Where to share a car?

Update: See the updated chart here (May 9, 2006).

Everyone's gabbing about car-sharing lately, for good reason. "There seems to be a perfect storm brewing," points out Nick at TriplePundit. Gut-wrenching gas prices will make the cost of driving a new car spike by 14 percent, says AAA.

The "FlexCar One," a Honda Civic hybrid, is parked near the White House, in case the president takes himself up on the suggestion that we drive less. A free hour of driving is his for the taking. But which service should you pay for? To help you pick, I compulsively cooked up the chart (below, click to enlarge) to compare car-sharing companies. Luckily FlexCar, ZipCar, and the Bay area's City CarShare all offer hybrids. Check out other car-sharing services around the world here.

Comments

[Michael Moulton]

The Zipcar website says there is an annual fee of $50.

[elsa]

thanks for the updates, folks! I made this chart back in November, so maybe it's time to bring it up to date...cheers.

[Steve Gutmann]

Great chart! The information about Flexcar is a bit dated. Here are a few updates. (Full disclosure: I work for Flexcar.)

Hourly rates are between $7.20 to $10 per hour. Rates vary by city and also depend on how much someone uses the service. "Frequent drivers" get lower rates.

With Flexcar, free miles are totally unlimited, and our members often take Flexcar vehicles on long trips out of town. Gas, insurance, maintenance, a home parking space, roadside assistance and cleaning are all included.

It might be worth adding a column for insurance, because there are significant differences in the levels of coverage that the 3 providers offer. Flexcar members get $300k of liability coverage, while Zipcar includes only state-mandated minimums (as low as $30k). I'm not sure what City CarShare offers, but if you're considering joining you probably ought to check.

On the "freebies" front, Flexcar is currently running a "New Year Special": $75 of initial free use to new members who join by February 28th and drive at least once by March 31. We also offer a $40/member referral credit.

[Kate White]

Another update: City CarShare now has 120 cars in the Bay Area. It's awesome! Check it out: www.citycarshare.org

[Kevin McLaughlin]

Great idea - but you might want to check some of your #'s. Flexcar is $9 / hr (for instance) and currently runs a similar "credit back you joining cost" program like Zipcar; and CityCarShare also includes gas & insurance. Including the per mile cost with Zip & Flex is a bit misleading, as a ypical trip (say 4 hours, 25 miles) would never hit the limit of freebies (and thus makes it more difficult to compare). You might also want to compare a typical trip (as above), which puts the apples & oranges in a bit more persepctive.

[green LA girl]

OMG -- This spreadsheet is way too cute! Inspires me to get more techy with my posts :)

Sadly, although Flexcar's in LA, all its parking spots are way too far away from me. Considering the fact that I can take the bus during daylight, meaning most of the times I'd need to rent a car is in the evenings and nights -- this is a real problem: a single gal run 6 miles at 11 p.m. to get to her flexcar.

I'd like to ask all readers in the greater LA area to join Flexcar's email list to let them know that we're here, ready and waiting, for our hybrid Flexcars to arrive --