Car2go Announces First All-Electric Carsharing Fleet In North America

Car2go N. A. LLC, a subsidiary of Daimler North America Corporation, announced that San Diego will be the first North American city to have a one hundred percent electric vehicle (EV) carsharing program. San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders, Nicholas Cole, President and CEO of Car2go N. A. LLC, and Jonathan Read, CEO of ECOtality, made the official announcement at a news conference at the El Cortez on July 13.

The all-electric Car2go program in San Diego is going to start operations before the end of 2011 with three hundred Smart FortTwo electric drive vehicles.

All Smart ForTwo electric drive cars will be equipped with the latest telematics technology. As the world's first free-floating carsharing service, Car2go intends to provide its members with the possibility to rent the cars spontaneously without having the burden to commit to a specific return time or location.

The program is already very successful in four cities with a total of more than 40,000 members and 1,000 Smart ForTwo vehicles with low-emission gas engines.

The ForTwo electric drive is powered by a thirty kW electric propulsion system that is economical, quiet, and emissions-free. In San Diego, the high-efficiency lithium-ion batteries can be recharged at designated EV charging stations. On a single charge, the car can travel up to eighty four miles. Battery recharging time from twenty percent to eighty percent of battery full capacity is just three and a half hours. Recharging a completely discharged battery takes no more than eight hours, which makes it possible to recharge overnight. Past experience shows that this is seldom necessary, as the daily stretch covered by Car2go drivers in urban areas rarely exceeds six miles.

The electric Car2go vehicles will be charged at Blink EV charging stations developed by California-based technology provider ECOtality. The company is currently in the process of siting and installing the charging stations, and approximately 1,000 Blink commercial charging stations are expected to be installed by end of 2011 for public use in San Diego.

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