Zipcar and Car2Go are car-sharing companies that let card-holding members walk up to a parked car, drive it somewhere and get charged for it by the hour. Zipcar requires that you return it to its start location whereas Car2Go lets you drop it off somewhere else.
The thing is, Zipcar charges $8.75 an hour and Car2Go charges $13.99 per hour.
Under which scenario is this really worthwhile?
If I need a car to tour around a city in, a traditional rental car only costs $20 to $40 a day (at least in the places I’ve been) – excluding gas, yes, but for most in-town trips that isn’t significant.
If I need some way to just get from points A to B, I’d have to deal with the hassle of hoping that there’s a car nearby, getting to it before someone else reserves or drives off with it, and then hoping that there’s a parking spot close enough to the destination. If time isn’t a factor, it seems like the bus would be a lot cheaper. If time is a factor, wouldn’t a taxi be easier and only slightly more expensive?
So who exactly is the target audience? The businesses are still around after all these years, so somebody must find them useful… what am I missing?
I think the target market are urban dwellers who need a car for just a few hours, such as for grocery shopping and the like. Rental companies, AFAIK, are rarely located downtown, and such would be a giant hassle to rent if you need a car for a day or less. Zip Cars, conversely, are located all over downtown and are far more convenient.
Zipcars are intended for city dwellers to do things like pick up a relative at the airport or make a big Costco or Ikea shopping run for a couple of hours.
As for why you’d want one of these vs a traditional rental, the fuel and insurance are included in the hourly charge, and you’re free to go wherever you want without haing to worry about waiting half an hour for a cab to pick you up at Ikea and finding that they sent a regular car when you asked for a minivan to hold your new furniture. (Not to mention, the taxi fare from Ikea in Emeryville (across the Bay) or Palo Alto (30 miles away, in another county) to San Francisco would be breathtaking - they’ll charge you double as they have to deadhead back to their normal area.)
No worries about the car not being there - you log in, locate a car near you, and reserve it.
I own a car so this is all hypothetical for me. I could walk to several locations within 10 minutes of my house and pick up a ZipCar if I needed one. There is a car rental location around 15 minutes away, but in my old house I’d need to go much further for a rental.
We use Zipcar, as has been said it’s great if you are in the city and need a car for just an hour or two. We live in DC and there are about 6 cars within a few blocks of us, I have an app on my phone that finds and reserves the closest car and I can do my shopping or whatever and then return it.
Cars2go has the added advantage that you can leave the car anywhere that it is legal to park. With Zipcar, you have to return it to the original space.
Zipcar is also great for vacations. My wife and I were in San Francisco and we decided to drive out to the redwood forest, we found a zipcar a few blocks from us, booked it for 3 hours or so and then returned it, no need to find parking or have to rent a car for the entire trip.
ETA: zipcar also has specialty vehicles like pickups and vans so if you need to make a run to the hardware store for some lumber or whatever, you can do so very conveniently.
Except for the $8/hr cars, Zip Car has daily rates that are pretty competitive with a traditional rental. So, for example, an $11.25/hr Toyota pickup only costs $77 to keep for 24 hours instead of $270.
Another thing is that unlike most traditional rental fleets, Zip Cars’ fleet generally contains cars you might actually want to drive. They don’t have the super-cheap subcompacts like the Nissan Versa which would probably be your $20-40/day rental, and even their $8/hr compacts are usually nice cars that are generally well optioned. Their premium cars, like the aforementioned Toyota or the Mini Coopers and BMWs, have competitive day-rental prices.
Time - For Car2Go, I find a car via an app, walk up to it and drive away. For a rental, I have to get to a rental place (probably via a cab), stand in line, provide ID and credit info and get my car.
Convenience - As noted, with car2go, I have an app to tell me where the closest car is and if it’s convenient, I take one. With rentals, I have to deal with a rental person and I have to get to a rental place.
My primary use of car2go is one-way rentals to bars/parties/whatever where I take a car2go there and grab a cab home. Or, sometimes I’ll commute to work on a car2go and grab a bus home or take car2go back again. The cost difference is only a few bucks between a bus or car2go for my short commute.
Maybe not. My son took a car service home from Williamsburg once. It’s a 20 minute ride by car at that time of night (plus waiting time for the cab). The cab cost $38. The train would have been cheaper, but would have taken over an hour (again, at that time of night) If Car2Go was in NYC, it would have cost $14 and taken 20 minutes (plus time to get to the car).
It’s pretty common in DC. I’m always amused by the number of ZipCars to be found outside the University Park Ikea.
ZipCars are usually used for short, semi-planned outings by people who do not own cars. The advantage is that you can treat a ZipCar much like your own car. In urban areas you can pick up and drop them off within blocks of your starting point or destination. I have five lots within three blocks of my house, and I’m not in a particularly dense area. I have access to lots by my work, by my friend’s houses, basically everywhere. It’s like always having access to a car parked nearby.
You can rent this with no planning- I can decide on the subway home that I want to run to Costco after work, press a few buttons on my phone, walk up to a car, and take off. There is no need to compare prices, visit an office, fill out forms, deal with extra charges, hand my credit card over to someone, get my license checked, etc. You just make the reservation and go from the nearest car.
Most people I know who use them use them primarily for large-item shopping on the outskirts of town (stuff like Costco and Ikea), the occasional group outing to a concert or other venue without metro access, small-apartment moves and those random “I need a private vehicle now” moments.
It’s better than cabs when you are going to the outskirts, traveling with a group, hauling things or planning to have a period of downtime at your destination.
They’re in the car on a retractable tether thing. Think pen at the bank. You have a card with an RFID chip in it and each car has a gizmo that reads your chip and unlocks the car door. I believe the car also won’t start unless it’s been opened with an authorized chip, so smash-n-drive theft doesn’t work.
Ignition key and gas card are in the glovebox. I carry an RFID card (like any credit or transit card) that unlocks the car via a reader mounted to the windshield. Make reservation via smartphone, walk to car 1/2 block away, slap card onto windshield over the reader, car unlocks, and retrieve key from glovebox. (it’s not tethered - I keep it in my pocket when not in the car) Use that key for the duration for driving/locking/unlocking then put back at end of trip and lock the whole thing back up with the RFID card. The final locking won’t happen if the key fob isn’t in its slot in the govebox, so you can’t forget to put the key back. Walk away.
Also came in here to mention that you can’t get a Budget car at 10pm or on holidays. I use iGo (local Chicago non-profit carsharing) for getting to family holiday functions and for emergency visits to the vet and stuff like that. There are even discounted hourly rates between midnight and 6am. Once took my cat to the ER at 3am and spent all of $9 for the car. A cab both ways would have been upwards of $30.
I live in Chicago, and am in a car sharing program (not ZipCar, but one operated by the city) that I’ve used maybe five times in the year and a half that I’ve lived here. I’ve used it to pick up furniture, and once to drive my sister to the airport because she’s a giant crybaby who couldn’t stand the idea of waiting for the train in the cold. So each of these times, I end up paying less than $10 for a quick trip that’s cheaper than a cab and is cheaper and easier than renting a car. Hell, the insurance alone at a car rental place is $10/day.
In addition to the above, for Zipcar at least (I don’t know about Car2Go), you don’t need a credit card.
As long as you have a bank account and a debit card, you can use a Zipcar. I found and started using Zipcar when my car was totaled and I didn’t have and couldn’t get a credit card because my credit was in the shitter. There’s no credit check at all; as long as you can pay the fees they’ll let you drive a car. If it’s your only access to a car it’s a lifesaver.
Interesting. Yeah, I guess for impromptu things and for sheer convenience, it’s easier than renting a car. I also didn’t know traditional rentals cost so much in bigger cities. Makes more sense now, thanks
How does refueling work with Zipcar and Car2go? There was mention of a gas card for this, is gas included in the price and what is the rules for who has to take it to the pump?
You are expected to leave the car clean and with at least 1/4 of a tank. There is a gas card in the car and when you fill up, you enter your membership number instead of a pin number. The cost of gas is covered in your membership, so it’s kind of fun to fill up the car for ‘free.’
I’ve found renting a zipcar for the day no more expensive than renting a traditional car in DC, plus I don’t have to go out to the airport or a rental office and as someone else mentioned, the cars are actually ones you’d want to drive.
We didn’t have a car for a couple of years and relied on zipcar for any shopping trips or to go outside the city. Now we use it as a second car, if my wife stays home and I take the car to work, she can book a zipcar.
A new use we just discovered (we’re a little slow) is that we can use it in any city that has zipcar, so if we’re on vacation we can book a car near the hotel. I mentioned that we did this to go out to the redwoods when we were in San Francisco, it was great because we booked a Mercedes with a huge sun roof, it’s exactly the kind of car you want for tooling around California, it was the best part of the trip.
