GM's car sharing service to make Canadian debut in Kitchener

GM plans to expand its Maven vehicle sharing service to Canada and its first location will be Kitchener.

Kitchener city council approved a plan last night to rent five parking spots to GM in a lot at the corner of Charles and Water streets, near Communitech, for the next year.

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"Just like all businesses, they have to at least get their foot in the door and see what the demand is," Paul McCormick, the city's manager of parking enterprise, told CBC News. "They have plans that if this takes off the way they think, that they will look to other sites in downtown Kitchener, maybe in the east end."

McCormick said the Maven service would complement other vehicle sharing services, such as CommunityCarShare.

Fills a different niche

The Maven service is available in the U.S. Kitchener would be the first Canadian location.

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To rent a vehicle through the service, you book it through an app on your phone and pay for it there. You also unlock the car and start the engineusing your phone.

A staff report to council said the five vehicles GM plans to use in Kitchener are "fully loaded vehicles." McCormick said this could include features like leather seats and satellite radio.

The report said GM and Community CarShare are "similar business ventures" but "each are unique, servicing a different niche in the market."

Car sharing reduces traffic, parking headaches

Staff said car sharing services help the city reach a number of goals, including reducing the number of people on city roads and trying to find parking, while benefiting air quality and the environment overall.

"If we can get more people to maybe take transit coming downtown, all of a sudden they need to go to a meeting somewhere else, they can easily use one of these services, whether it's Grand River [Community] CarShare or Maven, and be able to still conduct their business activities without having to bring their cars downtown," McCormick said.