is in Stuttgart, is actually sought after and expensive. If you can afford it, avoid the narrow valley and lives prefer something off with the appropriate fee, of course. With Car2Go, Daimler’s Car-Sharing service, is now reversed: the one Who goes into a rather lonely on the edge of town, parked the vehicle, pays a lot less than before. Those who book by the end of the rush hour in the congested city centre, a Car2Go car, gets more charged. The periphery of the discount against the City Supplement, and not only in Stuttgart, but everywhere in Germany.
Behind the Change of the price policy to be a Problem, it is not only here and not only in the case of Car2Go. It plagues all, the Car-Sharing according to the so-called Free-Floating principle to offer – that is, without fixed rental stations.
For the users is extremely this concept into practice, because often just around the corner, there is a rental car place and it can be parked within a certain Radius. For the provider, but the System has one snag: standing around a vehicle in a low-traffic area, usually somewhere on the edge of the business area, parked it there, under certain circumstances, for hours unused. And, like aircraft, ships, trucks and vans also applies to Car-Sharing: still costs money.
“to shorten the service life of The vehicles, is a fundamental challenge of the Free-Floating concept, depending on the city, sometimes more and sometimes less,” says a spokesman for Car2Go. The question was: “How do you get the inactive vehicles in the areas with low demand and in areas with higher demand come in?” Because it is against control not active, give it sometime to a lot of inactive cars in peripheral areas and the Hotspots of the inner cities, where they would be needed no longer enough.
Flexible pricing system aims to increase use of cars in boundary layers
About 15 Times a day, each Car2Go car is rented in weekly average, but it can also be time about 20 rentals – for example, in Berlin, in the 24 hours from Friday afternoon how the company calculates that.
the values are not significantly below, it tries Car2Go now with the changing prices, to encourage people, in a long-unused car. In Stuttgart, was reduced about a year ago, even before the business field. Thus, areas were gone, in which often cars stranded.
Also, DriveNow from BMW, and now even more competition soon, but a Partner of Daimler in a new joint venture, is familiar with the Problem. Completely flexible the price system is not there though. Lower prices per minute for cars that are too long unused, but, as a spokesman explains. Or, as in Cologne, free bonus minutes for the customers who drive a vehicle back to a Hotspot. Also adjustments to the business areas, there is, depending on the city, says the spokesman. Certainly could involve the thus, times greater, for example, a well-frequented Station.
But all of this also brings what? “People are very price sensitive,” says transport researcher Martin Kagerbauer, Karlsruhe Institute of technology. In this respect, the tactics could have been a success. Also, a homogeneously-designed business area is important. But ultimately, you have to do it with people and the were not always rational. “You can’t change all the locations of the vehicles. But it is a first step to control it,“ says Kagerbauer.