Will Car-Sharing Apps Revolutionize Transportation? (orlandosentinel.com) 77
We're now living in a wrold where customers "can download smartphone apps and rent privately owned cars, usually parked a short walk away in urban areas or residential neighborhoods," reports the Orlando Sentinel, noting that the rates can be as cheap as $5 an hour -- or $400 a day if you want to spend a day driving a Ferrari, Aston Martin or Bentley:
Car-sharing companies say they offer benefits that young users find particularly appealing: Shared cars reduce congestion and parking shortages in cities. They reduce carbon emissions by making fewer cars necessary. They make it easier to live without owning cars. Car-sharing platforms are also easy to use: Your smartphone's GPS will navigate you to where the car is located, then you use the app to activate a remote entry system to get access to the key, or wait for the owner to bring it to you, and you're on the road.
Using a car-sharing app eliminates trips to the airport or in-town car rental agency office. "Skip the Rental Car Counter," beckons the website for Turo, the nation's largest car-sharing platform... Just as Airbnb allows private home owners to generate extra income from short-term rentals, the car-sharing platforms say their apps help car owners cover ownership costs by making their vehicles available for rent when they would otherwise be sitting in a driveway or parking spot.
The article cites two 10-year-old companies, Turo and Getaround, noting both companies "have raised hundreds of millions of dollars from venture capitalists in recent years to finance aggressive expansion efforts."
Using a car-sharing app eliminates trips to the airport or in-town car rental agency office. "Skip the Rental Car Counter," beckons the website for Turo, the nation's largest car-sharing platform... Just as Airbnb allows private home owners to generate extra income from short-term rentals, the car-sharing platforms say their apps help car owners cover ownership costs by making their vehicles available for rent when they would otherwise be sitting in a driveway or parking spot.
The article cites two 10-year-old companies, Turo and Getaround, noting both companies "have raised hundreds of millions of dollars from venture capitalists in recent years to finance aggressive expansion efforts."
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How is the ownerâ(TM)s car insurance affected?..
It's affected in the same way the people who drive for the Lyft and Uber taxi companies are affected: they lie to their insurance companies through omission.
"You mean if I'm using my vehicle for commercial purposes I have to pay a different, higher, rate of insurance? I never knew that!"
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Vehicle ridership didn't decrease when it went from horse buggy to ICE. It INCREASED.
Autonomous cars should make vehicles **more** accessible to people, like the elderly or disabled, that normally wouldn't have access to driving.
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Person B gets the car from 10 to 11 am.
Person C from noon to 1 pm.
Person D from 2 to 4 pm.
Person A returns from work at 5 pm.
With a ride share would have person B to D used their own car that day?
Thats 3 less actual cars in a city.
One space needed to park.
1 car getting used a lot around a city all day.
An amount of energy driving all day but from one modern car.
As many people needing transport all day. But its one car at set times.
The city gains some car parks.
Car sharing = taxi service by another name (Score:3)
Share with friends and family, sure. Share with a complete stranger? No thanks. My car is my personal space and I'm not interested in being a part time taxi driver on the way to work. And apart from that why would I want to get up much earlier so I can pick up and drop off these strangers?
Its a stupid idea only ivory tower non car owning hipsters would come up with.
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Am I? Oh ok , thanks for letting me know. Its good to know geniuses like you can infer so much from a dislike of car sharing. Or maybe you're just full of shit.
Oh and FWIW genius, I'm not even american.
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That's it! That's your trifecta of ignorant stupidity. Not even knowing what "car-sharing" is and equating it to Uber. You did it. You didn't let us down. You have won the ignorance of the year award.
Man I crave the days where people would just first post with "first post" rather than writing some bullshit that shows they didn't even read the first sentence in TFA.
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When Uber first appeared on the scene they called themselves a ride-share company that was totally not an unlicensed taxi company.
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Cool story. Not at all relevant to car sharing.
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First post
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Let's draw the line between:
- car sharing
- ride sharing
- ride service
With that done, car sharing is not ride (taxi) service, period.
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I think you misunderstand.
You're not going to be in the car with the renter.
Just as Airbnb allows private home owners to generate extra income from short-term rentals , the car-sharing platforms say their apps help car owners cover ownership costs by making their vehicles available for rent when they would otherwise be sitting in a driveway or parking spot.
Just as with the Airbnb model, where you don't sleep with the guest, you're not in the car you rent.
The biggest benefactor - the Insurance Industry (Score:1)
The insurance industry gonna laugh all the way to the bank.
For one car, the often sell one policy per year.
For car sharing service, for every single car, they could be getting as many as 20 policies per day.
For some it already has (Score:2)
Looking to cities with dense population, difficult parking, bad traffic and generally a younger demographic you can already see car sharing has made an impact on many people. Much like ride sharing has changed the taxi landscape I actually know many people who use these services as a justification for not owning a car at all, and one person even sold their car after discovering car sharing services.
However key to note is that this only really works at scale if you don't need it for your daily commute.
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Looking to cities with dense population, difficult parking, bad traffic and generally a younger demographic you can already see car sharing has made an impact on many people. Much like ride sharing has changed the taxi landscape I actually know many people who use these services as a justification for not owning a car at all, and one person even sold their car after discovering car sharing services. However key to note is that this only really works at scale if you don't need it for your daily commute.
It's nothing revolutionary new though, it's basically car rental organized a bit differently as a club with a base membership fee. You still have all the overhead of getting to a pickup point and returning from it, you have to check for damage so you're not stuck with an insurance bill, you have to keep it clean and tidy, you can't store any personal items in it and if you're transporting something heavy you might have to make an extra round trip home to load/unload the car, it's fairly expensive to occupy
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It's nothing revolutionary new though, it's basically car rental organized a bit differently as a club with a base membership fee.
Well ultimately nothing is revolutionary. Uber is just a using your phone to call independent taxis. SpaceX is just lauching rockets into space and reusing the bits that fall to the ground. A computer is just a fancy abacus. I mean that's ultimately what you're saying by comparing a car sharing platform to a car rental agency right?
You still have all the overhead of getting to a pickup point and returning from it
I think you clearly missed the point of what this app allows. My brother inlaw has never had to walk more than a couple of hundred meters to find a car. Not at all anything like
Might to some extent, no generally (Score:1)
You do not want to share your home, except sometimes, in some circumstances - web and app does help you in that. The same with the cars - you barely want to entrust your investment to every stranger, you might however do that to some extent, substituting in a way car rental business. Some company actually can offer safety net and an app to do this, perfectly viable business niche. Individual trying luck is much less substantial and attractive.
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You do not want to share your home, except sometimes, in some circumstances - web and app does help you in that. The same with the cars - you barely want to entrust your investment to every stranger, you might however do that to some extent, substituting in a way car rental business. Some company actually can offer safety net and an app to do this, perfectly viable business niche. Individual trying luck is much less substantial and attractive.
Oh hell yes. Who takes care of the problem when someone shits in your car, or wrecks it, or just decides not to bring it back.
While yes, there are solutions for each, but who the hell wants that hassle?
The whole thing sounds like another gig economy problem. And if it works at all, Uber will take it over, any you'll make a couple bucks on your car sharing.
Rentals in Japan (Score:1)
Let me rephrase (Score:5, Insightful)
"Will people give up on their holy cow, that they invest time and money in, and keep spotlessly clean, and replace it by a dodgy vehicle that may or may not have been used by some drug user or pimp in its previous ride, and that is never available during rush hour, and where they cannot leave any personal items?"
I think the answer to that question is "no".
Oh, and they do not reduce carbon emissions: they improve utilisation per vehicle, but certainly not the number of rides that will be taken. Quite the contrary in fact: partial car ownership, at low cost, and with a low barrier to entry, will vastly increase the number of rides.
"Just as airbnb lets home owners benefit from short term rentals" That's wrong too: airbnb has created an industry of unofficial (and frequently illegal) hotels that operate at very low cost, and displaces regular use of housing with the sole purpose of housing tourists instead of locals. Soon our city centers will only have tourists living there; for normal people, a house far away in the suburbs is the best they can aspire to.
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that may or may not have been used by some drug user or pimp in its previous ride
If the pimp leaves a few whores in the car . . . I'm all in.
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You forgot to mention that people treat rental cars horribly. And have for pretty much as long as rental cars have existed. AirBnB suffers this problem as well. I call it "Its not mine" syndrome, and just as some people intentionally use AirBnB for parties they know will destroy a house, some will choose to use these cars for similar reasons.
"Hey I saw this old show called the Lords of Danger or something with this racist orange car in it, but they did these sick jumps over rivers. We should totally do that
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The short answer is no. But the long answer is "not soon".
When we have fully self-driving, self-sanitizing cars, then ride sharing will take over. Until then, it's going to be a mix, and most people will prefer their own vehicles.
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self-sanitizing cars,
When can we get that technology? Please?
AIRBNB DIDN"T CREATE JAQ (Score:1)
Real carsharing (Score:1)
Great for smuggling (Score:5, Interesting)
Is every renter responsible for whatever the car has inside it at the time if searched by authorities?
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Is every renter responsible for whatever the car has inside it at the time if searched by authorities?
Are you responsible for drugs found in your your brother's car while you're driving it? The answer is yes, and no this doesn't change smuggling one bit.
Still a problem of demand (Score:4, Insightful)
Car sharing will need to figure out how to deal with those peaks, otherwise everyone using the cars will have to pay for them anyway because the cars required at the peaks will sit idle most of the time otherwise.
Re: Still a problem of demand (Score:1)
It'll be "solved" the same way Uber "solved" the problem. It'll essentially be a regular car rental company without regulations or protections, and instead of having centralized parking lots to pick up and drop off cars they'll use the public parking spaces.
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The problem with 'car sharing' is that everyone wants them in rush hour and on sunny weekends.
Car sharing will need to figure out how to deal with those peaks, otherwise everyone using the cars will have to pay for them anyway because the cars required at the peaks will sit idle most of the time otherwise.
"Car sharing" is just a very bad way of trying to say "unregulated and/or illegal car hire/taxi company". If I were to set up a stall with a 8 yr old selling cans of Stella Artois I bought from a Tesco, am I "drink sharing" or "running an illegal public house"? If I were to "encourage" young women to sleep with men for money, am I "body sharing" or just pimping?
Can we please just stop pretending any of this is "sharing" and just call it what it is.
Yes, indirectly (Score:2)
Car-sharing and ridesharing are transitional technologies that are preparing people for the coming age of automated driving. They are already catching on with the young, who are the first generation in the modern US to not grow up attached to car culture. The young, especially in cities, see cars as strictly utilitarian and would rather put money into college savings and eventually a home, rather than a succession of cars whose equity dissipates soon after you leave the dealership. The places where they liv
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The young, especially in cities, see cars as strictly utilitarian and would rather put money into college savings
You mean into paying off college loans.
and eventually a home,
Not in cities. Single family residences are out. High rise rentals are in.
The places where they live, dine and go for entertainment are not in the suburbs surrounded by seas of parking space.
They are within walking distance or on transit routes. Right where the business owners placed them to take advantage of captive customers. Car sharing? You still need that 'sea of parking space' while you are at the movie or restaurant. Or a sharing app that reserves parking or a connecting ride to accommodate the vehicle while you are busy. Want to go out Saturday night? Sorry. Tuesday afternoon
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If we're going to have to build a separate roadway for these things with signs and reflectors and sensors and all kinds of environment destroying things, then we might as well go back to bikes.
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And rather than let the car sit idle in an expensive rented parking space, why not lend it out instead when not in use? A profit center rather than a money sink.
Because people will disrespect it, and it will inconvenience you even if it doesn't cost you any money. The only kind of car I'm willing to loan out is the kind of car nobody is willing to pay to use.
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And rather than let the car sit idle in an expensive rented parking space, why not lend it out instead when not in use? A profit center rather than a money sink.
If it is at all profitable, an outfit like Uber will take over, and you'll be giving most of the money to Uber, and keep a few dollars for yourself.
And you soon find out how no one takes care of your property like yourself. I suspect your car will also end up smelling like urban buses in the end.
Can I get a big "HELL, NO!" from y'all? (Score:2)
I'm far from alone in this, too. I'll go so far as to say you're nuts if you involve yourself in this.
For the record, I think Airbnb is about as nuts.
Sharing versus renting (Score:2)
I get that car-sharing has is place in the personal transportation ecosystem, but it not original and it seems to be targeting a narrow market that it would make a good solution for. It lies somewhere between traditional car owhership and renting from an ordinary car rental agency regularly. Nothing about it is radically different.