Five years after arriving in San Diego as an exciting new alternative to car ownership and a weapon against climate change, car2go and its fleet of conspicuous blue-and-white Smart cars will vanish from local streets after today.

A series of unpredictable setbacks, including the rapid rise of ridesharing companies Uber and Lyft and delays installing electric charging stations in San Diego, made the international company’s experience here a disappointing failure.

The company’s departure also raises questions about whether the city can meet the goals in its ambitious climate action plan, and whether car sharing could be successful here under different circumstances in the future.

San Diego was billed as a key milestone for car2go, the first North American city where the company would use all electric cars instead of gas-powered vehicles.


That approach enhanced the already strong environmental benefits of car sharing, which allows commuters and residents to conveniently rent vehicles for short trips, helping some survive without a car and others solve “final-mile” problems they face when commuting by train or bus.

But the unusual approach turned into a strategic misstep when 1,000 charging stations promised by the federal government in 2011 shrank to 400 because the nonprofit handling installations went bankrupt in 2013.

Worries about running out of power before completing a trip made car2go membership numbers plateau at about 40,000 and depressed the number of active users.

That prompted the company in late 2015 to shrink its home service area, the geographic region within which members could pick up a car and then drop it off.


Car2go stopped serving Point Loma, the Midway District, Shelter Island, Pacific Beach east of Olney Street and Mission Valley east of state Route 163.

That left only Ocean Beach, Mission Beach, western Pacific Beach, western Mission Valley and a rectangular block bordered by Interstate 8, state Route 15, Commercial Street and Pacific Highway.

The move frustrated many customers who live outside the newly shrunken service area. But car2go officials said that only 11 percent of trips took place in the low-demand areas eliminated from the home area, while 89 percent were in the areas that remained.

Meanwhile, ride sharing services Uber and Lyft, which weren’t part of the equation when car2go launched its San Diego fleet in late 2011, were becoming an increasingly popular way to solve the same commuting problems car2go was tackling.


And things took another negative turn last spring when the company decided it’s only chance for survival in San Diego was abandoning the all-electric approach.

Noting that a fully fueled Smart Car running on gas can go five times as far as a fully charged electric — 342 miles versus 65 miles – car2go officials switched their entire local fleet of 400 cars to gas powered engines during the month of May.

The company simultaneously reduced its per-minute usage charges from 41 cents to 19 cents to attract new members, and lowered membership fees.

But six months later in November, company officials announced they would cease operations in San Diego at the end of 2016 due to inadequate demand.


That frustrated many car2go users, prompting some families to announce plans to buy a second car and others to start using Uber and Lyft more. While others complained that car2go severely shrunk its fleet during the last few weeks of operations.

“I’m disappointed because this service is going away... I used it almost 3-5 times a week since my car was totaled in 2013,” Erik M. said two weeks ago on Yelp! “What I wasn’t expecting was for so few cars to be available the month BEFORE they went out of business. There must be like 10 in all of San Diego.”

Colleen W. called car2go “a great concept” last month and said she has used the service since it was launched, but she complained about the change in service area and said she plans to switch to Uber or Lyft.

This week, Will Berry, car2go San Diego general manager, said there is still hope for car sharing in San Diego.


“We want to express our heartfelt thanks to our members for supporting us, and we deeply regret any inconvenience this difficult decision may have caused,” Berry said in an email. “We truly hope that as more people around the world adopt car sharing and embrace all its economic and environmental benefits, we might one day resume our service here.”

Reasons for optimism about a return include the volatility of the market for Uber and Lyft, where options and pricing change rapidly, and a San Diego Gas & Electric plan to install 3,500 charging stations at 350 sites — mostly condominiums and apartments where residents can’t charge an electric car in their garage.

In addition, San Diego has a separate car sharing deal with Zipcar, which is now the city’s only provider.

Zipcars, however, are more like rental cars because they must be picked up and dropped off in the same spot, eliminating the one-way options available with car2go.


Nicole Capretz, executive director of the nonprofit Climate Action Campaign, said Friday that losing car2go is a setback because car sharing was part of a many-pronged approach to reducing car ownership and usage.

“This will add more pollution, more carbon emissions and more traffic to San Diego,” she said.

While the city’s Climate Action Plan doesn’t rely on emissions reductions from car sharing to achieve its goal of cutting the city’s carbon footprint in half by 2035, car sharing was still important because it can fill small gaps in commutes that feature mass transit or bicycling, which the plan does rely on.

City officials have stressed that transportation initiatives aren’t the only ways to achieve the goals of the climate action plan, but Capretz said the city needs to focus more on efforts to get people out of their cars.


david.garrick@sduniontribune.com (619) 269-8906 Twitter:@UTDavidGarrick