By KEN BELSON
Published: September 10, 2010
FOR all the reasons it may make sense to rent a car — a carless household facing a gaggle of errands, a temporary need for a second vehicle, the appeal of driving something more economical on a vacation — there are still drivers who resist the drill of stepping up to a rental counter.
The recent boom in so-called car-sharing services provides an alternative for many of these part-time drivers, neutralizing their reluctance with services that allow them to rent by the hour — and do so at a straightforward all-inclusive rate. No less attractive is the ability to pick up and drop off a car without waiting in line or dealing with baffling forms sprinkled in fine print.
With 400,000 members and double-digit growth, Zipcar is the largest service in this emerging market, so dominant that its name has become synonymous with car sharing. Zipcar’s success in siphoning customers from the traditional rental companies has not gone without response: in the last two years, well-known names like Hertz, Enterprise and U-Haul have begun competing for the 10 million drivers nationwide that analysts estimate are interested in car-sharing services.
While individual car-sharing companies aim at different audiences — city dwellers, college students or corporate accounts, for instance — their services largely work the same. Drivers register online and, depending on the service, pay an initiation fee of about $25 and an annual fee, often $50.
To reserve a vehicle, a member types in an address; available cars in the area are displayed on a map that shows where they are, whether in parking lots, at an office complex, on a college campus or simply waiting on a city street.
Cars can typically be reserved in half-hour increments; hourly rates range from $7 to $17 with up to 200 miles included. Other plans offer a better deal for drivers running errands close to home: U Car Share, for instance, charges $4.95 an hour and from 49 to 89 cents a mile.
Zipcar has the largest selection of vehicles, from the Mini Cooper and Mazda 3 (as little as $8 an hour) to the BMW 328i (up to $17 an hour). The hourly fee includes gas (a credit card is placed in each car) and insurance.
Drivers need not go to a rental agency office to pick up a car, a convenient time-saver. An electronic card provided by the car-sharing company is programmed each time a car is reserved. Drivers pass the card over a reader on the car’s windshield to unlock the doors; the keys are inside.
Car-sharing companies use a variety of technologies to make the experience as painless as possible. Connect by Hertz, for instance, sends customers text messages to confirm a reservation. Its cars are outfitted with GPS navigation units, and a one-touch button on the dashboard puts the driver in touch with one of the company’s operators.
Connect also offers an application that lets customers reserve cars using their smartphones, and, like other car-sharing operations, its cars are equipped with an electronic toll payment tag. Tolls are added to the renter’s credit card bill.
A Zipcar driver running late can call the company’s toll-free number to arrange additional time. An automated voice response system recognizes the caller’s cellphone and asks whether an extension of the reservation for an additional 30 minutes is needed.
Zipcar’s Web site also displays a timeline that shows any other reservations that have been made for a particular car. With this information, a driver can reserve extra time if there is a chance the trip may run late.
Taking advantage of that feature could have reduced the tension on a recent rental of mine. Mired in traffic while on my way to return a Zipcar, I called to extend the reservation — only to learn that another customer had reserved the car for precisely the time I was supposed to return it.
I pleaded my case to a Zipcar operator, who called the customer scheduled to get the car next. The operator got back to me back five minutes later with good news: the customer agreed to cancel the reservation. So instead of getting hit with a $50 late fee, I paid $8.50 for an extra 30 minutes.
There are other examples that demonstrate the accommodations car-sharing companies will make to distinguish themselves from the old-school rental agencies. One strategy to simplify renting involves distributing cars across a city rather than warehousing them in a central location. In places like Manhattan, drivers can often find a car within blocks of their homes or offices. That makes it possible for customers to rely on public transportation for most trips, renting only occasionally to run errands or get away on holiday.
“The general success of a car-sharing company is how closely they can match the convenience of owning a car, having enough cars in the network to meet demand, where they are, ease of use,” said Dave Brook, a consultant to car-sharing companies. “It provides an alternative to car ownership.”
(Source: A version of this article appeared in print on September 12, 2010, on page AU2 of the New York edition.)