The company, which operates in the US and Europe, shuttered an operation in the Minnesota “Twin Cities” of St Paul and Minneapolis, and another in San Diego, California. It follows the closure of an outlet in southern Florida in the Miami/Miami Beach area in March.
Poor business results in San Diego and high tax rates in Minnesota and Miami were apparently to blame.
The average tax applied to a rented car in Minnesota is 22 per cent and at that rate, car2go said it was difficult to provide affordable transport. It costs US41 cents (A55c) a minute for short trips, less for longer use.
In Miami, the ride rate is the same and the tax is equivalent to about $US1 a day per driver.
Car2go had 300 Mercedes-Benz owned Smart ForTwo cars in Miami, 400 in the Twin Cities and 255 in San Diego.
Critics have said that it is the choice of the tiny ForTwo two-seater car that has affected business and car2go has last month introduced the larger Mercedes-Benz CLA and GLA models in some European cities and is now trialing these cars in Canada.
In the affected cities, car2go has 101,000 members who have signed up for life. They can still use car2go services in other cities.
The company still operates in nine US cities and 19 other cities worldwide in countries including Canada, Austria, Germany, Italy and Spain.
Car2go has operated in the US for fiveyears and has recently had a sharp increase in competition from similar companies.
These include independent groups such as Turo, Enterprise and City Carshare, as well as traditional rental firms such as Avis (Zipcar) and Hertz, and car-makers such as General Motors (Maven and Lyft), BMW (DriveNow), Ford (Credit Link and GoDrive), Getaround (Toyota) and Silvercar (Audi).
Car2go recently stated that its 14,000-car service passed the two- million global member level. In the US and Canada it has 800,000 members and in China, where it started in April, it has 100,000 members
By Neil Dowling
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