Last Thursday, Car2go didn’t

https://twitter.com/car2goBklyn/status/543269636390010880

Car2go had some trouble here last week. Apparently it covered the carsharing service’s whole system.

In an email to members on Friday, from Chief Marketing Officer Paul DeLong, explained.

Yesterday, at 4:30pm CST, our car2go vehicles experienced a disruption in service that was directly related to our Germany-based mobile provider. At that time, our provider had underwent a malfunction within their network that disabled cell phone roaming, resulting in a break in remote connection with all of our car2go vehicles across North America and their network in Germany. Thus, members were not able begin or end their trips until the issue was resolved at 12:54am CST today.

Which puts the outage as something like 5:30 p.m. to 3 a.m. here.

The letter goes on to argue that the company did its best to be transparent as possible and let members know that the system was down as soon as the company was aware of it.

Car2go announced last week that it had broken a million members and that it is now the largest carsharing service in the world. Brooklyn is its most recent U.S. enclave. Car2go is owned by Daimler Chrysler.

DeLong said the outage was a milestone for the company:

After this week’s announcement of car2go being the largest carsharing company in the world, I could look at this as a huge embarrassment. But to be honest with you, last night’s disruption was a defining moment for us. It showed me – and all of our team members across North America – that even though we are the largest carsharing company in the world, we remained true to you, our members – that during a sensitive time, we demonstrated the responsibility and the compassion as a leading brand should.