Photo courtesy of car2go

Ever since Flexcar and Zipcar merged in 2007, D.C. has been a one-company town when it comes to car-sharing services. No longer.

Over the weekend car2go, a subsidiary of Daimler Chrysler, brought its 200-car fleet to D.C. drivers. Unlike Zipcar, car2go offers a different take on car-sharing—you pay a one-time fee to become a member, grab a car wherever you find one and leave it wherever you want to. The service charges by the minute—38 cents plus tax—and gets progressively cheaper the longer you use it. An hour, for example, would run you $13.99, while a full 24 hours would cost $72.99. (The City Paper’s Lydia DePillis compared car2go’s system to Capital Bikeshare.) Unlike Zipcar, car2go allows you to park the distinctive blue-and-white Smart cars at any on-street spot—and you never have to pay for it.

Hertz has also launched it’s OnDemand service, which operates much like Zipcar, except without the membership fees. As of now, though, it only offers 25 cars around the city.

Zipcar shouldn’t yet feel threatened—it has 800 cars around D.C., after all. And even if car2go were to increase the size of its fleet, the two services don’t necessarily have to compete with each other. There’s something comforting in Zipcar’s reservation system, after all, just as much as there is in the spontaneity of car2go’s grab-and-drive model.