Such an unbelievable number of ways in which this could go wrong.
Renters could mess up a vehicle in any number of ways, from making a mess with food and drink, to damaging parts of the interior, to getting in accidents and causing serious damage. Are owners expected to do a full damage assessment pre/post every rental? Nobody will accept any liability otherwise.
That's overlooking any "drive it like you stole it" issues which can ruin the mechanicals.
Think of all the nefarious activity a renter could get up to. Road rage incidents, motoring offences. Drug dealing or trafficking. Congratulations, your car is now on a watchlist.
Imagine the disputes over how much gas is left in the vehicle. Let alone what type of gas a renter puts in there.
There's no way any ordinary insurance policy would cover this kind of scheme. Your premiums can, and should, skyrocket.
Then contemplate the practicalities of all this. A renter will have to pick the vehicle up from a location, then presumably return it to the exact same location. If that requires payment for parking, who pays?
Don't get me wrong; I can't wait for the future where nobody owns a vehicle and we all travel in autonomous electrical vehicles that are efficiently utilized, monitored and cleaned automatically as needed. But this halfway house is a nightmare.
In the above case, the survivors sued the car-sharing company, the estate of the (deceased) driver, and the vehicle owner. I would not expose myself to that kind of liability without very well established law around it.
Let's assume BMW owns the car and insures the car and puts their plates on the car. You then have no association with that car when you are not driving it.
Perhaps manage in the sense of providing legal representation, indemnifying, etc. However, I would still be concerned with having to deal with the hassle (if nothing else) of dealing with a lawsuit--especially if there were the remotest possibility of criminal charges related to maintenance or whatever.
These guys already do it. Don't get me wrong I had exactly the same sentiments as yourself and even aired them during an interview with the company. But that being said they seem to be growing steadily as people will do anything for an extra buck and hell the range of cars available is crazy. I encountered everything from beaten up old for lasers to late model Mercedes SLK Coupe's. (disclaimer: I did some work for them doing insurance checks/photo's of vehicles a year or so ago, something that was done at regular intervals, every 2-3 month or so depending on how heavily used the vehicle was/owners preferences)
And just imagine doing it with property which often costs ten to one hundred times as much as a vehicle! A sort of AirBnB for houses, if you will...
Just think of the unbelievable number of ways that could go wrong:
Renters could mess up a house in any number of ways, from making a mess with food and drink, to damaging parts of the interior, to having accidents and causing serious damage. Are owners expected to do a full damage assessment pre/post every rental? Nobody will accept any liability otherwise.
That's overlooking any "party like a rock-star" issues which can ruin the contents.
Think of all the nefarious activity a renter could get up to. Domestic abuse, public order offences. Drug dealing or trafficking. Congratulations, your address is now on a watchlist.
Imagine the disputes over how much electricity has been used, or how much milk is left in the fridge. Let alone what type of milk a renter puts in there.
There's no way any ordinary insurance policy would cover this kind of scheme. Your premiums can, and should, skyrocket.
Then contemplate the practicalities of all this. A renter will have to travel from their home to the location of the property, then presumably return home. If that requires payment for transport, who pays?
Don't get me wrong; I can't wait for the future where nobody owns a home and we all live in autonomous coffin hotels that are efficiently utilized, monitored and cleaned automatically as needed. But this halfway house is a nightmare.
TL;DR: The concept of renting property to third parties has existed for a long time, and the problems are well understood.
Very easy to fix. Monitor the driver's behavior in terms of the way they use the vehicle (accelerate, brake, etc), and charge them accordingly. Let them know ahead of time that you will do doing this, and that they could be liable for thousands of dollars if they don't drive well. Same goes for the interior, make them liable perhaps via insurance.
> Very easy to fix. Monitor the driver's behavior in terms of the way they use the vehicle (accelerate, brake, etc), and charge them accordingly.
Car2go (Smart) does exactly this... only they disguise it as eco-score (there's some trees on your dashboard and according to your driving style they grow or shrink). Given my last car was an 1994 BMW 318is, it took some time until I managed to get my driving style under control until I got my license yanked away (but that's another, totally unrelated story...)
My ex uses GetAround here in San Francisco for her SmartCar.
Interestingly, the car has been stolen twice. I don't remember if it was stolen by GetAround users or not, but IIRC I don't think so. The car was recovered both times within a day or so thanks to the GPS unit that is installed in the vehicle.
This isn't the first time AirBNB for cars has been done. Turo/RelayRides has been doing it for a few years, and most of reports I've heard have been positive. It involves the same magnitude of concerns you get with renting out a home:
> Renters could mess up a home in any number of ways, from making a mess with food and drink, to damaging parts of the interior, to getting in accidents and causing serious damage. Are owners expected to do a full damage assessment pre/post every rental? Nobody will accept any liability otherwise.
> Think of all the nefarious activity a renter could get up to. Domestic violence, noise violations. Drug dealing or trafficking. Congratulations, your home is now a a meth house.
Don't get me wrong; I can't wait for the future where nobody owns a vehicle and we all travel in autonomous electrical vehicles that are efficiently utilized, monitored and cleaned automatically as needed.
There is still at least one problem left - peak usage.
This is my thought also but the question is how big is the ratio between total number of cars and the cars in use during very limited time frame (mornings, evenings).
My observation is in the place where I live that around first morning hour the people who drive are the people who would use the car whole day. So we can ignore them in the estimation.
Then comes the bulk of the people who use the car to just get to work. I would estimate that around 1/2 to 2/3 of the cars are in the move during one hour.
I would assume that sizeable proportion of the current public transport users would also consider to use cars when they are readily available.
So I would assume that the number of cars needed to provide reliable automated cars service instead of private cars would be close to the number of current cars.
If it's environmental, we can assume cars in the future will be all-electric, powered by nuclear or renewable energy sources.
If it's congestion, firstly we should see a dramatic reduction in the number of accidents. Automated vehicles will make far more efficient use of limited road capacity, and with no need for parked cars to litter urban streets, we will have greater capacity.
More importantly, we can just regulate against congestion. Cap the number of cars in an area at any one time, if you want, or implement dynamic pricing. That will go a long way to eliminating unnecessary journeys during peak times.
Price or rather TCO. That is, if the amount of cars needed is the same as today, then why should people prefer communal self driving cars instead of personal ones?
Of course same cars could be used during the day, the question is just how much it would bring the cost down.
That will go a long way to eliminating unnecessary journeys during peak times.
Or eliminate the idea of communal self driving cars. There are no unnecessary travel when you have to get to the point A on time.
I think the typical fear actually goes the other way -- that infrastructure won't be able to handle increased peak demand, leading to a lot more gridlock/pollution, longer commute times, etc. when more people are driving.
Reducing the need for parking in city's should have a massive net positive impact. In time we should see self driving electric cars on electric highways which can mean unlimited range and vastly reduced pollution. Even if all you do is drive one person to and from public transit that lets a wide swath of family's go one car without public parking fees.
> There's no way any ordinary insurance policy would cover this kind of scheme. Your premiums can, and should, skyrocket.
There is even another issue with accidents and luxury cars. [1] If you own a luxury car and it's in an accident the value drops pretty significantly vs. a non luxury car (where it still drops of course). With a rental apartment you have to worry about damage but not damage that would cause you to have a significant drop in the resale value.
[1] Recognizing this test is starting with Mini of course however the idea from reading is they would expand to other parts of the brand.
This already exists as GetAround and I used it all the time when I was in San Francisco. Similar pricing to ZipCar, but I found that there was typically better options/availability (YMMV). The other big plus was that I was able to get approved by GetAround within something like 24hrs, where ZipCar I had to wait to get my key delivered (~2 weeks) or pickup my key at their office (during business hours only).
Yep, and if anything, BMW is going to struggle because it's yet another asset sharing service.
They'll likely get some BMW fans and aficionados, but given the small marketshare that BMW holds, most users are not going to use this as their go-to for getting a car.
> if you look at this service as a marketing channel to sell more BMW vehicles...
I think that's almost certainly what it is. Getting a BMW is a status symbol or a dream for many early drivers. There are lots of ways to get a beamer for cheap, certified pre-owned being a well known one. Maybe being an Uber driver is another way people have tried to finance their cool purchase, but this channel seems like a much more direct one.
I could see BMW tayloring these vehicles for existing car rental services. Keys are the least convenient part of a car rental. Removing a physical barrier to entry could provide a real edge to sway impulsive customers.
I suppose BMW would be the middle man? I have a hard time envisioning how a manufacturer provided service would be better than a neutral party since GetAround can provide the same service for all brands of cars. GetAround already provides a lot of useful features to participants such as remotely unlocking cars (that way you can keep your key inside for guests) and monitoring the location (primarily for the guest to find your car in the first place when it's inevitably parked randomly on the street).
This could be the first "pimp your car out" service I'd consider using. If the manufacturer were behind it, on a leased car, and absolutely guaranteed any damage would be restored, plus compensated me enough to cover depreciation/lease mileage fee/etc., the only inconvenience would be "make sure your car is totally empty when you leave it parked".
I tend to buy/keep cars ~forever, so it wouldn't work as well for me now, but if I could lease ~3-5 BMWs for ~20-30 people to share (at a remote company office or something which has a lot of people cycling through, and where some cars are needed), and then add them to a fleet pool otherwise, I'd be in. That's somewhere between Zipcar, Uber, and leased company cars.
Managing maintenance, cleaning, insurance, repairs, etc. for them for me would be great, too.
But at that point, what are you offering? (Genuinely curious. Capital? Taking on the risk? Insight/market research?) And is that worth the overhead that goes into your pocket?
Sharing economy type stuff makes complete sense when it's something you share often enough to want first dibs, but not often enough that renting it out from time to time is an inconvenience. But if you're renting it out full time then I'm not sure I understand how the incentives line up. Seems like if they notice you're doing well they could just swoop in and under-cut you next time the contract is up.
Guaranteed demand, parking (there are legal issues where being an individual or first party business owner of vehicles is easier than being a ZipCar). You're leasing cars for ~$500/mo for 36mo each. That gets paid regardless of demand. If your stable gets used enough to bring in >$500/mo in external customer net revenue per car, that would be pretty exceptional. Most likely you'd make $100/car/mo and get a bit of extra professional maintenance for the fleet vs. just owning them and having a dealer service.
What's interesting is if car manufacturers start to develop vehicles specifically for this kind of market. I'd love to have personalization settings (nav, seat, climate, driving controls, etc.) which follow me as a driver across a fleet of identical or related vehicles. You might also have a "valet mode" (some cars do now), "renter mode", and "owner mode", with different performance limits (I can ruin a $1-2k set of tires in 10k miles of spirited driving, but if I ran the right profile on the car, I could make them last 30k miles). Might also make some maintenance/safety things non-overrideable for renters -- you can't start the vehicle if the brakes/tires/fluids/etc. are not good, for insurance and vehicle-damage reasons.
Very courageous and visionary. BMW is canibalizing their sales as this will cut down on car wastage. Short term pain for long term positioning. This could be the tipping point as it forces other manufacturers to follow suit.
Likely they are getting ready for self driving cars business model that come will come at a press of a button.
Or it'll enable BMW owners to make enough money on their rental car, to buy another separate car just for personal use, boosting BMW's overall sales and expanding their market reach.
> ‘Never, ever will I lend my car to strangers.’ Then there’ll be others who’ll love the idea of halving their leasing rate.”
For luxury cars it appears that it would tend toward "never ever". Having a luxury car isn't for practicality and you tend to feel very possessive about what you have and it possibly being damaged. Having it tarnished in some way lessens the joy of arbitrary non essential ownership. The idea that someone might have some heavy perfume or cologne or smoke in or near the car (however prohibited) would be enough to give many people pause. Also what if someone drove the car and by accident left some contraband in it?
Airbnb is great if you're out of town for a week to a month or more (for business travel, vacation, etc.). The $ you make more than covers a professional cleaning service for when you get back, which leaves the place cleaner than when you left.
https://en.drivy.com/ is another "Like AirBnB, but for cars" I recently learnt about, which is available in some European countries. I like the idea, unlike AirBnB which eats up the rental market, there are too many cars not being used.
The latter, I think. I owned a car when I lived in Manhattan. Its rent was an appreciable percentage of mine. In retrospect, I should have sold it, and rented. But I was emotionally attached ;)
Most issues people cite are easy to solve by recording all car drive parameters and several cameras - inside and out. Combined with a reputation system this makes sure no one will wilfully abuse the car more than once (and even then they will pay for it).
That's pretty interesting. I remember some years ago there was car sharing service like Zipcar (do they still really exist?) where you could rent out your car and they would pay you for the miles driven. Not sure how that worked out.
The article seems to indicate that the non-owner drivers would not be the end users of the service, but would be Uber-like drivers. This is not a great article.
The last two paragraphs are about a Uber like service which is different from the main subject of the article. However if I want to get my car back to where I parked it and not on the other side of the city, the last user must drive it back or BMW will. The first option will make the service totally unappealing, worse than all those failed parking to parking car sharing services. The second one costs money to BMW. So maybe the only users of this service are Uber drivers. They get my car for some hours, make some profit out of it, park it where I left it, go get another one. The cost of the rental must be low enough for them to make a meaningful profit though.
Most likely it's for vehicles financed through BMW, which has a financial interest in the vehicle and whose financing might otherwise not have a sub-lease / use for rental / whatever clause. Or maybe it's just the language of an "offering" - "a new service that lets Mini owners do x, y, z".
Renters could mess up a vehicle in any number of ways, from making a mess with food and drink, to damaging parts of the interior, to getting in accidents and causing serious damage. Are owners expected to do a full damage assessment pre/post every rental? Nobody will accept any liability otherwise.
That's overlooking any "drive it like you stole it" issues which can ruin the mechanicals.
Think of all the nefarious activity a renter could get up to. Road rage incidents, motoring offences. Drug dealing or trafficking. Congratulations, your car is now on a watchlist.
Imagine the disputes over how much gas is left in the vehicle. Let alone what type of gas a renter puts in there.
There's no way any ordinary insurance policy would cover this kind of scheme. Your premiums can, and should, skyrocket.
Then contemplate the practicalities of all this. A renter will have to pick the vehicle up from a location, then presumably return it to the exact same location. If that requires payment for parking, who pays?
Don't get me wrong; I can't wait for the future where nobody owns a vehicle and we all travel in autonomous electrical vehicles that are efficiently utilized, monitored and cleaned automatically as needed. But this halfway house is a nightmare.