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Turo and Getaround Get Heat From the Rental Car Industry

citylab.com

21–30 of 44 posts

Re: Turo and Getaround Get Heat From the Rental Car Industry

#21
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a guy in my city who is apparently parking 40 turos by his house and using up a lot of the street parking to do it.

This is a flaw caused by unlimited free on street parking, a zoning flaw that needs to be fixed

There should be no street parking when it removes a lane from traffic. seems an awful waste of space for one car that could be used to move vehicles.

Re: Turo and Getaround Get Heat From the Rental Car Industry

#22
post #4

>Analysts predict the global market will double in value by 2022 to more than $120 billion. Double in 3 years? That seems excessive.

Analyst predictions about global market values are basically made up and shouldn't be used for decisionmaking

Analyst firms take money from their clients and the vendors they analyze.

They can't be trusted at all.

Re: Turo and Getaround Get Heat From the Rental Car Industry

#23
> Steven Webb, Turo’s director of communications, says that 95 percent of the platform’s hosts rent out three or fewer vehicles.

Three or fewer, like the guy his own mini-fleet of two Tesla 3s and an X mentioned earlier in the article? I doubt many people have 3 cars to "share" without having bought at least one purely as a rental. And how many people can afford to buy/lease more than 3 vehicles for their fleets? I'll bet that 95% would be much lower if we looked at "one or two vehicles" instead.

These negative-externality-based "Uber/Airbnb for X" companies are getting ridiculous. Has someone started one for prescription drugs yet? "We're not a pharmacy, we're just a platform facilitating transactions between patients and independent drug contractors." (Or was that Silk Road's business model?)

Re: Turo and Getaround Get Heat From the Rental Car Industry

#24

>(Turo takes a 25 percent cut on each transaction.) Let's at least stop using "sharing" to describe what these companies do.

No lets not, the term makes perfect sense how its being used. It has absolutely nothing to do with how much of a cut the business takes, not sure where you picked up that impression but its not correct.

If you share something, you don't charge. If you charge, it's called renting.

They are implying benevolence when there is none. Especially on the part of the hucksters.

Re: Turo and Getaround Get Heat From the Rental Car Industry

#25
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These companies are very much about externalizing the cost. They externalize cost onto the public for what is free pickup/dropoff of friends/family. They externalize the cost of maintenance and insurance onto the owners. They externalize the cost of public parking area to "store" the cars when not in use. What you most often are looking at is corporations exploiting benefits to the public for their profit.

There's a guy in my city who is apparently parking 40 turos by his house and using up a lot of the street parking to do it.

This sounds like a nightmare. Not to mention the possible safety issues as this “fleet” starts to age.

Re: Turo and Getaround Get Heat From the Rental Car Industry

#26
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a guy in my city who is apparently parking 40 turos by his house and using up a lot of the street parking to do it.

This is a flaw caused by unlimited free on street parking, a zoning flaw that needs to be fixed

So instead of regulating a multi-million dollar “startup” we should regulate everyone else instead.

Re: Turo and Getaround Get Heat From the Rental Car Industry

#27
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These companies are very much about externalizing the cost. They externalize cost onto the public for what is free pickup/dropoff of friends/family. They externalize the cost of maintenance and insurance onto the owners. They externalize the cost of public parking area to "store" the cars when not in use. What you most often are looking at is corporations exploiting benefits to the public for their profit.

There's a guy in my city who is apparently parking 40 turos by his house and using up a lot of the street parking to do it.

The city ought to tow and impound all of them at once. Last time my car got towed it cost me $250 to get it back; this guy might shape up real quick if he suddenly gets a $4,000 bill to get his cars back, not to mention the time spent running around to how many different tow lots.

Re: Turo and Getaround Get Heat From the Rental Car Industry

#28
The problem with this article is that it doesn't go into detail about what the "taxes and fees" pay for, aside from airport surcharges. Without knowing that it's impossible to determine who should be paying for what.

Airport surcharges should just be a toll gate (E-ZPass) when you enter and exit the airport. Same for roads, ideally. A single fee schedule for everyone.

Parking shouldn't be free. Someone with 3 cars on Turo shouldn't be penalized any more than someone with 3 cars who doesn't rent them on Turo and just leaves them parked most of the time.

I use Turo and Getaround. With Turo, I always end up meeting or interacting with the car owner. I'm not renting luxury vehicles, but in my experience the owners are always regular middle-class people. From what I've seen, "Tesla fleet" Jason Chan from this article is not representative of the average Turo renter. Except perhaps in niche luxury markets, Turo rentals won't be massively profitable because renters are competing against Zipcar, Enterprise, Uber, etc. and there is maintenance, cleaning, depreciation, etc. you have to handle for the cars.

I think we can all agree that regulations and taxes should be fairly and equitably applied. I'm fine with my Turo charges going up to comply with this. But I don't think this article is very balanced. It spends a lot of time talking about Turo without acknowledging the massive inefficiencies in traditional car rental business models, as well as the big difference in customer experience.

Re: Turo and Getaround Get Heat From the Rental Car Industry

#29
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To provide a counterpoint, local taxes pay for a lot of local things. So why should a tourist benefit from a bunch of things that they did not pay for? A tourist tax is a way to make sure they are paying their share of it.

Rental car tax applies to locals as well, though.

ISTR my state has an exclusion for local residents. I don’t believe the exclusion applies at rentals at the airport. I wouldn’t be surprised to find most states have rental car/hotel tax exclusions for locals.

Re: Turo and Getaround Get Heat From the Rental Car Industry

#30
post #20
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

benefits like clean air and good roads don't cost more when a tourist arrives. A tourist also pays taxes from VAT and other sources,but do not benefit from them. So it evens out I presume. But tourist tend to generate economic activity. A benefit that locals would want more of. The taxes a tourist pay is disencentivizing.

I would argue that they actually do... More people coming in and using roads and moving around contribute to the deterioration of the roads and more pollution.

Regular motor vehicles don’t do nearly as much harm to the roads as OTR trucks, yet we subsidize those for the benefits they bring...
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