Montreal Starts Canada’s First 100% All-Electric Carsharing Program

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Communauto has just started a new carsharing program in Montreal, Canada. Based in the Le Plateau-Mont-Royal borough, the new pilot program will offer Canada’s first 100% all-electric, one-way carsharing program.

The pilot project will analyze all of the benefits and impacts associated with such a carsharing program. The project includes 20 electric vehicles that citizens will be allowed to take from point A to point B (no return necessary). This will allow additional means for citizens in the area to move around more freely.

Benoît Robert, CEO of Communauto said, “We believe such a system should be positioned as to complement the existing service offer for short trips rather than placing it in competition with other sustainable transportation actors such as taxis, the STM, BIXI and car sharing with reservation.”

As a bonus, to help ease constraints on parking the EV at the user’s final destination, the borough has offered a universal parking permit. This will allow drivers to park for free in any legal parking area.

In order to use the service, Communauto has made it fairly simple. Subscribers can simply register their OPUS card number (which is used with Montreal’s public transportation system) into an Auto-mobile system. Then, once registered, they can simply find the nearest vehicle by using their smartphone or internet and simply swipe their card on the vehicle and take it away.

The cost for using the carsharing program is 38 cents a minute or $12 an hour, with a “$50 for the whole day” option. There is also a discount rate that is good until July 5th — a rate of 10 cents a minute and $6 an hour.

If the response is good for the new carsharing program, there may be additional cars added to the fleet of EVs.