Montreal is in a ride-sharing mood

MONTREAL — The city's two main ride-sharing services — Car2go and Communauto — are making significant changes to broaden their customer base and make more cars available in more areas and on shorter notice.

Daimler-owned Car2go, which currently uses two-seat Smart ForTwo vehicles, will introduce five passenger vehicles to its Montreal fleet of 450 cars by the end of 2017 to better meet the needs of customers with children or those who simply need more room.

“It’s been a constant request from our customers,” said Jeremi Lavoie, general manager for Car2go in Quebec, about the move to add larger vehicles.

As two-seaters, Car2go’s Smart ForTwo models run in to a serious snag in that provincial regulations don’t permit passengers weighing less than 36 kilograms (80 pounds) to sit in the front seat. That means no children.

The entire fleet is in the process of being replaced this year with 340 new-model Smart ForTwos; 110 of the older model will remain in circulation until the remaining void is filled later in the year with the coming five-seat vehicles, likely to be Mercedes-Benz GLA and/or CLA models. Car2go services in Toronto and Vancouver have already been replaced with the new-model ForTwos.

The little blue and white gas-powered two-seater ForTwos have been crisscrossing Montreal since 2013.

Also missing from the picture at Car2go Montreal is an electric vehicle. The company has more than 2.2 million vehicles worldwide, including electric units, but Lavoie says that there are not enough public charging points available in the city yet to make such a switch feasible.

The city is installing more charging stations and still has its sights set on 1,000 battery-electric sharing cars by 2020.

Based in Montreal, Communauto started small in 1994 with three cars. Today, there are more than 40,000 members (Car2go claims it has 46,000) and 1,350 vehicles in operation. Communauto has operations in four cities in Quebec (Montreal, Quebec City, Gatineau and Sherbrooke), two cities in Ontario (Ottawa and Kingston), Halifax, N.S., and Paris, France.

Communauto launched Auto-Mobile, a car-sharing concept developed in Montreal that operates without a station; vehicles are freely dispersed in the streets of certain neighbourhoods and their parking spots are guaranteed by the city by means of specific permits. Users locate vehicles on the company website and access them with a card registered with Communauto. The service is currently available in Montreal and Quebec City.

“With Communauto, we never could guarantee members that they would have a car at the last minute. With Auto-Mobile we can,” says general manager and founder Benoit Robert.

“The arrival of Auto-mobile has made it possible to achieve recruitment [membership] records,” said Robert. Auto-mobile offers Nissan Leaf, Toyota Prius C hybrid and Toyota Yaris subcompact vehicles.

For both Communauto and Car2go, the real competition is not the taxi, bus or subway, but the personal car.

“Three-quarters of our members are people who have renounced the purchase of a vehicle or have sold the one they owned,” said Robert.

“It takes a while to change [peoples’] habits,” said Car2go’s  Lavoie. But there is a transition in the minds of people: Transport is not necessarily a possession, he said, but a service.