Car Insurance Car

RelayRides and General Motors partnership — RelayRides continues with yet another very significant high-level partnership with GM's OnStar division.  This enable the OnStar telematics installed in all new GM vehicle to serve as the "on board computer" enabling them to sign up with RelayRides and immediately start renting their vehicle, nothing to install.  Vehicle owners would still have to subscribe for other OnStar services — emergency help, turn by turn navigation instructions, automatic crash response, stolen vehicle location.

This is the first announcement of what I expect to be other telematics partnerships as cars increasingly become wired.*

London's Streetcar begins conversion to Zipcar — The Tweets are starting to fly, preparing Streetcar (and Zipcar) members for the upcoming integration.  Rates have been published and FAQs have been written.  The challenge for Zipcar will be to keep their customers happy service as Streetcar's "home town" identity goes away.  And the usual Zipcar bells and whistles will apply — smart phone apps, phone/text reservations and reminders, etc.

Lowering the rates slightly, at least on weekdays, is a good first step. For example a VW Polo's drop from £5.25 to £5.00 per hour and daily rates drop from £52.50 to £49. VW Golf and BMW 1 series also dropped by £0.25 per hour.  Included miles increase from 20 miles per calendar day to 40 miles. Excss miles increased slightly from 23p to 25p.   Only the BMW3 series and van/transporter rates increased a tiny amount from £8.95 to £9.00 per hour.  Annual membership fee of £59.50 stays the same, as do the cost of various insurance options.  Weekend rates are £1 - £2 per hour over weekday rates.  A summary of Zipcar's London rates is here: http://www.zipcar.com/streetcar/welcome/faqs?for=rates-streetcar

A VW Up!

VW Quicar adds car rental — They haven't even launched in Hannover, Germany and VW is making a last-minute addition to the service.  In addition to the 200 Golf BlueMotions in the original announcement, VW will be adding an option for members to rent 70 other vehicles for 10 hours minimum.  Vehicles include the new VW Up! (a sub-sub compact) for ten hours starts at €30 (about $41 when this was written); a Beetle at €40 (about $54) and the Golf cabriolet or Passat for €50 (about $68).  Pricing for the core Quicar carsharing usage is €6 (about $8.25) for the first 30 minutes and €0.20 (about $0.27) for each additional minute.

Like Peugeot Mu project, this looks to me like a car manufacturer is getting into the car rental business.

Closer to home, it's worth noting that the pace of RFPs from US cities to attract carsharing services to their communities continues.  As this is written, Austin, Knoxville and Eugene have RFPs on the street.  Why Austin, you might ask? They have car2go, what more do they want?  If you find out the answer, please post the answer in a comment below.  Thanks.

Suggestion to cities evaluating the proposals - don't get hung up on the membership fees, concentrate on the package the provider offers for attracting new members - time-limited discounts off the normal application cost (to get people to join), free usage for the first trip (to get people to actually use the service).  And don't worry about the second year membership fee.  If members aren't willing to pay $50 - $75 a year for access to the vehicles, they probably aren't using them anyway — in which case, the city isn't getting much benefit from a symbolic member!

Finally, the car2go juggernaut continues with the announcement of plans to offer the "mobility on demand" service in Lyon, France.   Daimler expects the free-parking zone to be about 44 square kilometers.  The car2go operation in Lyon will be another joint-venture with Europcar, similar to the car2go service in Hamburg, Germany.

I'll be watching to see if their Smart cars face the same rebalancing challenge that the public bicycle system in Lyon, Velo' V, faces — residents regularly "clean out" certain stations on top of a hill, taking the bikes downtown and then ride the bus home in the evening rather than pedal back home.  Maybe the gas power to get them back up the hill will avoid this problem.

That's it for this month.

- Dave


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* I couldn't help but smile at a great opening line in a recent NY Times article on after-market gizmos for cars: "Cars, one of the great mobile devices to begin with, are about to get connected to the Internet like never before. It will change not just how we drive, but the economics of the car business."

Perhaps the most important news of 2009 is to acknowledge that car sharing in North America turned 15 years old this year, thanks to Communauto - a silent leader of the industry. Congratulations Benoit, Marco and everyone there.

There continued to be a strong growth in membership in other carsharing cities.  My guess is that most companies also experienced a growth in revenues and profitability, especially Zipcar (since they haven't added any new major cities or expansion in overall fleet size (compared to where they were at the time of the Flexcar merger). I would be amazed if any carshare didn't experience an increase in vehicle utilization (hours per day) helping out the bottom line.

Campus Carsharing — What expansion that occurred in the carsharing industry was primarily in college and university carsharing services - which can be a very good deal for the carsharing companies since they usually involve a contractual arrangement with guaranteed revenues and handling of some (most) of the fleet management to the university. As has been pointed out elsewhere if you look at the budgets of higher education, they really seem to "get" the issues of transportation and are willing to do spend some money on it. Near the end of 2009, Zipcar was at more than 140 college campuses, claiming a growth of 75 percent in the past 12 months, serving a total student population of 1 million.

Meanwhile cities with revitalizing downtowns seemed to realizing that carsharing offered something of benefit and several RFPs ("request for proposals" - tenders to the rest of the world) hit the street - Miami Beach, Baltimore and Pasadena, to name a few. The usual suspects, Zipcar, Hertz Connect, U-Haul and WeCar responded. Meanwhile, in the LA basin, which once had more than 200 Flexcars, several cities are toward putting out incentives to attract carsharing - Long Beach, Santa Monica, Los Angeles city proper - as part of more comprehensive strategy to meet greenhouse gas reduction goals set by the State of California.

(Here's a special note from yours truly to cities thinking about an RFP: please don't try to ask for some sort of revenue percentage from the carshare, at least not in the first 5 years. Structure your RFP so there's as much incentive as possible to grow the service in your city. But do include definite evaluation component so you can document the value of carsharing to your city council and residents.)

Partnerships — carsharing companies made some headway in 2009: I-Go Carsharing in Chicago announced a major partnership with the Chicago Transit Authority, ace-ing out Zipcar, for the Chicago Card Plus - a stored value card for transit travel and an RFID card for carsharing. Earlier, I-Go signed another partnership with the Parks District

Developments — Kevin McLaughlin reminds me that, "In Toronto, the city is finally realizing that its all about parking. Both AutoShare and Zipcar have been taking advantage of the development offsets being granted to new condo builders if they provide carsharing parking in their buildings (often as high as 10 fewer spaces per shared car, in the range of $200,000 cost savings!)" Toronto recently approved its first large condo (300 units) with NO PARKING for residents, and 9 shared vehicle onsite."

The City of Winnepeg also provided a developer an alternative to meeting parking requirements by setting up an in-house carsharing service, since no commercial company operates in Winnepeg at the present time (entrepreneurs, Hertz, Enterprise are you listening?)

On street parking continues to a conundrum for many cities. For some reason most continue not to "get it"! They're happy to provide parking for taxi cabs, which are operated by private companies but somehow providing carsharing is controversial, even though the benefits to the city (of having cab stands) are not well documented and the benefits flow to visitors. (I've got nothing against cabs, which employ people and provide a useful service; I just want cities to acknowledge carsharing.)

Technology

On the technology front, the big news was the major investment in French carsharing technology company Eileo by Hertz. Another major development is the joint marketing agreement between Convadis (Swiss car computer maker) and Metavera (Toronto-based carsharing reservation system provider). It was a natural link up since Convadis faced limitations selling their product since they didn't have an integrated reservation system and Metavera was looking for a more fully-featured option to supplement their long-term link up with OpenCar Networks, used by most all of the independent carshares in North America. On the sidelines 5,000 miles away another carsharing technology provider Nic Low of Goget started marketing their own on-board computer for fleet applications at Fleetcutter.

Apps — This was the year of the (iPhone) app (application in non-jargon). Zipcar continued its focus on the flash with what is arguable the industry's biggest (carsharing) marketing coup of all time, scoring inclusion on stage at Apple's World Wide Developers Conference to showcase its iPhone app (replacing the interesting but limited Where app). While scoring headlines and TV segments, as happens with technology, the actual rollout was delayed for months over a seemingly trivial hardware glitch - making sure all the Zipcar's could honk their horns with a tap of the button on the iPhone screen; only to later realize that demonstrations of horn honking capabilities was likely to be highly annoying to neighbors living close to Zipcars (so the feature is only activated after the member has logged in to the vehicle with their member card).

But the independent carshares were on the wave, as well, and Metavera, which provides reservations and support to most of them through the Autovera system, unveiled its a mobile reservation site to work with iPhone, Blackberries, etc., while continuing to improve its web carsharing system with functionality that keeps up with Zip.

Battery electric vehicles edged closer to becoming a viable alternatives to gasoline/diesel with Nissan unveiling the Leaf EV; Daimler, after a year to testing their Smart ED (electric drive) in the UK, started production; BMW demonstrating the EV concept in a Mini, with a host of other companies threatening to manufacture - Norwegian Th!nk finally whirred (one can hardly say "roared" for an EV) back to life announcing a plans to produce their new models in Indiana. The most interesting is Electrovaya, which opened what they called "carsharing" in

Baltimore with a service called Altcar. Although it's being promoted as carsharing, still at year's end all the vehicles were all located at the Maryland Science Center downtown. At the present they still didn't have any electronics to allow unattended access, but I expect they will take the plunge in 2010. Better Place, Shai Aggasi's much promoted and heavily invested EV battery service, which has always indicated it wasn't interested in carsharing, cleverly signed a deal in Denmark for the railroad system (DSB) to operate a public carsharing service at several train stations in Copenhagen and elsewhere. Finally, the City of Paris continued to move closer to their Autolib, EV carsharing system, taking time out in 2009 to get the surrounding cities to participate in the program as well. Similar to car2go, Autolib would offer one way carsharing between stations. Planning on up to 4,000 vehicles in Paris and surrounding communities, Autolib could completely redefine public transportation in Paris, in much the same way the Velib revolutionized bicycle travel there. Or it could be a bust... (or something in between). This Business Week article contains a good update of the status.

Meanwhile, given the US fascination for plug-in hybrids, in 2009 Zipcar followed HourCar (including a solar recharger station) and Autoshare into the Plug In Hybrid world with a single vehicle on their system in San Francisco.

Some comments about specific companies during 2009

Hertz Connect continued to grow their fleet in Manhattan up to over 400 by the end of the year - certainly attracting members that have been frustrated with Zipcar's on-going customer service problems there. Near the end of the year Hertz surprised everyone with announcements of major new international operations in Madrid and Berlin. Fleet sizes in existing cities are up slightly Paris now with 77 and London at 115. Hertz did send a message to Zipcar by listing 4 cars in Boston and further challenged them with token vehicles in Chicago and San Francisco.

U-Carshare (U-Haul) went live in Salt Lake City with 28 vehicles - concluding a protracted RFP process. The Salt Lake operation branched out from the traditional ad-covered PT Cruisers with a wide range of vehicles, including the requisite Mini Cooper, hybrid Civic and Ford Escape, Prius, as well as Toyota Yaris, Mazda 3, Ford Focus and several pickups and larger Ford vans, both passenger and cargo configurations. In other cities, such as Portland, Oregon, U-Carshare vehicle numbers are static and they continue to take a very passive approach to marketing - with no visible advertising other that on-street here and presence at a couple of public events.

WeCar (Enterprise) - continues to play its cards very close, with several university/college deals including University of South Florida in Tampa and some fleet management contracts (with carsharing reservations and access systems). Of course, Enterprise has the biggest challenge integrating carsharing into their existing business model of any car rental company since they already have extensive network of neighborhood rental locations, which, arguably would lose a little business from carsharing but would also likely funnel some longer-term rental business they would otherwise have missed

Independent carshares in North America continue to move forward - most continuing to grow at a more modest rate than previous years. Philly Carshare is on the upswing after disastrous decision to terminate members and raise rates. Nonprofit Boulder Carshare signaled a change of strategy with it's new name EGo, expansion and upgrade of its fleet in Boulder and more significantly locating 2 vehicles in Denver, joining OccasionalCar there (see below). They continue to offer vehicles at the remarkably sensible prices of $4/hr. + 30¢ per mile. Another nonprofit, Austin Carshare, which has been struggling to figure out where the capital to grow would come from since its founding 3 years ago, sent out a letter in the fall to members that they were considering becoming a cooperative. Nothing decided yet - perhaps watching what happens to car2go. Chicago's I-Go Carsharing passed the 13,000 member mark announcing further expansion in targeted suburban pods including Oak Park, Evanston, Skokie, Forest Park, and most recently Des Plaines. Cooperative Auto Network in Vanccouver continues to provide excellent service and supports a number of smaller services in British Columbia with their Carshare Everywhere reservation system.