Carsharing service car2go is expanding in Canada and the U.S., offering more drivers the opportunity to give up car ownership in exchange for renting one only when needed.

A wholly owned subsidiary of Daimler North America Corporation, car2go was started four years ago and now provides access to over 4,000 smart fortwo vehicles (625 of them electric) to carsharing customers in 11 cities around the globe: Austin, Texas; Vancouver, British Columbia; San Diego, California; Washington, D.C.; Portland, Oregon; Ulm, Germany; Hamburg, Germany; Amsterdam, Netherlands; Vienna, Austria; Dusseldorf, Germany; and Berlin, Germany.

Each car2go city in North America has between 200 to 300 cars available for sharing, and members pay by the minute, hour, or day to rent the cars whenever they need them. The company is a “free-floating’ carsharing service, meaning that members can pick up and drop off their rentals anywhere within their home service area and not at a specific garage or parking space. Members can then just drive the car for as long as they need it, park it when they are done, and swipe their membership card on the reader to close out their rental period.

The company is expanding to Toronto, Calgary, and Miami this summer and is offering free membership and free driving time for new members for a limited time. Interested parties can use the following promo codes to receive 30 free driving minutes and have the $35 membership fee waived:

  • TDOT for Toronto
  • ONWARD for Calgary
  • HEAT for Miami

Car2go will also begin offering Multi-City Access Memberships, giving cardholders access to vehicles in any city with a car2go system in place.

“As car2go continues to grow and spread its carsharing business throughout North America and throughout the world, more people will have access to an entirely new form of automobility,” said Bodo Uebber, chairman of the Supervisory Board of Daimler Financial Services, the division responsible for car2go. “The success of car2go around the world to date shows that we are in a time that demands and calls for new mobility solutions in urban settings, and Daimler is at the forefront of this movement.”

Because I have used carsharing services in the past when I was without wheels, I can attest to just how great it was to be able to use a car whenever I needed one without having to pay for insurance, maintenance, garaging, or gasoline. Most of the time our cars just sit there unused while we continue to making the payments. Carsharing eliminates the ownership model in exchange for a rental model, and it’s one that makes sense in most urban environments. Think about how often you use your car versus how much time it sits parked somewhere. That’s why carsharing works for so many people, and if you have access to a service in your city I highly recommend you check it out.

Image Credit: car2go