Blue Indy made the announcement to close last December, but the service stayed operational through May 21 when current subscriptions ran out.<\/div>\n
The program\u2019s cute little EVs were sprinkled throughout Indianapolis and available to rent and return. The service was available for a one-time fee or annual membership. One-time users paid $8 for 20 minutes;\u00a0an annual membership was $9.99 per month, not including additional charges for more time at the wheel.<\/p>\n
The service had hoped to reach 15,000 members, 500 cars\u00a0and 200 charging stations, but peaked instead at\u00a03,000 members, 250 cars and 92 stations as interest waned after a well-publicized start. France\u2019s Bolore was the primary investor, but the program also received\u00a0support from Indiana institutions including Indianapolis Power & Light utility, which invested more than $3 million to extend electric lines\u00a0to the chargers.<\/p>\n
Former Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard hoped to give to give the Midwest city a progressive feel. Car-sharing and ride-hailing services like Uber have been touted as modern alternatives\u00a0for less-dense cities without expensive, public-transit rail systems.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe think it\u2019s the perfect city to do this,\u201d BlueIndy General Manager Scott Prince told the Indianapolis Business Journal in 2014. \u201cIf we had the world\u2019s greatest mass-transit system today, this arguably would not be the first city we\u2019d be launching in in America.\u201d<\/p>\n
GM\u2019s Maven\u00a0pulled out of eight of its 17 markets \u2014 including Chicago and New York \u2014\u00a0last year before the COVID-19 outbreak halted the business in its tracks this April. The BMW-Daimler joint venture Share Now was focused on major American and Canadian cities like Seattle, New York\u00a0and Montreal, but folded its cards late last year.<\/p>\n
As BlueIndy indicates, the car-sharing services were struggling before the COVID-19 crisis. The post-pandemic landscape looks even more challenging.<\/p>\n
“The concern a lot of people have now, and this applies to car-sharing, ride-sharing \u2014\u00a0all the transit options \u2014 is when you get into\u00a0one of these vehicles and you don\u2019t know when it was last cleaned,” said analyst Abuelsamid. “There might have been somebody in there 15 minutes before who was sick.”<\/p>\n
A survey taken this May by the IBM Institute for Business Value of 25,000 U.S. adults found significant change in attitude toward ride-sharing\u00a0services, The survey found\u00a0a shift away from public\u00a0transit and ride-sharing toward individual\u00a0transportation.<\/p>\n
\u201cMore than half of people surveyed who used ride-sharing apps and services said they would either use these less or stop using these services completely,\u201d concluded the IBM study. \u201cMore than 17%\u00a0of people surveyed said that they intend to use their personal vehicle more as a result of COVID-19, with approximately 1 in 4 saying they will use it as their exclusive mode of transportation going forward.\u201d<\/p>\n
BlueIndy got mixed reviews from users.<\/p>\n
Green advocate Mary Beatty, 65, told the IndyStar she was drawn to BlueIndy\u00a0becasue of her belief in renewable energy. But they encountered issues when they took the EV to the airport.<\/p>\n
“It was so difficult trying to put our luggage in, and we couldn’t figure out how to open the hatch,” she told the newspaper. “The quality of the car was not good and kind of frightening because it is a lightweight car and did not handle well on the highway.”<\/p>\n
Abuelsamid said that the cars did not meet federal safety standards, so they could be used in a ride-sharing capacity. Some customers complained of the car’s cheap build. Others complained of poor customer service as well as lack of convenience.<\/p>\n
“There was a pretty big learning curve, and it didn’t make it a user-friendly experience, even for someone who was motivated,” said Beatty. “After our membership expired we didn’t renew.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The electric-car sharing future has got the blues. BlueIndy, a pioneering car-sharing service in Indianapolis that launched in 2014, quietly closed\u00a0last month. Beset by losses, the decision to pull the plug on BlueIndy’s\u00a0electric cars came before the global coronavirus pandemic \u2013 and as other similar services have also shut their doors. BlueIndy, an electric-car sharing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25527"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25527"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25528,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25527\/revisions\/25528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}