Driving a Zipcar

[elizilla]

So far, the greatest inconvenience of me selling my truck, has fallen on my parents. They are snowbirds of a sort; they spend half the year somewhere else. But their variation on snowbirding has them traveling back and forth once a month or so, rather than annually. And they have an intense prejudice against taxis; they simply won't use them, ever - it is out of the question. So they regularly call me up to take them to/from the train station or the airport. (When I demur, they do ridiculous things. The last crazy thing was to rent a car at the train station in Chicago. You see, there aren't any rental cars at the station in Ann Arbor. So, rent a car in Chicago, drive FOUR HOURS home, get their car, and take the rental car back to Chicago. Since setting foot in a taxi will make them lose their immortal souls, they didn't have any other choice.)

Well, Zipcar has two cars parked just a few blocks from the train station. I found a coupon that is good for $75 worth of driving in the first 30 days, which basically gives me back the cost to join. I can probably use them now and then for other things, this summer. And if I were to not have car insurance for a year, I'd get killed on insurance costs when I came back - but having a zipcar membership counts as having car insurance. So I signed up.

My zipcard didn't arrive in time to get my parents from the train station this past Monday. I had to borrow Michael's car. The card arrived Wednesday. I figure it would be good to know all about how to do this, before I expose them to it, so I can perhaps convince them to drive a zipcar themselves, someday. So today I checked out a zipcar, and drove it to Lowes to buy mulch and paving stones.

You can check out a zipcar on very short notice. I went to their website at around 1pm, looking for a car at 2:30, and there were nine cars available in various spots around Ann Arbor. None are close to my house - I will be taking the motorcycle to get the zipcar, regardless. So it doesn't much matter which one I choose. I looked at the City of Ann Arbor's page to see which zipcars were in lots that also had free motorcycle parking spaces, and found that the cars closest to the train station have that. So I reserved one of those.

The cars have a sort of transponder-ish thing under the windshield. You hold your zipcar card to it, and it chirps and unlocks the car. The car keys are on a lanyard attached near the ignition; they stay in the car all the time. I assume the cars must have some kind of electronic immobilizer that keeps someone from breaking into them and driving them off with the keys that are in them?

So you hold your card to the windshield and the car unlocks, and you just get in and drive. No paperwork, no interaction with any zipcar employees. You don't even pay for fuel. I got gas for mine, just to see how that works. There's a credit card in a pocket on the visor, you just pay at the pump, at whatever gas station you like. The pay at pump software knows about the card, and it prompts you for the mileage of the car and your zipcard number. You don't even need to save a receipt.

When you are done driving, you just put the zipcar back in its spot, and hold your card to the windshield to lock it.

I wonder if there's some kind of software enforcement to keep people from taking the cars at the wrong times, or do they just count on us behaving ourselves? I suppose there must be some enforcement.

You can reserve them via text messaging, so I suppose if I were downtown and wanted a car that instant, I could just get one.

The car I drove was a Scion xD. It was not new - it had almost 60K on it. But it was in very good shape apart from a scratch near the gas cap. It was not quite as clean as I would expect in a normal rental car - someone had tracked grass clippings into the passenger floor mat and the trunk. But it was certainly not grungy; it hadn't been smoked in or had things spilled in it. I found it quite tolerable and I am picky about that.

If I lived within walking distance of any zipcars, I'd probably never buy another car. But the closest one is seven or eight miles away.

Comments

[dagibbs.livejournal.com]

On the insurance thing -- why not just have your name on the insurance for redrunn's car?

[elizilla]

Yes, I could do that as well.

[dagibbs.livejournal.com]

And, it is kind of odd that your driving insurance for all those motorcycles doesn't count against the "not being insured for a year". You have been insured to drive a motor vehicle, just not a 4-wheeled one.

[elizilla]

Aww, don't mess up all my supporting ideas of why this is a good idea. Mostly, I just think it's cool that such a business exists. :)

And here's another cool thing about it: I can drive their cars in other cities.

[dagibbs.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think it is cool that the business exists. A few of my friends in Ottawa use our equivalent (Vrtucar).

[theobviousname.livejournal.com]

I know several people who do not have cars anymore, but use zipcar or autoshare. (Of course they live more downtown-ish, where it's almost always possible to walk to a lot. And I suspect the service they pick depends largely on which company has the closest lot to their home.)

It seems to work quite well for them, even to the extend of needing to drive to a client site for an entire day. And you never have to worry about taking the car in, and how to get around while it's being serviced.

[elizilla]

All the zipcars around here, are in areas where the majority of housing has no included parking, and free legal parking is scarce as hen's teeth. There are a lot of houses near campus that have four apartments with two or more drivers in each, and only one or two parking spots. I'm not really their demographic, way out here at the edge of town. Their target market is people who will find keeping their own car almost as inconvenient as doing without.

[normalcyispasse.livejournal.com]

Huh. I have friends in the northeast who use Zipcar and they seem to like it; I hope this model takes off. It would even work here fairly well, I think. If I didn't already have access to a car (via the wife) I might look into it myself. Well, that and the luggage on the KLR swallows a surprising amount of groceries.

[elizilla]

The luggage on the NT will carry a lot too, especially the huge 55 liter topcase. I carried bedding plants home in it, a couple weeks ago, and I carried a hose reel cart with the case open and straps holding it in. But I'd have had to make four or five trips to carry all this mulch, one bag at a time.