The impacts of the pandemic continue to be felt
Since March, things have been shaken up. When it comes to carsharing, the good news is that the changes in our mobility patterns due to working from home, a greater interest in spending and travelling locally, and the need to maintain physical distance as we get around, makes carsharing more attractive than ever.
The less good news is that auto manufacturers had to cut production for several weeks. Our vehicle orders scheduled for the months of May and June have been delayed.
With both our services combined, our fleet in Montreal currently has just over 2,000 vehicles. Despite the circumstances, nearly 150 FLEX vehicles and about 50 station-based vehicles have been added since January. Shortly we’ll be adding another 85 station-based vehicles (60 Corollas and 25 Kia Rios).
Plan ahead
Demand for vehicles is greatest on Saturdays and Sundays. It is important to take this into account when planning your trips.
If you have access to station-based vehicles, it is best to book in advance, especially for trips of one or more days.
In the case of trips that are just a few hours, a reminder that there is a very useful tool to help you find an available vehicle: the “reservation grid“. This tool is useful for booking at the last minute, because it allows you to precisely see the start/end times of existing reservations for all the vehicles in a station, or in a selection of stations, which allows you to adjust your start/end times to sneak in your booking between other reservations, if you have some flexibility.
This function is not yet available in the mobile app. To access the reservation grid, log into your online account, then:
- Select “Add a reservation”
- Select your start and end dates/times
- Check the box by “VIEW RESERVATION GRID” (just under where you picked your dates/times)
- Click on “Show cars”
The reservation grid is only available for trips with start/end dates and times that fall within the next 72 hours from the time of your request.
Are you thinking enough about FLEX?
For trips of a day or two, it often costs no more to use a FLEX vehicle rather than a station-based vehicle. The price per day is certainly higher, but you will see savings on the per km price, especially taking into account that your first 100km are free. Even for trips lasting a few hours, FLEX can be an excellent alternative. This is even more true if you are subscribed to a Value plan, in which case you can drive a FLEX vehicle at the same price as when you use a station-based vehicle. Check our rates or use our trip calculator to compare. Click here >
Do you know about Network Reservations?
Communauto has a partnership with Discount Car Rental which gives our members access to discounted car and truck rentals. Enjoy this offer! Learn more.
The phone lines are also overheating
Communauto has suffered much less than many other companies from the dramatic consequences of the present pandemic. Our usage rates may have dropped almost 70% at the bottom of the wave, but the resources available to us and the speed of recovery have fortunately enabled us to keep all of our employees.
That said, it was not possible for us to recruit all of the additional staff we wished to hire for the summer. In a context of teleworking, work-life balance is not always easy, either.
Communauto, as an employer, makes it a point to support its employees when they are going through difficult times. You should therefore expect response times to sometimes be a little longer if you write to us or contact us by phone. We apologize.
Like everyone else, we will do our best to work with the situation and minimize the impact.
With that, we wish you the best of summer!