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Learn more about Chattanooga’s electric car-sharing program at greencommuter.org/chattanooga or at www.facebook.com/greencommuterchattanooga
Any Chattanoogan with a clean driving record, a smartphone and $50 for an annual membership fee can now rent a Nissan Leaf for $9 an hour under an electric car-sharing service called Green Commuter Chattanooga that went live in October.
It’s a program of the Chattanooga Area Regional Transportation Authority (CARTA), the city’s bus service, which got a $3 million grant from the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) to establish the electric car-sharing service.
“It just adds another transit option,” says Brent Matthews, CARTA’s director of parking, who thinks there’s a growing market for those who only occasionally need a car. “You’ve got more and more people moving downtown. A lot of folks are going to one vehicle.”
The car-sharing program works a lot like the Bike Chattanooga blue-and-yellow rental bicycles, with Leafs located around town that members can find, borrow and then return to the original starting point – via a smart phone app that’s used to unlock the car and start the engine. No key is involved in the app-based system. (Unless the car’s out of range of the Internet; there’s a key in glove box for that situation.)