car2go -- pay-as-you-drive commuting for all?

Imagine being able to simply walk up to any car, drive it away and when you're finished park it -- paying only for the time you've used. That's the reality of the car2go system currently in operation in the German city of Ulm.

Loosely based on Paris's noted Velib city electric bicycle system, the pay-as-you-go system recently moved from a pilot program to a fully fledged operation in the German city of Ulm. It will also be trialed in, Austin, the capital of the US state of Texas, from September and an Australian city could be one of the next in line to trial the innovative smart fortwo based car-sharing system.

Backed by Mercedes-Benz and smart's parent company, Daimler, car2go isn't the first car-sharing scheme in the world, but is one of the simplest.

It began with 50 cars for 500 employees in October last year, spread to 100 cars for 1000 users in February this year and now has 200 cars available for any Ulm resident to use any time.

The cars can be left in any public parking area, though there are specific car2go parks in high-traffic areas -- such as commercial parking centres, railway stations and airports.

And as the residents of Ulm have just discovered, after they register for the system, they can drive away in any car2go vehicle for just €0.19 cents a minute -- around $A0.35. The pricing covers all fuel, insurance and charges and, once the drivers reach their destination, they can just leave the car and walk away.

"The idea is that when you want a car, you just take it and when you've finished with the car, you just leave it," car2go project manager, Robert Henrich, said in Ulm, Germany, earlier this month.

"It's a completely free-flowing system and you never have to return the car to where you picked it up. If you want to cross the city, you just take a car, cross the city and then leave it.

"Membership is free. We've take a lesson from the mobile phone industry and you pay by the minute, which covers all the fuel and insurance costs as well," he insisted.

So far, car2go has been well accepted in Ulm, with up to eight people renting the same car in any given day, with drivers travelling around 4km for an average trip. The cars can be rented for longer trips, too, with the rates stretching to just under €10 an hour ($A18) or €49 ($A89) a day.

"Since the start, we've had peak periods in the first trial where all 50 smarts were being used at the same time. We've had 8000 rentals registered, too."

Admitting they are still ironing the kinks out of the system, car2go is working to prove its viability by tendering for Paris's upcoming Autolib system, which would need 4000 smarts around the French capital by late 2010.

"There are 480 cities with more than a million people in the world," Dr Jerome Guillen, Head of Daimler-Benz's Business Innovation department, observed.

"The ideal number we are working on is around 5000 cars for a million people, so that's 240,000 smarts. We would need more factory capacity."

Senior managers insist the project will be a profitable, stand-alone business unit. Municipal bodies will not need to pay for cars, but car2go will seek help to find exclusive parking for its smarts, which take up about half the parking space of a normal car.

"We own all the cars and we want to own the whole business. We are producing the cars and the financing for the cars and maintaining the cars and we want the value chain under our control," Guillen said.

"We will pay for certain parking spots that you can use. We intend to make blue spots (special car2go parks) for 70 per cent of the vehicles, so that means 30 per cent are driving or in regular, free parks.

"About 300 to 400 metres between blue spots would be ideal. We expect people to walk only between three to five minutes, maximum. In Paris, the metro was developed so that nobody was more than 500 metres from a metro stop and this is similar."

"From a business perspective we can compare it to Velib, except ours is more free flowing. But Velib has made the ground very fertile for this kind of system and its public acceptance," Guillen said.

Benz also hinted that the system may upgrade from the fuel-sipping CDI smart, which uses just 3.3L/100km, to a fully electric smart -- just like the versions it is already trialing in London and Berlin.

But being fully electric won't help with some obvious questions, such as dealing with theft and intentional damage.

"Being a manufacturer allows us to do a few things with the car because we know how it works," Guillen said.

"All the electronics are linked to the ECU. If somebody breaks the window and tries to start the car, it won't work, even with the key. We also know where any car is at any time. If we see a car driving into Belarus or England we can call the driver on the phone in the car or, failing that, we can simply shut down the engine.

"That said; we will keep no record of individual itineraries. Just where and when it was picked up and where and when it was dropped off," the Innovation chief stated.

car2go project manager, Robert Henrich, says an Asian capital is likely to be the next step for the car sharing system, but says Australia is also high on the list.

 "We have had interest from cities all over the world -- including several in Australia," Henrich admitted.

"We would probably think an Asian city should be next, because sometimes the thinking there for the consumer is more different... and we want to keep learning. But we have serious interest from some councils there [in Australia] and we are investigating all of them."

According to Mercedes-Benz Australia's David McCarthy, car2go is one of a list of alternative transport solutions the company would like to see trialed in Australia.

"car2go is a product of Daimler's Business Innovation department. Within that business unit there are people with experience and knowledge of the Australian market, so our biggest cities -- Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane -- are on the radar for car2go," McCarthy told the Carsales Network.

"What we learn from Ulm as a company will help make the local situation clearer. It could be that car2go comes Down Under via a third party operator.

"We have had strong interest from a number of specialist operators and they, like us, are looking closely at the results of how the initial car2go operation pans out," McCarthy said.

for more information about the car2go, read our news item here.

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