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Highlights 2009

car2go goes USA

The success story continues. On November 17th the first international car2go pilot was launched in North America in a joint partnership with the City of Austin.

After the successful launch of the initial pilot project in Ulm in October last year, car2go has now widened its network to include Austin as the first location outside of Europe to feature this concept. The joint partnership of car2go and Austin form an important step in the current journey to meet the challenges of urbanization and the growing need for mobility in cities while coming up with innovative solutions which are environmentally friendly.

In Ulm and the neighboring town Neu-Ulm the 200 smarts of the first pilot are rented 500 to 1,000 times per day and they are used by 15,000 customers which equals more than 15 percent of the citizens who possess a driver’s license in Ulm.

Whereas the initial pilot project in Ulm was aimed at testing the general acceptance of the concept and ensuring the system’s stability, the current pilot phase in Austin is focused on preparing the system for its launch in the worldwide market which has been planned to start from 2010. The Daimler TSS colleagues have been working tirelessly to ensure the IT-sided realization of the car2go project in Austin. With success: For now 200 smart fortwo cars will be tested by 13,000 employees from the Austin City Council. Preparations to extend the project to the general public and increase the fleet size correspondingly are already in progress.

Recently Michael Gorriz, CIO of Daimler, applied successfully for the title “CIO of the Year 2009” with car2go as the most important IT project. This title is awarded every year by the magazines CIO and Computerwoche. The jury made up of editorial members, scientists and practitioners was impressed about the innovative IT performance for ”car2go” including Telematic Software and Hardware, a user portal for the car2go-customers, back office applications and fully automated ticketing and accounting processes.