More Electric Car-sharing on the Rise

The primary car-sharing company in Montreal, Canada, is expanding its offer and significantly increasing its fleet of electric vehicles. This will reduce the number of personal cars clogging up the island’s already heavily congested road network.

“What we have found is that the more mobility options we offer, the more people take them up,” explains Sophie Mauzerolle, the city’s executive committee member in charge of mobility.

Communauto is expanding its flex-based service in the west of the island, adding stations in Dorval, Cartierville, Montreal Nord, Rivière-des-Prairies, and Saint-Laurent for members to take cars without reservation and park them anywhere in Montreal in specified zones. As the service extends to the suburban part of the island, Communauto will add more minivans to its fleet in the coming months. Some 1,100 cars will be added – including 85 Kia Niro electric cars and 70 Kia Carnival minivans – for a fleet of 4,800 vehicles. First, 900 station-based cars will be added for Summer’s high vacation season – the last two weeks of July – then 200 flex-based vehicles will be added by Fall. The carsharing company claims that each car it offers prevents ten individual vehicles from being purchased and used. The service is growing by more than 20% per year in Montreal and is available in 17 of its 19 boroughs and in Laval, Longueuil, and other Montreal-area cities. Communauto is in operation in other Quebec’s major cities like Quebec City, Gatineau, Sherbrooke, and Trois-Rivières, but also elsewhere in Canada – Toronto, Hamilton, Ottawa, Calgary, Edmonton, Halifax – and in Paris, France.