Car2Go has 741 vehicles and over 75,000 members in Seattle, making the Emerald City the largest market in the nation for the car-sharing service. But competition appears to be coming in the form of BMW's DriveNow service, reports GeekWire in a bit of a scoop.
DriveNow cars were sighted in Belltown this week, and the company responded to a subsequent GeekWire inquiry by saying only that a test program is underway.
“We are currently exploring the potential to work with a number of U.S. cities who are welcoming car sharing in their communities and offering the parking permits necessary to operate one-way flexible car sharing," a spokeswoman said in an email to GeekWire.
GeekWire notes that DriveNow's presence in Seattle comes only three months after it suspended a program in San Francisco because of parking permit restrictions that prohibit car-sharing services from parking vehicles on public streets.
An expansion for Car2Go was approved by the City Council in January 2015, and also allowed up to three additional car-sharing companies to launch in Seattle. Each company is eligible for 500 initial permits and up to 750 if they agree to expand across the entire city. That means up to 3,000 shared cars could be available to Seattle residents in the next few years, if DriveNow is successful and two more companies tag in.
