Two years on, Car2go is helping bring about change in Madrid
My friends at Car2go are celebrating the second anniversary of their launch in Madrid this week, inviting me to participate by writing a brief review for their press release, which was distributed by Spanish news agency Europa Press (link in Spanish).
When Car2go launched in Madrid two years ago, I had just returned from Stuttgart, where I had been talking with its parent company, Daimler, about innovation and why companies were obliged to investigate and innovate precisely in areas that could alter, or eventually destroy, their current business model. If some of Daimler’s recent developments, such as Car2go, MyTaxi or Moovel, work, soon there may well be little reason to buy a car. All this came from reading an article I wrote about innovation processes in Forbes, “If you want to change things, you have to break things”. At the launch, I spoke about how traditional solutions have so far proved useless in deterring people from using their cars, and why we need many more mobility options in cities.
Two years ago, Car2go was still a new concept in Madrid: a fleet of vehicles parked throughout the Spanish capital that anyone could, with a simple app, locate, open, drive and pay for by the minute. The company’s decision to come to Madrid with an exclusively electric fleet was welcomed by a City Hall sensitive to congestion and pollution, and that endorsed the initiative by allowing electric vehicles to park free of charge on the city’s streets and even in spaces reserved for residents, all of which helped the project toward viability, despite some tricky moments.
The company arrived in the middle of a “perfect storm”: the capital’s authorities and residents are increasingly concerned about rising pollution levels. The launch aroused a lot of interest, to the point that, in a very short time, Madrid became one of Car2go’s busiest markets.
In Madrid, Car2go has been followed by Emov, on which I wrote a mini-case earlier this year, and soon we will also have Zity and DriveNow. Plenty to choose from, and that growing numbers of people are opting to use instead of their own vehicle, and that will doubtless have prompted some Madrileños like my daughter not to bother buying one in the first place.
Is electric carsharing the solution to the traffic problems plaguing our cities? Not entirely, but it will certainly help in transitioning from automobile ownership to cars simply being something to move us around from A to B, a transition that will affect carmakers. At the same time, the data showing increased demand for carsharing services on days when traffic restrictions are imposed in Madrid suggest that the way to speed up the transition may be for city hall to further restrict private car use. Given the choice between having thousands of cars driving around each day looking for somewhere to park and a large fleet of shared electric vehicles, the latter is clearly the more sustainable option.
Below, the brief paragraph that I wrote for the press release marking Car2go’s second anniversary in Madrid.
When, in just two years, a service goes becomes an important part of the city’s landscape, it’s pretty clear we’re talking about a major change, something that defines the future of urban transport. Car2go arrived in the middle of the perfect storm: pollution and ever-worsening traffic jams, driving and parking restrictions, along with growing interest in electric mobility: it has much to offer in helping bring about a different mindset that contribute to a better future for all. The future of the automobile is no longer that of a product, but a service.
(En español, aquí)
