In Vancouver we have a local service (evo) that was competing with car2go, but since car2go pulled out they seem to be doing quite well. I suspect the reason car2go "failed" was that it was more about pushing the smartcar into the north american market that was fairly reluctant to buy smaller cars, than it was about actually providing that service. When smartcars showed they weren't going to take off here, they had no reason to keep it going.
Yeah, I've heard the theory car2go was all an attempt to advertise Smart cars, which I thought was weird... I liked the car2go service but I would never want to buy one of those cars, they drove like crap. For the purpose of getting around they were fine, but nothing more.
Are Smart cars always that crappy, or were the models used for Car2go particularly inferior? I'm not sure what the transmission was, but it wasn't a normal automatic - you could feel it go into neutral (losing power) and then engage at a higher gear.
It was an automated manual transmission. You described exactly what it was happening. The car was disengaging the clutch, changing gears, after witch it would reengage the clutch.
I drove a Smart for a few years. One feature of the computer controlling the transmission was that it's supposed to "learn" your driving and adjust its shifting accordingly. Mine always ran pretty darn good. I could also put the gear shifter into manual mode where it would only shift when I told it to, and it was much faster on the shifts.
The mother-in-law also had one. Hers drove like crap, much like you're describing. It's annoying to ride with her no matter what she drives. We'd do the reset procedure on hers and it would behave a bit better for a couple weeks.
I suspect the computer would have a helluva time guessing what to do next if there's a different driver every day.
It shifts like crap. We also have this transmission on an older Civic and I find myself giving up and switching to manual whenever I need to overtake or drive up a hill. Just give me a stick and a clutch or at least a sequential manual like the older convertible Smart has. My partner has developed bad urban driving practices such as accelerating and then immediately braking at a red light that could be clearley seen in order to compensate for the gearboxes' crappy behaviour. DSG double clutch is a dream to drive in compared to an automatic manual. I haven't used CVT but other drivers seem to have issues with that too.
I heard the diesel’s were better, but I can’t confirm that firsthand since all the car2go ones were gas. They rolled out some all-electric ones towards the end and those drove quite well with none of the jerking and rocking
It's basically a manual transmission that's automatically controlled. More efficient than a classic auto with a torque converter, but the shifts won't ever be as smooth (nor the acceleration from standstill.)
