Last chance to car-share with Share Now as company leaves Vancouver

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – Saturday is your last chance to drive a Share Now car-share vehicle in Vancouver.

The company previously known as Car2Go will no longer operate in North America after Saturday.

The company announced last year that it would pull business out of the continent, as well as London, Brussels, and Florence, choosing instead to focus on 17 other cities in Europe.

According to the Share Now app, most of the company’s cars in Vancouver are already off the roads.

 

Share Now is the product of a 2019 merger between Car2Go, owned by Mercedes-Benz’s parent company Daimler AG, and BMW Group’s car-sharing service Drive Now.

The company aggregates anonymized data to evaluate supply and demand in order to optimize fleet distribution and to determine pricing.

It also uses data to determine whether Share Now has the right product mix in its markets.

“We will retain and secure personal information as needed to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, close claims, and/or enforce any of our agreements for a period of up to seven years,” said Tiffany Young, with Share Now.

“Regarding credit card information, specifically, we only store the last four digits,” she added.

Data that is stored will not be sold to third parties, Young said.

Customers can request that their personal information be deleted by emailing NAprivacy@share-now.com.

Vancouver was Share Now’s largest market in North America, with more than 300,000 customers.

Last year, customers in the city took more than two million trips and drove more than 19-million kilometres, she said.

But North American markets lack the infrastructure necessary to support a large fleet of shared electric vehicles and Share Now believes the future of car sharing is electric, the company said in a statement announcing its withdrawal.

It also cited rising operating costs and “rapidly evolving” competition.

-with files from Brenna Owen and The Canadian Press.