When I Took My Zipcar Into the Wilderness • Hacker News Board

Re: When I Took My Zipcar Into the Wilderness

#51

Post by rebuilder » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 7:30 AM UTC

isostatic wrote: post #50

rebuilder wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't used any of the services you mention, but an on-line rental service I have used has a simple system: they unlock the car remotely when you start your rental, and the key is in the glove compartment. You may run into issues starting your rental, but lack of connectivity won't stand you in the middle of nowhere. Is there a particular reason these services can't just leave the keys in the car? Theft?

If the car has no signal, how is it unlocked?

That's a problem when starting the rental and returning the car. Pickup points should be placed in areas with good reception. But in any case, not being able to start a rental is a nuisance. Not being able to use the car once you've driven it somewhere is potentially dangerous. I don't see why the car should need a connection to unlock once the rental has been started.

Re: When I Took My Zipcar Into the Wilderness

#52

Post by fenomas » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 7:41 AM UTC

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.

> If you know that parking in the garage will lead to a 50% probability of..

50% is GP's after-the-fact description of how often the car failed to start. It's not an actual failure rate that GP knew about before they parked.

Re: When I Took My Zipcar Into the Wilderness

#53

Post by cbcoutinho » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 7:43 AM UTC

isostatic wrote: post #50

rebuilder wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't used any of the services you mention, but an on-line rental service I have used has a simple system: they unlock the car remotely when you start your rental, and the key is in the glove compartment. You may run into issues starting your rental, but lack of connectivity won't stand you in the middle of nowhere. Is there a particular reason these services can't just leave the keys in the car? Theft?

If the car has no signal, how is it unlocked?

In the Netherlands, we have Greenwheels, which in addition to being accessible using an app, also allows you to open the car with an NFC-enabled card (I'm assuming for the case where my phone doesn't have reception?). If the car doesn't have reception either then I'm not sure you would be able to open it.

EDIT: Actually, after you pick up the car and start driving it, you (un)lock the car using the keys that are in the glovebox. In principle, you should be able to drive into dead zones without an issue

Re: When I Took My Zipcar Into the Wilderness

#54

Post by boomlinde » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 7:48 AM UTC

> 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 reception had nothing to do with the inability to open the car in this case?

Re: When I Took My Zipcar Into the Wilderness

#55

Post by dTal » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 7:50 AM UTC

msbarnett wrote: post #30

bt848 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bit about the cell phone discharge seems pretty unlikely. A charged car battery has at least 2MJ of stored energy. GSM in its highest-power mobile station state draws 800mW. Add maybe another 150mW for the GPS, call it 1W total. The battery should power such a phone for weeks. You should be able to smell-test this fact by considering that your mobile weighs nothing and runs all day whereas a car battery weighs 20…

Your smell test is a bit misleading in that most car batteries have a drastically lower energy density than Lithium Ion cells. There’s still a lot more energy in the car battery, of course, but not by nearly as much as a naive comparison of the weights would suggest. If it had the energy density of your cell phone, the lead acid battery in your car would only weigh 5 or so kgs. Your cellphone will also last a lot les…

I also seem to recall that standard car batteries respond poorly and inefficiently to trickle-discharge, being designed mainly for providing a lot of amps over a short period. Providing long term off-grid power is what deep cycle marine batteries are for, and they are a separate product.

Re: When I Took My Zipcar Into the Wilderness

#56

Post by rocqua » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 8:05 AM UTC

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…

I believe the issue was that, after losing both reception and battery, the car needed reception before being unlocked.

Re: When I Took My Zipcar Into the Wilderness

#57

Post by xchip » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 8:10 AM UTC

The title is misleading

Re: When I Took My Zipcar Into the Wilderness

#58

Post by Nextgrid » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 8:10 AM UTC

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.

Disagreed about the ban. Since when is shitty technology (which any engineer worth their salt should’ve predicted - this is not rocket science) the fault of the customer? Unless they say in bold in their marketing statements “Only drive within cell coverage” the customer isn’t at fault for trying to use it as a normal car (in fact it’s crazy to think that parking in a place with no reception is no longer normal, at least according to ZipCar).

Re: When I Took My Zipcar Into the Wilderness

#59

Post by rocqua » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 8:13 AM UTC

nraynaud wrote: post #16

gorgonian wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what percentage are manual transmission vehicles these days? Probably less than 1

90% of southern Europe?

Why just southern Europe? Here in West Europe there is still a vast majority of manual transmission.

Re: When I Took My Zipcar Into the Wilderness

#60

Post by SimonPStevens » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 8:15 AM UTC

myrandomcomment wrote: post #23

In my younger years I worked at a startup that had an advisor that was one of the original technical architects at Air Touch Cellular. For those that do not know they were one of the original cell phone companies in California and the west (now AT&T). He did not own a cell phone, a fact which I found strange. I asked him why and his answer was “they screwed it all up..the deployments and coverage, it’s a solved issue…

I'd love to hear more about this.

Did he mean that there is a solved and known way to get uniform national cell phone coverage without blackspots? If so, do you know more about what his solution was.