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Sunday, May 27, 2012

Daimler’s car2go on course for more than 100,000 customers

Daimler’s car2go subsidiary remains in the fast lane: In just six months, both the number of customers using the service and the number of rental transactions worldwide have doubled. The market leader in the area of flexible short-term vehicle rentals is thus continuing its rapid growth unabated. In fact, car2go is the fastest-growing carsharing company in the world. The system is now in place in 12 cities throughout Europe and North America; more than 100,000 customers have registered as members, and vehicles have been rented more than two million times.

On average, a car2go vehicle is rented every eight seconds. The smart fortwo two-seater models used in the car2go system have proved to be ideal for urban mobility applications ever since the system was first launched in the Southern German city of Ulm in March 2009. The vehicles, which are manufactured in variants specifically designed for car2go, have since clocked up roughly 20 million kilometers. In most of the cities where the program is available, car2go is now being successfully operated in a joint venture with Europe’s leading car rental company, Europcar.

“car2go is an incredible success story, and it will continue to rapidly expand its business operations in the future,” says Klaus Entenmann, Chairman of the Board of Management of Daimler Financial Services, who is responsible for car2go at the Daimler Group. “We’ll be operating in around 20 cities by the end of the year, and the number of customers we serve will certainly once again rise sharply.”

car2go GmbH Managing Director Robert Henrich says, “Two million car2go rentals not only make us happy; they also show just how enthusiastic our 100,000 customers are about the system. As a pioneer and the only international company to offer such a flexible short-term rental service, we also now have a wealth of experience, in large part due to our ongoing dialogue with our customers. This is enabling us to expand rapidly all over the world and to further improve our service in line with customer feedback.”

More than 4,000 smart fortwo vehicles are currently operating in the 12 car2go cities, including 625 battery-electric smart fortwo electric drive models, which are being used in Amsterdam, San Diego, and Ulm. The regularly scheduled maintenance and cleaning of the cars makes the system extremely reliable and leads to great customer satisfaction.

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