Car2go

I'm not a car2go member yet, and I don't mean to be late on the bandwagon, but am just collecting thoughts on it now.  However I do value its contribution to our transportation mix.  Great solution for people who don't want the capital ownership of a car.  Doesn't cost a lot for variable use though... like less than taxi.  But it's not really a "car" business, it's entirely enabled by smartphones, GPS, and online payment, so I'm calling this a technology business.  I haven't had to use one and therefore experienced how close they are on average, but I've heard there's 170 of them in the "home zone" in Calgary, and the downtown/beltline observed density is high enough to look like its working well. 

I've always admired NY, Toronto, and other various world cities as places someone could move after graduation with just a suitcase, a cell phone, rent an apartment and start living and working, with very little capital investment.  They're responsive/cater to mobile workforce.  Calgary didn't have quite the same downtown living/public transit/density mix of a big world city to make that feasible - Calgary is a car city in my view.  But this sidesteps that and makes it easier now to function in a car city.

If I'm a retiree living in a place where I don't think I need car ownership - bam... perfect solution.  If I'm a student going away to school who needs transportation only intermittently... bam (aside from moving couches is gonna be hard with this thing).  Travelling between Canadian cities and want to zip around?  No problem!  Travelling between US and Canada for business or pleasure and want to cruise around?  Almost no problem - billing isn't quite working between the two, so you need to double sign up and have a US account and a Canadian one.  You don't need a US domiciled address or credit card billing address in the US to do so, I just checked with their guy on the help line (who resides in Iowa interestingly enough).  Are you pulling a car behind your RV?  That might make sense in remote camping regions of US, but if you happen to get to a city, perhaps less need... there's ones present for variable time use.  Great!

If I'm Daimler, I think this thing is making money just on my estimates of utilization, revenue and service cost.  It also puts their fleet fuel economy down, allowing them to sell big Benz's to people who are consumers of them.  And lastly, it shows innovation in the car business isn't all just mechanical engineering.