I mostly keep Zipcar in my life for the unknown unknown possibilities, but it s getting harder and h

I ve been a ZipCar member for 8 years, beginning in Boston in the pre-smartphone era in which I would (gasp!) call in to find available mitty lite travel trailers cars.  I ve used Zipcars in Seattle, Washington DC, Vancouver BC, Boston, and Pasadena, even sleeping overnight mitty lite travel trailers in one (a long story involving a Delta Airlines mitty lite travel trailers fail and fully booked hotels near National Airport). ZipCar allowed me not to own a car from 2005-2012, and has provided me with a level of urban mobility of which I couldn t have otherwise dreamed.  When I lived in the U.K., ZipCar was only available in London, so I used  WhizzGo  instead for my trips to places outside the rail network (such as  Malham Cove ).
Enter  Car2Go . It made quite the splash on the Seattle carsharing scene in December, going from obscurity mitty lite travel trailers to near ubiquity in a matter of weeks (see our posts here and here ).   Alongside  Zipcar (née Flexcar), carsharing is now big business in Seattle.  After 8 weeks of using Car2Go, mitty lite travel trailers I thought I d write this post both as a comparative analysis of Zipcar and Car2Go and as a chance to give readers mitty lite travel trailers the chance to comment on the new carsharing landscape.
Car2Go mitty lite travel trailers has a much more aggressive rate structure than Zipcar, mitty lite travel trailers but its per-minute pricing  (38¢/min) gives it a small window (trips of less than 25 minutes) in which it is considerably cheaper than Zipcar.   Zipcar s 1-hour minimum and round-trip requirement punish short trips, but Zipcar s 30-minute increment pricing and flatter rate structure optimize it for trips of 1.5-6 hours.  My own experience backs this up, my average Zipcar rental (2 hours) being 10 times longer than my average Car2Go rental (12 minutes). Zipcar s round-trip requirement, however, can act as a de facto time penalty that can skew the financial calculation in Car2Go s favor for longer than the 25-minute window.
ZipCar s guaranteed, mitty lite travel trailers reserved parking and round-trip mitty lite travel trailers requirement ensures reliable car availability and the ability to make reservations months in advance.  Car2Go, by contrast, depends upon a natural equilibrium  that provides free (but not guaranteed) parking at any legal street space that is timed for more than 2 hours and lacks peak-hour restrictions).
With Car2Go this liberating spontaneity is paired with increased risk; the incentive to take one-way trips means there is no guarantee that a car will be available when you need one. In my experience thus far, Car2Go mitty lite travel trailers s fleet exhibits suprisingly traditional peak flows during the day, toward the CBD in the daytime and out toward urban villages at night. Recently at 10:45pm on a weeknight, I wanted to drive from Pioneer Square to Wallingford but no cars were available between Jackson and Battery west of I-5.
Car2Go complements a transit-first lifestyle in ways ZipCar doesn t. I can commute from the C.D. to downtown by transit, mitty lite travel trailers take a peak-hour bus to Ballard for dinner, then take Car2Go home, saving mitty lite travel trailers 30 minutes compared to a 2-seat bus ride. I can choose in real-time what is best for each situation.
Car2Go s lack of presence in South and West Seattle has been a prominent criticism, and one that I hope market mitty lite travel trailers demand will rectify. At a minimum we need Mt Baker Station within the home area, and in my opinion ideally as far south as Othello.
There is no question that Zipcar has a more attractive, versatile fleet. The driving experience in a Mazda 3 or an Audi A3 is light years ahead of the Smart ForTwo, with its uneven acceleration and temperamental mitty lite travel trailers transmission. Zipcar has trucks and vans for hauling, mitty lite travel trailers SUVs for ski trips or hikes with large groups, and Subarus with bike and ski racks. mitty lite travel trailers If you re going to leave the Seattle city limits for any reason, Zipcar is usually a better choice.
I ve found customer service at both Zipcar and Car2Go to be exceptional. Car2Go refunded a $113 mistake I made last week by erroneously thinking my reservation had successfully ended (passenger door wasn t closed all the way). They erased an hour of drive time plus a $100 Unsecured Vehicle Fee but with a stern warning to ensure it didn t happen again. With Zipcar I ve never had a bad customer mitty lite travel trailers service experience, from dead battery replacements to compensating me with free drive time when other drivers mitty lite travel trailers had been late returning vehicles I had reserved.
Zipcar s website is generally superior to Car2Go s. Car2Go often doesn t recognize the proper cookies, and frequently has defaulted me to the Austin, TX home area. The signup process with Car2Go was buggy and poorly adapted for the U.S. market, asking me for my passport number and my province of residence.
As far as mobile apps, Zipcar wins here too. Zipcar has a single, simple, free app that does everything you need it to. Car2Go has multiple apps, some free and some paid, with varying levels of functionality being unlocked as you buy the nicer apps. The free Car2Go app works well for most purposes, however.
Anecdotal mitty lite travel trailers reports from STB readers on Twitter have shown that users have had other Beta-esque software issues, such as being unable to suspend their time while trying to refuel. These  types of problems mitty lite travel trailers will likely resolve with subsequent updates.
Along with VeloBusDriver , I ve long been concerned with the financial exposure of carsharing. As carsharing enables members to live without a personal vehicle, many members carry no separate vehicle insurance. Both Zipcar and Car2Go provide the legal minimum in liability insurance (up to $300K per incident), but $300K can go pretty quickly if multiple vehicles, public infrastructure, or human injuries are involved.
Policies also vary widely regarding vehicle damage fees. Zipcar s basic deductible is $750 per incident, while Car2Go s is $1000. Zipcar offers cheap waivers ($9/mo waives the deductible) that every frequent user should mitty lite travel trailers purchase , but Car2Go offers no such protection.  Car2Go has told me that they may offer waivers in the future but currently have no plans to do so.
Both Zipcar and Car2Go have extensive fees for improper use, fees for which I m grateful because they minimize  tragedy-of-the-commons incentives not to take care of the vehicles. Nevertheless, users should educate themselves thoroughly to avoid unpleasant surprises.   Zipcar s fees  are considerably less punitive than Car2Go s , but both are high.
Great post. Something else worth mentioning is the barrier to entry. I always wanted to try out Zipcar, but the $85 to start out always detered me. Sure, compared to the cost of owning a car that s really mitty lite travel trailers insignificant, but I wasn t prepared to give up my car I just wanted to try it out. Car2Go s free trial had me signed up on day 1, and I convinced several friends to sign up as well.
The fact that I ve used Zipcar about 15 times in my 4 years of membership, and have used car2go 6 times in the last month, tells me all I need to know about which service is appropriate for my needs.
I would hardly even call Zipcar guaranteed availability the way Matt does. There are so few cars in Ballard that often none is available for half a day at time. At the same time, they keep rotating the vehicles such that $8 vehicles disappear for months and the average available car is now a luxury model. $8/hour versus $11.75/hour (plus tax) completely changes the cost-benefit algorithm.
I mostly mitty lite travel trailers keep Zipcar in my life for the unknown unknown possibilities, but it s getting harder and harder to justify. Unless Zipcar gets very competitive very fast, it seems unlikely that I will bother to renew come July.
My experience with ZipCar versus car2go has been about the same. All of my post-C2G ZipCar rentals have been trucks or vans for haulage. In fact, on two occasions, I drove a car2go to a ZipCar/ZipVan as there was no appropriate mitty lite travel trailers model close to me, and it was a Sunday, so getting across town on Metro was unreasonably hard.
My Zipcar account expires at the end of April. Considering I ve only reserved a car once in the past 90 days, and I now have a car2go membership mitty lite travel trailers with no monthly or annual fee, I m seriously considering not renewing my membership.
I would stick with Zipcar if you offered a program with the same annual fee and a higher per-minute cost than car2go, but with walk-up (no-reservation) car availability, 15-minute-interval trip durations, and incentives for making return trips and/or for refueling vehicles.
Have you compared these with a traditional car service like Enterprise at least for the know in advance use? They will pick you up at your doorstep and daily rates even with insurance can be quite low. You can get a car for a day or over a weekend for the price of a few hours of one of these services.
If I m getting a car for longer than 24 hours or I m traveling more than 200 miles, I generally use Enterprise. Their periodic $10/day weekend special ($27 with damage waiver) is tough to beat. But that 30 minutes of haggling with an agent and signing forms is a huge hassle.
It says they will pick you up from the offices in the University District. I picked a Friday to Monday schedule. They offered a base of $14.16 a day for a total of $52.44 for a Chevy Spark or similar.
I once had an experience where I needed a car from 5:30 AM to 7:30 PM on a Sunday. I considered Zipcar, but saw an Enterprise special for $15 a day and decided to take it. Here was the total cost breakdown:
Good analysis. I m insulated from the insurance costs because I only use a rental car when travelling and I have Allstate which covers me for rentals, but yes, it looks like for that situation Zipcar would be preferred.
It does point out the extreme impact that insurance rental covers. I wonder if we can do even better (like have an Allstate offer a rental only plan that lets you get Zipcar rates across all major carriers). Perhaps even government can step in and subsidize insurance so that people are encouraged to rent rather mitty lite travel trailers than buy in dense urban environments.
@JB: Government doesn t need to step in to fix the insurance issue ZipCar already did it. If traditional rental agencies want to undercut ZipCar on price for all-day or all-weekend ren