I’ve taken on a new challenge recently and given up my old friend and buddy – my 1995 Toyota Tercel – to become a car-less city dweller. This is just the latest of our many green steps. But very few of us can survive entirely without wheels, so I’ve signed up for Zipcar (www.zipcar.com) for the occasion trip the burbs. Here are some comments on the concept and the service they provide.
- Zipcar is fantastically convenient. We live in the city and there are about 25 cars within a mile walk. To get one, I reserve online (about 1 minute of my time), walk to the car (another 5 minutes, maybe), tap the Zipcard on the windshield and the car is mine. So in about 10 minutes, I can rent a clean car, that’s full of gas, that someone else drives to the repair shop, someone else cleans, someone else takes care of paperwork. What else could you want??? A funny side note about this. When my friend and I first rented a zipcar, on our way out of the parking lot after locking up everything and painstakingly checking that we left nothing, I said to her “Do you feel like we’re forgetting something big?” She said “Yes.” And then, I figured out what we’d forgotten: “Like the car?!”.
- It’s convenient, but is it cheap??? As we’re making every dollar stretch as far as it can go, I had to do some calculations to make sure that Zipcar is actually worth its hype. Here is my calculation. I use Zipcar for errands that last about 3-4 hours each. That’s somewhere around $30-$40 for the car. $40 you say. That’s crazy. Well – do some quick numbers. I was paying $135 in parking, plus about $100 in insurance and gas per month. That’s $235 per month, or about 6 such trips. I use the car only once a week, which means my tab is somwehere between $160 and $200 dollars, which is less than I was spending. Suppose I didn’t own a car and had to shell out another $300 to $400 in monthly payments, plus regular maintenance, etc. Well, you get the idea! It adds up fast and Zipcar is suddenly looking very nice indeed.
- Take your pick. Probably one of the coolest things about Zipcar is the variety of cars they have available. I happened to rent a Mazda 3 ($9/hour) since it was the closest, but they also have Toyotas, Hondas, and others in sizes small and big. The bigger the car, the more you pay, but it’s still very reasonable to rent a truck if you need to go to say, Ikea, to buy something thrifty will all the money you’ve saved from ditching your car.
- Hybrids… One small gripe is that Zipcar doesn’t have many hybrids. They are about $6/hour for the smaller models, which is $3 less than most others and I would rent one in a heartbeat, but there isn’t one within a mile walk of me.
Since I posted this, I saw an article in Business Week about Zipcar (See Article). I hope that the prediction that Zipcar will go into the green (no pun intended) in 2009 comes true and the concept stays around. Besides being a green solution, Zipcar also gives its users freedom they may not have been able to afford otherwise.