Photo courtesy of Communauto
Renting a car while on vacation can be a pain. Inconvenient drop off locations, finding (and paying for) parking in a strange city and paying daily or weekly rates for a car that might only get used once or twice a day can all be a hassle, so its no wonder that car share services are becoming so popular.
In Canada, as of January 1, 2015, there were more than 5,200 car share vehicles and 20 car share businesses, according to The Globe and Mail. But that number continues to climb as companies acquire new inventory.
Among the companies growing their Canadian footprint is Québec-based Communauto, which will receive nearly 600 new hybrid and electric cars for use in Montreal, Québec City, Ottawa and Halifax, as well as a few in France. In total, 500 cars are heading to Quebec, where Communauto's inventory will jumping from 1,370 to more than 1,800.
"In 2015, nearly one million trips were made with Communauto vehicles," said Benoît Robert, president and CEO of Communauto. "Carsharing's growing popularity, partly due to our extremely competitive rates, requires us to drastically increase our fleet in order to effectively meet the demand. The impact of carsharing is becoming more and more noticeable."
In cities where the company's Auto-mobile short-term reservation service is available, the number of vehicles will double: 275 new vehicles, 25 of which will be totally electric, are heading to Montreal, bringing the entire Auto-mobile fleet to 550 for the city. In Québec City, the fleet will increase from 30 to 55 all-hybrid vehicles.
Communauto claims to have the largest electric vehicle fleet of any car sharing service in Canada, with a total of nearly 90 electric vehicles company-wide.
Other upgrades for Communauto in 2016 include a new version of the company's mobile app as well as a more innovative approach to the service's instantaneous subscription process.
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