driver’s license) had registered for the service. The 200 smart fortwo cars are rented up to 1,000 times per day. It’s particularly interesting to note that two out of three car2go users in Ulm are under 36 years of age. The immediate success gave the start-up company the confidence to try its luck on the other side of the Atlantic. Following a six-month test phase with municipal employees of Austin, Texas, the 750,000 inhabitants of the state capital and university city were able to enjoy the advantages of spur-of-the-moment mobility themselves in late May.

“Austin is the ideal city for bringing this concept to North America,” says Nicholas Cole, who manages the car2go project in the U.S. “The city is very open to new technologies and ideas, and it attracts many young people and creative minds. The people here want to use new approaches to tackle the challenges associated with the growth in traffic.”

Photo Gallery

car2go billboard in Austin, Texas

smart fortwo in front of the Capitol Building in Austin, Texas

smart fortwo in Austin, Texas

smart fortwo in Austin, Texas

smart fortwo in Austin, Texas

smart fortwo in Austin, Texas

car2go fleet in front of the worlds highest church in Ulm, Germany

car2go fleet in front of the worlds highest church in Ulm, Germany

smart fortwo in front of the worlds highest church in Ulm, Germany

car2go parking area in Ulm, Germany

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The “new approach” consists of 200 blue-and-white smart fortwos. You can hop into one right in front of Cole’s office in downtown Austin or at dozens of public parking spaces throughout the city. All of the vehicles are networked with a completely new logistics system. However, customers don’t notice the complexity. A green diode on the windshield shows if a vehicle is available. Registered customers must then merely wave their chip card in order to unlock the car’s door.

The booking system then logs the customer into the central server in Stuttgart, and the user can drive off in less than five seconds. car2go conveniently invoices use by the minute, charging drivers €0.19 per minute in Ulm and $0.35 per minute in Austin. The fee also covers the cost of insurance and gasoline. There’s also an attractive service package, including a navigation system. Direct contact to the customer service department is possible at the push of a button.

“You can hardly get more flexible than that,” says Cole. “You can book a car in advance, but you don’t have to. You can use the vehicle as long as you want and leave it anywhere you like in the downtown area.” According to Cole, car2go is therefore ideal for city people who either don’t have a car, would like to drive their car less often, or want to cover the last mile to their destination after traveling on a train or bus. “The concept also affects people’s lifestyles in the city,” he says. This level of freedom within Austin’s 17- square-mile area (44 square kilometers) goes well beyond the flexibility of existing car-sharing concepts, which normally stipulate fixed handover locations and times.