Copenhagen's New All-Electric Public Carsharing Programming 84
dkatana writes: Residents in Copenhagen have a new all-electric, free-floating, carsharing service. DriveNow is launching 400 brand new BMW i3 electric cars in the Danish city. The service is one-way, and metered by the minute. The big news is that residents can sign-up on the spot taking a picture of their drivers' license and a selfie and use their public transport accounts to pay. There will be a car available every 300 meters, the same distance as bus stops. The cost will be 3.50 kroner ($0.52) per minute driven. If members decide to park the car for a few minutes continuing the rental, those stationary minutes are charged at 2.5 kroner ($0.37). The maximum charge per hour is capped at 190 kroner ($28.50). There is no annual fee.
i8 or nothing baby (Score:1)
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i3? Yuck.
Yep the one car that is uglier than a PT Cruiser.
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I could agree with aesthetics being important but then we are all different and have different tastes which sort of makes a generally well received vehicle a futile endeavor. Besides I have impression that the reason people prefer one car over the other has nothing to do with aesthetics but rather the status. In other words - can you explain how does Tesla extends your dick better than anything else?
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Because Tesla sacrifices aerodynamic drag for styling, because they have big expensive battery packs. When the Nissan Leaf was designed, every decision was based on minimizing drag, and thus maximizing range. It has big weird bug eye headlights, which create bubbles of low pressure around the side view mirrors at highway speeds.
Re:i8 or nothing baby (Score:5, Funny)
Yep the one car that is uglier than a PT Cruiser.
They chose the i3 for the same reason that US rental car companies use PT Cruisers: No one will steal them.
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Yep the one car that is uglier than a PT Cruiser.
You forgot the first-generation Pontiac Aztek, and arguably, the VW Thing. But the Aztek is undeniable. It looks like the bounding box for a PT Cruiser. It looks like the shipping crate for a Citroen.
I saw my first i3 recently, though, and I was stunned at just how ugly it is in person. Serious wow factor, as in, wow that is about the ugliest pile of shit I've ever seen. I think the technology is pretty nifty, but I wouldn't like to be caught dead in the same photograph as an i3.
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Yep the one car that is uglier than a PT Cruiser.
You forgot the first-generation Pontiac Aztek, and arguably, the VW Thing. But the Aztek is undeniable. It looks like the bounding box for a PT Cruiser. It looks like the shipping crate for a Citroen.
I rate the Aztek as being less ugly that the PT Cruiser, plus the Aztek never made it outside the US. I've seen a PT Cruiser Cabrio and thought it'd have to be the most useless convertible ever, You'd only be able to use it on unlit roads at the dead of night to ensure no-one saw you in it.
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I rate the Aztek as being less ugly that the PT Cruiser, plus the Aztek never made it outside the US.
Well, this implies you don't live here in the US, where you might actually encounter one of these vehicles. Just like the i3 is staggeringly uglier in person than in BMW press photos, the Aztek is fractally ugly. The more you look at it, the more new things you find to hate about it. When I saw it, I seriously thought it was a concept car that hadn't been refined yet. But no, it was a production vehicle already, in all its... glory. Every proportion just screams wrongness, like a bug wearing an Edgar suit.
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i disagree with more than half the things you say in your posts that i've noticed...
but in this instance, about the aztec. you are correct. Looked it up... and had a visceral reaction.
it causes me physical discomfort to appreciate the proportions, the sheen, the shape... god the proportions, the finish, oh god the proportions...
dear lord,
this was too deliberate not to be intentional... some designer out there hates people with eyes.
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I saw my first i3 recently, though, and I was stunned at just how ugly it is in person. Serious wow factor, as in, wow that is about the ugliest pile of shit I've ever seen. I think the technology is pretty nifty, but I wouldn't like to be caught dead in the same photograph as an i3.
If they made EVs look just like regular cars, then other people wouldn't be able to tell that you are making such a supreme sacrifice for the good of humanity and they wouldn't even realize how they should bow down and worship you as the savior of the environment.
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I saw my first i3 recently, though, and I was stunned at just how ugly it is in person. Serious wow factor, as in, wow that is about the ugliest pile of shit I've ever seen. I think the technology is pretty nifty, but I wouldn't like to be caught dead in the same photograph as an i3.
If they made EVs look just like regular cars, then other people wouldn't be able to tell that you are making such a supreme sacrifice for the good of humanity and they wouldn't even realize how they should bow down and worship you as the savior of the environment.
A person in my car park owns an I3, on the back he's got a "Australian Electric Vehicle Network" sticker. I've been tempted to place another sticker below that saying "Proudly supporting the Australian tow truck and flatbed association".
Then again, he's still bitter from when I posted a letter on his windscreen saying I didn't need his car parking next to me to make my Silvia look good.
I have to wonder how many carbons a cummins 9L diesel puts out with an EV on the back.
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It's rare to see a 21st century car that's not ugly. They all look bloated, uglily shiny and look angry or pissed off for no good reason.
Perhaps the car passive-aggressivity is done on purpose : people are meant to be aggressive and afraid of each other, so that they feel insecure and remedy that insecurity by buying consumer products, and they make distressed competitive workers too.
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I can't speak for outside the US, but inside the US, there's this mentality of cars being supposed to keep you safe if there's an accident.
Perhaps what you're seeing is the natural extension of buying an SUV to be "safer". However, instead of being in a big car that can take a hit, now it's being in the car that outwardly says "don't mess with me".
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i3? Yuck. Give me an i8 or go home. I just wish they had it with a turbodeisel engine.
It is a car you can get access to for a few dollars. It is meant to be ugly so that no one wants to steal it or joyride it to destruction.
Or for slightly less per month (Score:3)
Re:Or for slightly less per month (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not intended to completely replace cars for every resident of Copenhagen (with a population far greater than 400). It's surely intended as an occasional thing for people who don't have a car, or took public transportation into the city center.
Re:Or for slightly less per month (Score:5, Interesting)
It's surely intended as an occasional thing for people who don't have a car, or took public transportation into the city center.
Exactly. This is not for people that drive every day. My house has three drivers (me, my wife, and my daughter). We also have three cars. 90% of the time we could get by with just one car. 99% of the time, we could get by with two. So we have the 3rd car "just in case". If these "rent-by-the-hour" cars were available within 300 meters of my house, I would definitely sell the 3rd car, and maybe even the 2nd.
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That's what I did when we moved to Berlin/Germany: Sold my car. My wife has the only car in the house.
I have joined two carsharing services in case I need a car - one of them DriveNow as in the article. But that occasion pops up far fewer times than I originally thought.
There is no guarantee to have a car nearby but usually there is one down the street. The iPhone app works great to locate the cars and provides a filter in case I want a specific model (do prefer the Mini).
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We moved to Barcelona from Boston three years ago. Decided not to have a car here, the best decision we have done! Once you live in an European city with good public transport there is no need to own a car.
We have only rented a car twice in Barcelona, once to go to Costa Brava and another one to the south of France. We paid €130 ($150) per week.
Taxis are cheap here, and found everywhere. There is no car sharing such as DriveNow or Car2Go, just a Zipcar company, Avantcar that doesn't offer one-way trips
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Average monthly usage of who, exactly? This isn't intended to replace cars for people who want to spend 2.5 hours/day commuting, it's intended as a supplement for people who don't usually drive but would like to occasionally, as an alternative to the bus or a cab or biking or walking. Just because you don't fall into that group doesn't mean that no such market exists.
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At $30/hr it sure doesn't sound like a big market.
Re:Or for slightly less per month (Score:5, Insightful)
At $30/hr it sure doesn't sound like a big market.
It is cheaper than a taxi, and cheaper than Uber, and way less hassle than a conventional rental car. Those are all multi-billion dollar markets.
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At $30/hr it sure doesn't sound like a big market.
It is cheaper than a taxi, and cheaper than Uber, and way less hassle than a conventional rental car. Those are all multi-billion dollar markets.
But then in Copenhagen you could also rent a car for the full day for about the same price. Sure it won't be a BMW but if the brand is the only reason for the higher price, that again justifies putting this offering squarely in the (narrow) luxury market. Even more so as they could have picked cheaper Renault Zoe [wikipedia.org] or Bluecars [wikipedia.org] for their fleet if price was the issue. Note also that Autolib' [wikipedia.org], an equivalent service in Paris, rents their electric Bluecars for well under $15 per hour, so being cheaper is totally p
Re:Or for slightly less per month (Score:5, Insightful)
Depends on how much you use the car. Drive a brand new car off the lot to the used car dealer across the street, and you'll find the car is now worth about half what you paid for it. It takes a lot of 3.5 krona minutes to make that instantaneous depreciation seem attractive.
Now if you're like most suburban-dwelling American, you spend hours a day in your car, so it just makes sense to buy it, or lease it long-term. But if you lived and worked in Manhattan you'd be nuts to own a car for transportation unless you were a gazillionaire. Just the cost of keeping the car would exceed the cost of renting one on the rare occasions you'd need it.
I suppose most people in Copenhagen are in the same boat. It's far more walkable than most American cities and enjoys excellent bicycle and pedestrian public transit infrastructure. But every so often you and several of your friends might want to take a trip that's a little inconvenient to take by transit. If that's every day several times a day then sure, buy a car. But if it's only occasionally then it doesn't make sense to have a car sitting and depreciating in a garage somewhere.
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and you'll find the car is now worth about half what you paid for it.
Depends on the car, but for most cars they are worth far more than half, despite the truism. The higher priced the car, the less they lose as a percentage.
But yeah if you pay $30,000 and LITERALLY drive it across the street, there is no way the dealer is going to pay you more than the wholesale cost on the vehicle new.
Think about it... why would he pay you more for your slightly used car than he could pay for a brand new car?
But given the vehicle literally has under 5 miles on it, and you can show a bill of
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The higher priced the car, the less they lose as a percentage.
Hahahaha nope. A 1997 Audi and a 1997 Honda both cost around three grand now, but guess which one cost more to begin with? And you take a horrible bath on the most expensive cars (the S550s, the A8s, etc) in the first three years, almost without exception.
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. A 1997 Audi and a 1997 Honda both cost around three grand now,
Yeah, 18 years later most cars converge around a few thousand bucks. We were talking driving it off the lot. And I was thinking a little further up market than run of the mill Audi.
The more expensive cars, honestly hold their value better for the first few weeks. Why? Limited supply and demand. If I want a 2016 Ford F150 there are plenty of them to be had; why would I settle for even a slightly used one unless I was going to save a couple thousand?
But a new 911 Turbo or a Lamborghini... the numbers being sh
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Depends on how much you use the car. Drive a brand new car off the lot to the used car dealer across the street, and you'll find the car is now worth about half what you paid for it.
That's incorrect. Car employees can typically buy two brand new cars with a 20% discount every year. So most of them are on a cycle where they buy a brand new car every 6 months and resell it for the same price 6 months later. This way they keep a brand new car at no cost forever.
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Or for slightly less per month based on average monthly usage, you could buy, insure and fuel an I3
I see. Its a good thing Copenhagen has plentiful free parking! (sarcasm)
I think the real question is, how do they compare to taxis? These are not going to replace private cars, though it might be one part of the answer for people in the inner city.
Re:Or for slightly less per month (Score:5, Informative)
Or for slightly less per month based on average monthly usage, you could buy, insure and fuel an I3 and when you got tired of it, you could sell it and get some money back.
Not in Denmark... 2 / 3 of car prices in Denmark are taxes... Energy is also more expensive..
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Leasing a BMW i3, cheapest option, in CPH will cost you 211870 DKR for 36 months, or 31636.55 USD. This comes to about 0.136 DKR/minute, vs 3.50 DKR/minute for the rental.
The difference is 25.7 times, or, for every 25.7 minute you have the lease car, you can drive the above solution for 1 minute, or, 6.5 hours of driving per week.
If you only need it for odd trips once or twice a week, which, since you're living in a modern city (CPH) is more than likely, the 3.50 DKR/minute is miles cheaper than a lease-opt
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Copenhagen really is the city of the future (Score:5, Interesting)
I had the pleasure of spending a couple of weeks in Copenhagen earlier this year. The public transport is excellent, there are separate cycle paths with their own traffic lights everywhere, and now you can rent an electric car if you absolutely need one. We used the train a lot and walked around many Km too. It was easy to rent a car when we did need one but if I lived there it is highly unlikely I would want to own one because the traffic is pretty bad and the public transport offered is excellent. The car is such a dinosaur when it comes to getting around a city.
Re:Copenhagen really is the city of the future (Score:4, Interesting)
The car is such a dinosaur when it comes to getting around a city.
There is no 'city of the future', because cities will be dinosaurs in a post-industrial age.
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There is no 'city of the future', because cities will be dinosaurs in a post-industrial age.
There is little evidence for that. As societies become technologically advanced, and people have more choice of where to live, they tend to be more urbanized. Housing in Silicon Valley is expensive, but workers don't live out in rural areas and commute in, they live in San Francisco, which is even more expensive, and then commute south to the Valley.
Ask any rice farmer in China, and they will tell you their dream is to live in a skyscraper in Shanghai.
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This is why rural phone lines need to be replaced with rural 10 Gbps fiber lines. The subsistence farming deal will be that much better with HD porn, videoconferencing, online gaming, loud high quality music, weather forecasts and frequent satellite or high altitude pictures/measurements etc. all served from a $100 desktop PC.
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Good that this is not the only possible scenario. Nuclear or biological warfare being also available I'd say we run out of luck before w
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Indianapolis as well (Score:1)
every 300m? (Score:2)
So they park them everywhere evenly to start with, and over time they cluster into groupings. How do they fix that? Will they have a fleet of drivers picking cars up to ensure spread of cars?
Re:every 300m? (Score:4, Interesting)
If properly incentivized, I suspect you could get your customers to de-cluster them for you.
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So they park them everywhere evenly to start with, and over time they cluster into groupings. How do they fix that?
Usually when someone drives somewhere, they also drive back.
Will they have a fleet of drivers picking cars up to ensure spread of cars?
There is an obvious market-based solution: Reduce the price for the counter commute direction.
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In Hamburg, that's exactly what happens. I live next to a bar / party location. Some people come by those rental cars and leave by taxi or public transport. When there's mor than one rental car parked here, the next day someone comes and drives it away.
Finally! (Score:1)
I have been wondering why electric charging stations have been popping up all over my street the past few months and it is a bit funny to see the answer on the front page of slashdot!
To see why something like this makes sense in a place like Copenhagen people got to keep in mind the transportation pattern over here is very different than in the US. I am in a household of two and we could easily afford a car, but since our workplace is 12 km from home we both bike to work. In addition we have a large tricycl
Can't wait to try this! (Score:1)
With 400 cars scattered across the city, you can almost expect and plan for a car to be available in your vicinity. Huge flexibility and so many use cases.
Owning a car in Copenhagen, even a small and highly economical car is easily minimum 400 USD per month, everything included; parking, depreciation, fuel, insurance, service etc. You can drive one of these guys around for many many hours for the same price. So if you li
0.52c per minute? (Score:2)
There is an electric car share in the USA (Score:1)
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Drop anywhere? Really? (Score:2)
The article claims that users can "drop [the cars] off anywhere that public parking is allowed within the city". Given that I very much doubt every single public parking spot in the city has a a charger, and assuming they are not stupid and did not lie, that means they plan on having a bunch of employees running around moving the cars to the nearest charger(*). That could partly explain why the price is over twice as much per hour as the similar Autolib' [wikipedia.org] service in Paris.
(*) Note that no matter what it's n