I swear I thought the headline said "cat sharing" when it came up in my feed reader.
Getaround: Peer-to-peer car sharing and car rental startup
11–20 of 82 posts
Re: Getaround: Peer-to-peer car sharing and car rental startup
#12I wonder how easy it would be for someone to sign up with fake id, pass the screening process and then steal a really nice car. Or, worse, remove some of its engine parts and replace them with cheaper ones. Do I need to tag each part in the car and strip it down each time it's returned to make sure no one has swapped anything out? (Some internal parts are expensive enough that it might be worth someone's time to rent…
These are all legitimate issues you bring up, but they're all issues that normal car rental companies face too. How do they handle it?
Re: Getaround: Peer-to-peer car sharing and car rental startup
#13Airbnb for cars. Very cool idea, but some concerns:
I assume the car is unlocked via a cellular uplink, rather than connecting as a local hotspot over wifi or bluetooth (since you can track the car online). What happens when it's in a garage with no signal?
Many newer cars have chips in the keys, tied to a system in the engine that prevents it from starting without the proper code. This means I have to leave a key in their box to start the car. If someone smashes the window, it's now much easier for them to steal my car.
I'd worry about wear-and-tear. Rental cars are rolled every couple years, you can buy cheap because they are often beaten.
Re: Getaround: Peer-to-peer car sharing and car rental startup
#14When considering only commodity vehicles (a Honda Accord or whatever), the motivation of most urban renters is likely a low friction way to go to Costco on a Saturday, etc. without the cost/bother of owning a vehicle. However, the motivation for someone to pay more to rent, say, a BMW for the afternoon is quite different and probably not one which would give the BMW's owner warm fuzzies.
It seems that Getaround might actually be preferable to traditional car rental methods because of the low friction associated with the transaction. Enterprise Rent-A-Car will pick you up, but you have to go back to the retail location to fill-out paperwork and drop off the kid who brought the car to you. It would be so much easier to just use a car already located in your building's parking garage.
I looked at the Getaround site and couldn't find any details about how the in-car gizmo works. This support thread has some clues:
http://support.getaround.com/discussions/questions/8-power-f...
I'm a bit bothered by the statement "without giving too much away..." Security through obscurity? I presume that the CarKit does not integrate with the vehicle ignition? If not, must a person who rents his vehicle leave an ignition key in the vehicle? If so, the iPhone app implicitly becomes a location tool for easy-to-steal vehicles. Just smash a window and start up the car. If the carkit does indeed replace the need for a physical key, I suppose the security concerns would be no worse than those associated with aftermarket remote starters. It is bothersome that Getaround is not more forthcoming about the technology.
Re: Getaround: Peer-to-peer car sharing and car rental startup
#15Wondering how much this site differs from:
http://relayrides.com/ http://www.spride.com/ http://www.whipcar.com/
Has anyone used any of these services?
Very cool idea and hope that the legitimate concerns are mollified.
Re: Getaround: Peer-to-peer car sharing and car rental startup
#16I wonder how easy it would be for someone to sign up with fake id, pass the screening process and then steal a really nice car. Or, worse, remove some of its engine parts and replace them with cheaper ones. Do I need to tag each part in the car and strip it down each time it's returned to make sure no one has swapped anything out? (Some internal parts are expensive enough that it might be worth someone's time to rent…
I hope they have a very good screening process... the fact that you have the key at some point means > go to locksmith and make duplicate > steal things from it a month later after a few others have rented it I would prefer personally approving people who want to rent my car...
"the fact that you have the key at some point"
I speculated about this in another post. Perhaps the CarKit thingy acts as a remote starter, so the renter never has the physical key?
Re: Getaround: Peer-to-peer car sharing and car rental startup
#17I wonder how easy it would be for someone to sign up with fake id, pass the screening process and then steal a really nice car. Or, worse, remove some of its engine parts and replace them with cheaper ones. Do I need to tag each part in the car and strip it down each time it's returned to make sure no one has swapped anything out? (Some internal parts are expensive enough that it might be worth someone's time to rent…
These are all legitimate issues you bring up, but they're all issues that normal car rental companies face too. How do they handle it?
Normal rental car companies have employees whose job it is to maintain the car, fix any cosmetic damages and notify the administrative unit if they believe a significant damage or theft has taken place. However, this is a different situation. The owner of the car seems to be the one who is repsonsible here for carrying out any checks and my question is, what is the process for negotiating any claims of theft or damage in this case? In the case of a normal car company, they simply make an outright decision as to whether the driver has damaged or stolen and then they put a charge on the person's credit card. In this case there are three parties - the renter, the owner and the middleman (getaround). So, if a claim of damage is made by the owner, in order to bill the renter, there needs to be a process on getaround's part to verify that claim. Similarly, if the renter claims that a false damage/theft claim has been made by the owner, there needs to be a way for the renter to be able to support that claim. My question is, what is that process? Does it require both the owner and renter to document all aspects of the car before an after each trip? Because to me that seems like the only way to ensure that fraud does not occur at some point in this process.
Re: Getaround: Peer-to-peer car sharing and car rental startup
#18I swear I thought the headline said "cat sharing" when it came up in my feed reader.
I thought this too so I upvoted you.. Needless to say I was pleasantly surprised to find that wasn't the case.
Re: Getaround: Peer-to-peer car sharing and car rental startup
#19I wonder how easy it would be for someone to sign up with fake id, pass the screening process and then steal a really nice car. Or, worse, remove some of its engine parts and replace them with cheaper ones. Do I need to tag each part in the car and strip it down each time it's returned to make sure no one has swapped anything out? (Some internal parts are expensive enough that it might be worth someone's time to rent…
These are all legitimate issues you bring up, but they're all issues that normal car rental companies face too. How do they handle it?
One speculation on the parts issue... Most rental companies only rent cars which have been produced in the past couple of years. Because those vehicles are almost always under warranty, I wonder if the black market for used parts for them is small and therefore doesn't provide much of an incentive for such theft? Almost all repairs involving mechanical failure (as opposed to an accident) on newer cars are handled by dealers because of warranties.
Let's consider slightly older vehicles. Or, for that matter, even newer ones. How many parts on a car could be profitably swapped out with low value replacements while allowing the vehicle to remain operable? One could certainly replace a water pump with an older one, but it couldn't be so badly damaged that the vehicle could not be driven a few miles. What's the marginal difference in the value of the stolen part vs. the semi-operable one? Is the sum total of these marginal differences minus the cost of renting the vehicle sufficient to make this crime worthwhile? For non-commodity vehicles (a Honda Civic w/ many aftermarket parts, etc.), I can see positive ROI for the thief, but owners of such vehicles would no sooner rent them out than they would offer up their pets or girlfriends by the hour.
Re: Getaround: Peer-to-peer car sharing and car rental startup
#20Facebook only logins... why not OpenID?
I would imagine because OpenID failed, it's popularity peaked in early 2008 and it's been dropping since then. It's pretty much a dying technology. Most consumers have no idea what it is.