The service launching today enables users to book GoTo cars three months in advance and use them for longer periods — such as hours or days. This comes as an addition to the originally available one-way service, where users pick the car up, and after reaching their destination they leave the car at one of the 450 designated spots. In the case of the latter, the car can only be reserved 15 minutes prior to the ride, and once left behind, other users can take it.

The new service is be operated by 30 Toyota Yaris Hybrid 1.5 cars, which come as an addition to GoTo’s fully-electric core fleet of 150 Renault Zoes at the time of publication. The so-called roundtrip cars will have designated parking spots where users can collect them and the cars must be returned to these very spots after use. Nevertheless, while booked, these cars can be parked anywhere and will wait for the user where they were left off.

“The minimum period for hiring a roundtrip Toyota car is two hours. We believe this offers a great opportunity for business people when they need to attend meetings. They will know surely that the car is waiting for them after the meeting, right where they have left it. We paid special attention to business hubs when deciding on the designated spots for these cars,” Mr Golan tells BM about the new service.

As the Toyota hybrids will be available for longer hires, the fuel needed for the combustion engines will be covered by GoTo staff. However, should the users need to tank the cars, GoTo will offer a selection of fuel stations where the clients just need to top up the car and GoTo will pay the bill.

Launching new mobile app

Additionally, to the new service, GoTo is also launching its new mobile application, further streamlining the services the carsharing company offers to clients.

In the past month, the company was running a test-phase of the new service and the new app, all having been tested by its clients. They received GoTo services for free for this period, in exchange for helping debug the operations.

Developing its infrastructure, GoTo is currently installing charging stations to charge its electric cars. Under the public tender GoTo won last year, it has to install a total of 225 charging stations. At the moment, they have 60+ charging stations and counting. Mr Golan is positive that all the charging stations should be finished by the end of this year. Once GoTo reaches its goal, Mr Golan says that these stations might be opened up for public use, whereas now they are exclusively available for GoTo cars.

Although GoTo was only launched in November, Mr Golan says that demand for car sharing has been high. The company currently receives 570 reservations a day from over 6,000 registered clients, out of whom 3,700 are monthly active users.

The post GoTo launches complementary ‘roundtrip’ service today first appeared on The Malta Business Weekly.

GoTo was launched at the beginning of November 2018 after winning a public tender issued by Transport Malta seeking a car-sharing service provider to reduce dependency on owning cars in the island nation. The Israeli firm has ten years of car-sharing experience and uses its in-house technology that they also provide to other companies.

“The principle is that instead of owning a car, multiple people can use the same car through different times of the day. Therefore the number of cars on the roads and in parking places can be reduced,” Ms Jasenaite says. GoTo’s car-sharing concept comes on time, as roads in Malta have seen an increasing grade of congestion.

For the time being, Malta is the only country in the world where GoTo operates by only using electric vehicles. GoTo uses its own infrastructure; they have built the charging stations they use, and they see further expansion in this regard.

“We brought the service of car-sharing to Malta, and we are also building electric charging stations. Our goal is to build a total of 225 charging stations. Currently, we have 450 designated parking spots in Malta, but not all of them have charging stations, as we have 60 chargers, for now. Our goal is to add charging stations to all our parking spots,” the commercial chief says.

The charging stations and parking spots are exclusive to GoTo cars at the moment; however, the company is planning to open up their parking spots and charging stations for the public once they reached their 225 charger goal.

Gradually growing market

At the moment the firm is trying to understand the demand of the Maltese market before they would start planning expansion. GoTo Malta records 460 one-way trips per day on average, numbers upping to an average 600 per day on Fridays and Saturdays. As the service is growing in user numbers, and fuelled by this increasing demand, GoTo Malta can easily imagine growing further. “If we are going with the same level of growth, we will be introducing new cars,” Ms Jasenaite says.

In terms of car usage, the most popular area for car-sharing is the Great Northern Harbour. There are multiple reasons for this tendency, but one of the major drivers is that the area is the most active from an economic perspective, and it is where most of the expats live.

“There are three main groups of our customers. The first is expats who live in Malta for a few years only, who do not intend to buy own cars. The second group comprise of environmentally-conscious people who opt for our service in making efforts for protecting the environment. The third group of people uses our services for easier parking, especially in the heavily congested areas, using our designated parking spots. They might own cars, but it is much easier to drive into the busiest towns knowing that they will surely have parking spots,” the chief says.

Another exciting characteristic of GoTo users is that they are not exclusive to car-sharing; instead, they would use all other means of transportation. “What we see is that our customers usually are not exclusive to car sharing; they use several other forms like public transport, riding taxis, walking, riding bikes or driving their own cars,” Ms Jasenaite says.

Looking into the future, she believes once people realise how comfortable electric vehicles are, the shift toward EV will happen swiftly. “The Renault ZOEs that we use can go close to 270 kilometres with one two-and-half-hour charging stop,” she points out, adding that the charging costs are also lower than paying for fuel.

The post GoTo Malta’s growing user base can fuel further growth first appeared on The Malta Business Weekly.