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

When I Took My Zipcar Into the Wilderness

theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 192 posts

Re: When I Took My Zipcar Into the Wilderness

#101

Post by Marsymars »

braythwayt wrote: post #8
minutillo wrote: post #4

TL;DR: the car battery was dead

That's actually a problem with all modern cars: If the battery dies, the key fob won't open the door. In fact, if the battery dies in the car or the fob, you can't open the door. But, there is a mechanical backup with an ordinary car. In my 2012 Volvo, I can open the driver's door with the mechanical key. If the fob is ded, I can physically insert it and start the car. If the car is also dead, I have to sort that out…

With my (relatively) old Ford, the backup key is a small one hidden inside the fob that you can pry out if needed. There are also backup methods to lock the non-driver doors and for the push-button start to work in the case of a dead fob. I'd be very wary of buying a car without those backups.

Re: When I Took My Zipcar Into the Wilderness

#102

Post by philliphaydon »

dx034 wrote: post #39
cj wrote: post #24

I got banned from using Zipcar last year. I lived in a condo building with an under ground parking lot in SF. A few times I rented a Zipcar and left it parked in the parking lot at my condo building. About 50% of the time, the car would not unlock. In all cases, I successfully contacted Zipcar who informed me the only thing they could do is tow the car (usually 24+ hours later). The parking lot had no cell service. O…

Honestly, the ban sounds justified to me. If you know that parking in the garage will lead to a 50% probability of them having to tow the car, repeating this is just unnecessary. It would obviously be better if they could handle such scenarios but ignoring a known limitation to incur cost to others (since you have no advantage as you also can't use the car in this scenario) sounds wrong to me.

Don’t pretty much all phones have Bluetooth now? Couldn’t it backup the authorisation and allow him to connect via Bluetooth and verify and unlock? How is this absolutely his fault?

Re: When I Took My Zipcar Into the Wilderness

#103

Post by boomlinde »

ricardobeat wrote: post #89
boomlinde wrote: post #54

> Still, cars without reception become vulnerable in a few scenarios: when members lose or do not have their physical Zipcard with them, when they exceed their reservation time or want to extend their Zipcar reservation, or when the vehicle battery dies. That last scenario was the one my family and I found ourselves in, though we did not know it at the time. Can someone change the title to reflect that cell phone rec…

Someone mentioned above that the battery most likely died quickly due to constant hunting for cell signal, so it’s 100% related.

Even my cell phone can handle no reception for a few hours—no problem. It seems strange to me then to assume that it is 100% related based on what "someone" said was most likely.

Re: When I Took My Zipcar Into the Wilderness

#105

Post by oh_sigh »

crankylinuxuser wrote: post #76
oh_sigh wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You said you did it a few times. How often do you have to do something with negative consequences before you learn you shouldn't keep doing it?

Other than being told its a signal issue, how do you determine that? IoT crap rarely, if ever, actually communicates with the user about error conditions. You usually find out shit 'no workey' after the fact. There's a lot of articles and twitter feeds. Go look up the "Internet of Shit". There's a reason why it's called that. And Zipcars are no exception, evidently.

This isn't internet of shit though...is an iPhone shitty if you can't use cell services when you don't have cell service?

Re: When I Took My Zipcar Into the Wilderness

#106

Post by sly010 »

roland35 wrote: post #95
seltzered_ wrote: post #33

Friend in Seattle had this experience when trying to use a zipcar truck out of a garage while moving (i.e. Limited time window to get stuff out of one area to another). Ended up calling support, dealing with multiple hours of delays. Despite the issues which has led him to avoid Zipcar these days, he uses ReachNow (now defunct) and car2go (now called ShareNow) regularly and AFAIK ReachNow didn't have these limitation…

This sounds like a pretty common scenario for zipcar and certainly cell phone coverage coming in and out is something that they should be planning and designing for! Maybe a series of one-use pass codes or something like that could help. I always make sure there is a failsafe when I have two microcontrollers talking on the same circuit board! Never fully trust anything external.

There are many things they could do with software only without having to change their current scheme.

- Use exponential backoff when looking for network (although I find this part of the story hard to believe, my phone survives much longer when there is no network)

- Have a larger grace period. Let the key card just work for an extra day or indefinitely if the car's last known location is not the garage. Charge the customer for the usage.

- Fail open especially if the battery is low. Once the car starts, you have all the electricity you need to do updates.

- Make the updates small and efficient, so long as a few signed UDP packets get through, you can update the schedule. You can even use SMS. Sync non critical things (e.g. logs) opportunistically and asynchronously.

Re: When I Took My Zipcar Into the Wilderness

#107

Post by oh_sigh »

rebuilder wrote: post #81
oh_sigh wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could give your phone a signed token indicating your rental times, and then let your phone directly connect to the car to hand it off. Presumably it is easier for a human with a phone to move to a location with service than moving a locked car, usually just out of the cave you're in.

I just don't see why that complexity is necessary, when you could just give the user the key to the car.

The whole point of zip car is that you aren't reserving it a week in advance and want to wait for a key to be mailed to you.

Re: When I Took My Zipcar Into the Wilderness

#108

Post by Nextgrid »

oh_sigh wrote: post #105
crankylinuxuser wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other than being told its a signal issue, how do you determine that? IoT crap rarely, if ever, actually communicates with the user about error conditions. You usually find out shit 'no workey' after the fact. There's a lot of articles and twitter feeds. Go look up the "Internet of Shit". There's a reason why it's called that. And Zipcars are no exception, evidently.

This isn't internet of shit though...is an iPhone shitty if you can't use cell services when you don't have cell service?

It’s obvious that a phone won’t work without signal. It’s not (yet - and hopefully will never be) obvious that a car rental service requires cell signal to function.

If this limitation can’t be worked around and they still decide to go ahead with operating the service then they should advertise this limitation prominently. Until then, the customer should be compensated (your rental car letting you stranded is definitely an issue and can cause non-negligible monetary damage to the user), not banned.

Re: When I Took My Zipcar Into the Wilderness

#109

Post by stelonix »

oh_sigh wrote: post #74
Nextgrid wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No I’m trying to justify using the product as it’s advertised. Otherwise it’s too easy to just falsely advertise something and ban the people that manage to figure out the catch.

You said you did it a few times. How often do you have to do something with negative consequences before you learn you shouldn't keep doing it?

The comment you're replying to is not the person who was banned by ZipCar, but someone else showing why the logic behind the corporativist comment is wrong.

Re: When I Took My Zipcar Into the Wilderness

#110

Post by rebuilder »

oh_sigh wrote: post #107
rebuilder wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just don't see why that complexity is necessary, when you could just give the user the key to the car.

The whole point of zip car is that you aren't reserving it a week in advance and want to wait for a key to be mailed to you.

Why can't they just leave the key in the glove compartment? That way, Zipcar only needs to unlock the car remotely when the user starts the rental, and lock the car remotely when the rental ends. In between, the user can use the key. like with every other car.
Post reply on HN