Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Airbnb Is Popular, but Renting Out Your Car Is Another Story

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 90 posts

Re: Airbnb Is Popular, but Renting Out Your Car Is Another Story

#81

Post by arm »

xur17 wrote: post #80
siliconc0w wrote: post #38

I do really like the idea of a 'shared fleet' to get cars off the road and encourage alternative transport (walking, biking, public transport, ride sharing) and reduce our 'car culture'. Because these alternatives don't cover all use-cases, I need a car sometimes so I'm mostly forced to bear the rather large expensive of having a car all the time. I'd totally consider ditching my car entirely if I could press a butto…

I'm in a similar situation. I rarely used my car, and was considering getting rid of it for a while. About a year ago I got rear-ended in a hit and run that totaled the car, so I decided to just try using Uber / Lyft, and decide if I wanted to buy a car. It's been about a year, and I'm pretty seriously considering buying a used car. There are some use cases that Uber and Lyft don't cover, and my only option is to go…

Have you considered an electric bike?

Re: Airbnb Is Popular, but Renting Out Your Car Is Another Story

#82

Post by Cpoll »

snug wrote: post #30
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making sure cars weren't parked on street-cleaning side and dealing with tickets also seemed like a huge hassle. Cars have a really high administrative burden compared to homes, especially when things go wrong, which they do at a higher rate. Oh gosh, don't get me started on this. It's theft, plain and simple. Or rather tax. Owning a car in a city is a massive pain in the butt, and it's cost me like $2k per year. Whe…

If you're playing $2k/year in tickets, you should be paying closer attention, at that point you have nobody to blame but yourself.

Relevant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11680013

"To start, I found the top address where this ticket were given: in front of 575 Ocean Avenue in Brooklyn, where over $48,000 in parking fines were issued in the last 2.5 years. To my surprise, the spot, (or really spots since there are two ramps), are legal,"

Re: Airbnb Is Popular, but Renting Out Your Car Is Another Story

#83

Post by skewart »

kbutler wrote: post #60
x0x0 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

renting != borrowing Now I understand AirBNB et al would love for folks to get suckered into the idea they need to pay cash and get the friend-loaned-you-something treatment, but that's silly.

No, renting != borrowing, but with Airbnb you often meet the owners, may even have breakfast with them in their home, etc. Yes, money changes hands - you pay for use and cleaning of the place - but my Airbnb rentals have been significantly more intimate than any commercial hotel I've stayed in (even small hotels or regular commercial BnBs).

That's odd. Every AirBnB I've stayed at has been as impersonal as the most generic cheap hotel chain but with far more hassle and inconvenience.

The notion that you'd experience any kind of "community" or "sharing" with AirBnB has always seemed like pure marketing BS. It's cool that you've actually experienced it. Maybe it does happen sometimes.

Re: Airbnb Is Popular, but Renting Out Your Car Is Another Story

#84

Post by mantas »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #74
pavel_lishin wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That ~$50M/yr has to come from somewhere Yup: > UPS, FedEx and other commercial delivery companies pay a steep price for doing business in New York City, getting an average of 7,000 parking tickets every day and paying more than $102 million in fines in the city’s latest budget year. > Atlanta-based UPS has a fleet of 1,000 trucks and receives about 15,000 tickets a month here. The company is the biggest offender i…

What? Or is "dude" your sum total point? Are we really in a situation where it's heretical to turn left when there's no traffic? Ok then. If you didn't notice my other comment, we didn't see the sign. So maybe reserve judgement for whoever you like to judge. The point of traffic laws are to mold behavior into healthy patterns, not to generate money for the city. That's the goal, anyway. If you're really defending a "…

That no-left sign is there for a reason. For example, there's a similar innocentlylooking intersection near my place. There were identical crashes weekly. It was especially dangerous with seemingly no traffic due to poor visibility for incoming traffic. Now left turn is forbidden and all is good.

Re: Airbnb Is Popular, but Renting Out Your Car Is Another Story

#85

Post by kbutler »

skewart wrote: post #83
kbutler wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, renting != borrowing, but with Airbnb you often meet the owners, may even have breakfast with them in their home, etc. Yes, money changes hands - you pay for use and cleaning of the place - but my Airbnb rentals have been significantly more intimate than any commercial hotel I've stayed in (even small hotels or regular commercial BnBs).

That's odd. Every AirBnB I've stayed at has been as impersonal as the most generic cheap hotel chain but with far more hassle and inconvenience. The notion that you'd experience any kind of "community" or "sharing" with AirBnB has always seemed like pure marketing BS. It's cool that you've actually experienced it. Maybe it does happen sometimes.

My wife and I did a trip through Western Europe a few years ago - meeting and visiting with our "hosts", talking about what they liked about living there, etc., was a fun enhancement to the trip. The couple of hotel stays were much less welcoming and more generic.

My wife made the Airbnb reservations, and she really likes meeting local people, so she may have selected for that experience.

It worked out really well for us.

Re: Airbnb Is Popular, but Renting Out Your Car Is Another Story

#86

Post by bujak »

hannob wrote: post #45

There were a couple of German car-via-internet-sharing startups (tamyca was one of them, seems they're still in business) and I tried them once. My impression was at the end that I payed not much less than when I would've rented from a commercial car rental company, but with much more overhead. So that was the experience for me as a customer. With airbnb it's completely different. I feel I often get more from the thi…

I am using drivy.de in germany and it's cheap with a lot less hassle than a regular rental

Re: Airbnb Is Popular, but Renting Out Your Car Is Another Story

#87

Post by pavel_lishin »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #74
pavel_lishin wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That ~$50M/yr has to come from somewhere Yup: > UPS, FedEx and other commercial delivery companies pay a steep price for doing business in New York City, getting an average of 7,000 parking tickets every day and paying more than $102 million in fines in the city’s latest budget year. > Atlanta-based UPS has a fleet of 1,000 trucks and receives about 15,000 tickets a month here. The company is the biggest offender i…

What? Or is "dude" your sum total point? Are we really in a situation where it's heretical to turn left when there's no traffic? Ok then. If you didn't notice my other comment, we didn't see the sign. So maybe reserve judgement for whoever you like to judge. The point of traffic laws are to mold behavior into healthy patterns, not to generate money for the city. That's the goal, anyway. If you're really defending a "…

> The point of traffic laws are to mold behavior into healthy patterns,

You haven't done traffic studies. You don't know the traffic flow at that intersection. You don't know how often there were accidents before that sign was placed. You say that the point of traffic laws is to mold behavior into healthy patterns, but unless you're perched up above that intersection for a month, 24/7, taking notes, you have no idea what is or isn't healthy there.

It's a Chesterton's fence situation.

> If you're really defending a "don't turn left without an arrow under any circumstances," then I couldn't disagree more strongly with your stance.

I'm not. See above.

> Are we really in a situation where it's heretical to turn left when there's no traffic?

It's not heretical, but it is illegal. If you do illegal things, you can expect to eventually get caught. You're not fighting segregated schools here, this isn't a moral crusade.

> If you didn't notice my other comment, we didn't see the sign.

I actually didn't. I do apologize; you sounded totally unrepentant about it in the comment I replied to.

Re: Airbnb Is Popular, but Renting Out Your Car Is Another Story

#88

Post by Hydraulix989 »

majormajor wrote: post #78
Hydraulix989 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I, for one, go our of my way to treat AirBnBs (even) nicer than I treat hotels because its an actual friendly person's house -- not a hotel room owned by a big evil soulless corporation. I don't see why this isn't the case with other people. With GetAround, the whole premise is that you're borrowing your neighbor's car, not getting a late model Prius from Enterprise that has been beaten to hell and back already.

I'm paying them, no wonder they're friendly. Normal wear and tear should be factored into their prices, same as if I was renting a hotel room or apartment or car. When an AirBNB listing looks like they expect me to put myself at extra inconvenience, I don't bother with it. Especially with how many of them are basically full-time landlords of their rented spaces these days.

More than a few of my AirBnB hosts didn't really seem like they needed the money, but they really enjoyed meeting new people and being in the company of their guests.

Re: Airbnb Is Popular, but Renting Out Your Car Is Another Story

#90

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #51
Frondo wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man, I have owned a car in a medium-sized city for something like 20 years and I can count on both hands the number of tickets I've gotten. I'm by no means "perfectly vigilant" but if you're getting them with any regularity then that's just carelessness. That is something fixable by you, personally, rather than suggesting the systemic changes that you seem to want to see. Personal responsibility for the small stuff,…

May I suggest that owning a car in a medium-sized city is a bit different from owning one in one of the largest cities in the world? (Top 25.) When the parking people patrol your car, specifically, every day, looking for any small mistake, you bet you'll get a ticket. The best is getting one for "illegally parked too far away from curb" when it's literally one foot away. If you're arguing that tickets aren't a signif…

I'll have to agree with you. Having owned cars both in small and medium-sized cites and also while living a few blocks south of the 575 Ocean Avenue spot mentioned earlier, I was very happy to no longer have to deal with parking/owning a car in NYC.

Shit happens everywhere, but owning a car in Brooklyn was a level of hassle I'm not prepared to ever deal with again.

Post reply on HN