
Rental car companies have been waging a quiet legislative war against start-ups - tim333
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2018/03/30/airbnb-for-cars-is-here-and-the-rental-car-giants-are-not-happy/
======
dalbasal
Over the last year, I've really changed how I think about "tech giants," their
competition with other parts of the economy, and what it all means. The
realization we'll see 3-5 trillion-dollar tech giants very soon triggered it.

Let's take Thiel's startup = monopoly statement seriously for a minute. He
didn't mean monopoly in the traditional/legalistic sense. He meant dominating
some niche, so that ordinary "margins trend towards 0" rule doesn't apply.
0-marginal costs helps. Network effects too. MSFT are a platform, distanced
from market forces by network effects and lock-in. Google & Amazon are middle-
men, aggregators _and_ platforms distanced from market forces by network
effects. FB is all network effects.

The reason Uber could raise so much money was because they seemed to have a
good chance of "dominating" a market, and playing the middle-man between taxis
and passengers everywhere, forever. A 1% chance at a one trillion dollar
market cap.. that's worth ten billion.

For a _chance_ at a piece of a thiel-monopoly on cars, investors will happily
bankroll big loses. Big enough to sink competition. When you are playing for a
trillion-dollar monopoly, losses don't matter.

I dunno what to think of competition like this, at scale. This is a different
flavour of capitalism.

In any case, neither side wants normal, textbook laissez faire markets. One
side is playing for monopoly. The other side is playing for structural stasis
via legislation/regulation.

~~~
smeyer
>playing the middle-man between taxis and passengers everywhere, forever. A 1%
chance at a one trillion dollar market cap

Investors in Uber had to be hoping for either a larger than 1% chance,
expanding beyond taxis, fundamentally growing the taxi market, or all of the
above. The existing taxi market has a total market cap of well under a
trillion dollars, even including companies like Uber. The total US stock
market only has a combined market cap of about 30 trillion, so I think you're
overestimating the number of trillion dollar market cap industries that exist
and the extent to which investors are gambling on success having payoffs quite
that high.

~~~
sophacles
I don't know... Uber (et al) opened a lot of people to the "lets a hire a
driver" mindset. Outside of some major urban centers, the idea of taking a cab
was just weird. Uber came a long and suddenly people were taking them
everywhere. Not just people who would have otherwise taken a cab, but people
who otherwise would have driven themselves.

This is just anecdata from my observations and discussions with others who had
similar observations. But it would be interesting to find real numbers on
this.

~~~
ghaff
My experience is that outside of "major urban centers," Ubers are pretty thin
on the ground. I live about 40 miles outside of Boston and the couple of times
I've looked, there's been little or nothing available around me.

~~~
Jonnax
Are your local taxi services better than Uber?

~~~
ghaff
I assume they're not very good although I've never used them. But given that
Uber doesn't seem to be a practical option, I guess they're better?

------
john_minsk
These are 2 different business models. Centralized one with scale effects and
decentralized one where participants take care of different aspects of car
maintenance on their own and platform creates network effect. You can't apply
the same rules to these systems as regulation mechanisms are different.

Funny bit: we trust Uber's driver rating MORE than the fact that official taxi
drivers are "pro" and comply with regulations i.e. the value of this
regulation is negligible. So enterprise car rentals need to ask following
question: where in the process of making money we forgot about delivering
value to customers.

~~~
sidlls
I haven't used Uber, but I have used Lyft. I wouldn't trust these drivers'
ratings. My experience is that the conditions of the cars are generally better
but about 20% of the time a driver will be at the wrong spot for pick-up. I've
had to cancel and demand a refund way too many times. Also the driving isn't
any better than the taxi drivers' I've had.

On the other hand I can get a new, clean, well-maintained and current-year car
to myself for an entire day from a rental company for a 25% premium (inclusive
of all the taxes and fees) on the cost of a round-trip Lyft between my home
and my commute train station. When my family travels the weekly rate on such a
vehicle is only about the equivalent of 7-8 such round-trips. That's an
incredible value, in my view.

~~~
ballenf
If you're in an area with free parking, the value of Uber/Lyft is
substantially reduced. Alternatively, the total cost of rental cars needs to
include $ spent on parking during the rental.

Rentals still come out ahead sometimes, which is why it's great we have both
options.

~~~
ams6110
That's a great point, and clarifies why I have never used these services.
Where I live, I park for free anywhere, or at most $1/hr at a street meter.

------
snowwrestler
I used Turo once, during a visit to SF. The owner didn't meet me (it's
optional on their part), and the process of "checking out" the car didn't seem
any easier than renting a car from Budget. It's an elaborate sequence of
taking pictures and uploading them to the Turo app in the right order. The
cost was not too different from Budget either.

I used Turo simply because the closest "traditional" rental car office that
was open was many miles away; while the Turo car was parked close.

I haven't used Turo since. Usually when I need a car it's because I'm flying
somewhere, and getting a rental car at the airport just does not seem
difficult to me.

~~~
MrFoof
There's one actual great case for Turo: Pre-purchase test drive, especially
for oddball stuff.

You can likely find a car very similar to what you're going to buy, and drive
it for a weekend. Luxury car dealerships will do this (esp. when you go into
very high pricepoints), but they take convincing. For a lot of people, it's a
better way to find out that something isn't quite what you wanted, without
having to deal with depreciation after the fact.

Though if you want to give a childhood dream a fair shake before actually
plunking money down on one (and going through PPI, etc.) Turo is great for
that. There's no shortage of high-end sports cars and "common" supercars on
the platform, especially in large metro areas.

------
varjag
Rather ambivalent about this tbh. We've seen many times how the online
marketplaces initially targeted at grassroots providers evolve into
professional domains again. Ebay, Uber, AirBnB, in the end casuals are pushed
out and you get fulltime sellers, drivers and purpose rental properties
driving the market. Only this time most of the profit ends up with members of
a one pool party somewhere in California.

They want to disrupt the market, well be ready to bust your asses this time.

~~~
wutbrodo
> in the end casuals are pushed out and you get fulltime sellers, drivers and
> purpose rental properties driving the market.

Have casuals been pushed out of Uber? Maybe my market is weird, but I tend to
talk to every Uber driver I have and I take a lot of them: I'd say less than
50% are full-time drivers.

~~~
lordnacho
Really? I don't recall meeting an Uber driver who didn't do it all the time.

I think GP's point is valid. To start with, it's beneficial and fair that lots
of little people can rent out their cars for some extra change. But when it
ends up being a loophole to sidestepping existing rules to make essentially
the same service with fewer rules, it's worth paying extra attention to. Not
saying it needs to be outlawed, just that it's not obvious what to do.

~~~
ForHackernews
It'd be very easy to have legislation that regulates small-timers (only owns
one or two cars, rents it out less than 30% of the time, etc.) differently
from professional operators, even if they advertise on the same platform.

Some jurisdictions have started doing this for AirBnb.

~~~
Shivetya
we already have too much of this type of regulation which does just what you
state, keeping small timers out to benefit the established interests.
occupational licensing sounds beneficial to the public as a whole and at one
time it was but once established businesses found they could use it to block
competition its original focus was lost.

It really clobbers low income workers and fattens pockets of companies which
"train" for licenses and the like. Nearly a third of all jobs are regulated as
such and many are prohibited to former convicts which is yet another road
block. You can end up spending more money gaining your license to braid hair
than serve as an EMT.

~~~
ForHackernews
I'm proposing the opposite: regulate big operators more heavily than small-
time amateurs.

If you want to rent out a spare room in your own house a few weekends a year,
the government probably doesn't need to be very involved in that. On the other
hand, if you're a company that owns 50 condos and lists them all on Airbnb,
you should be carrying insurance, you should be subject to inspection for
bedbugs, etc.

------
kevin_b_er
Taxi company that isn't a taxi company. Hotel company that isn't a hotel
company. And now, car rental company that isn't a car rental company. And, as
always, all the regulations are somehow bad.

The PR person compares this to lead paint certification, but I'd argue that
the bulk rented apartments need that too. Instead they're fighting sales tax
on the rentals. Besides this, cars are far more dangerous to others when
maintenance gets lax.

~~~
tlb
Few would claim that all regulations are bad. But regulations often age badly.
Regulators and the companies they regulate are both motivated to freeze the
state of the industry over time. So when new technologies like smartphones
allow doing something better, the regulations often prohibit it (as they did
with taxis.) Established players don't want change because change costs money,
and regulators aren't motivated to make changes either.

What we see is that unregulated industries (say, dog-walking on demand) can
quickly adopt the new technology, while regulated ones like car rental have
trouble.

Car rental should be much better with smartphones. I should be able to get a
car brought to the airport in front of baggage claim. The fact that I have to
schlep my luggage on shuttle buses to a rental area is an artifact of a
business model that no longer makes sense. But if we wait for the incumbents
to do it, it could take any amount of time.

~~~
ghaff
>The fact that I have to schlep my luggage on shuttle buses to a rental area
is an artifact of a business model that no longer makes sense.

Well, it's also an artifact of the reality that the rental volume at major
airports is such that the activity needs to be moved well away from baggage
claim. Honestly, I don't find car rentals to be that big a deal. I have
priority cards for a couple of companies so I basically take the bus/train,
grab a car, and checkout at the gate. Admittedly, I don't usually have much
luggage.

------
giobox
Anecdotally the only people I know who have used Turo are young people - Turo
doesn't have a you must be 25 or a young driver surcharge policy for driving
if aged between 21 and 25, which is typically the case at a conventional car
rental desk in the US.

Personally I would feel pretty uncomfortable if greeted by the private vehicle
owner when picking up a rental (I know this doesn't apply to all vehicles on
Turo) - people are often extremely attached to their personal vehicles in my
experience. At least at the rental desk the staff could care less what I
choose to use the rental for, or how I drive it.

~~~
subroutine
> people are often extremely attached to their personal vehicles

And for good reason. Cars are expensive to maintain even when driven and cared
for responsibly. No idea what would be considered a reasonable listing price
on Turo, but to hand my keys over to a 21 year old stranger in town for a
weekend vacation, I dunno... maybe I'd do it for >$100/day.

------
arkades
There have been many comments here in the past about how sticking a digital
intermediary into a traditional business model doesn’t somehow magically
absolve you of regulations on that business model.

This article doesn’t actually present any unique obligations on Turo (the
rental car Airbnb). As far as this article presents, the legislation is to
explicitly make clear that if Turo is going to work in the rental car space,
they can’t just ignore regulatory burdens that all their competitors are
subject to.

I see no problem here.

~~~
mcherm
Do you also feel that Uber and Lyft should constrained from day 1 not to
operate without following all the regulations for taxi services like a
requirement to have a medallion and to only allow drivers who have undergone
an extensive background check?

Do you also feel that Airbnb, if it is going to work in the room rental space,
should be required to comply with all of the regulations for the hotel
industry (including collecting of hotel tax, posting of room rates on a
placard affixed to the door, and installation of better-than-consumer-grade
fire suppression systems)?

It sounds good to say "innovators can do whatever they like but need to follow
the same rules as everyone else". But perhaps the existing rules are
specifically tuned to the existing business model and will not be rewritten to
support another business model unless that business model has been proven in
practice. Or perhaps the existing rules are just excessively restrictive.

~~~
arkades
I see your point, but I think it's fundamentally flawed: I think the very
reason we can look at this and go, "it's just rental cars with an app" is
because it's not all that innovative. Beyond that, these regulations exist for
a reason, and if they're going to be argued against then it's on the part of
the "innovator" to build a business model that distances them, in granular
operational detail, sufficiently far from the old model to make those
regulations irrelevant.

e.g., Do I also feel that if someone creates an airbnb for food production
that they should still be required to comply with all the regulations of the
food prep industry? Yes, I do. They're still putting food in people's mouths,
and the bulk of the regulations exist to protect people who are eating
strangers' food. IF their business model is so divorced from the old
restaurant model that the risks the regulation addresses no longer exist, I'd
be more sympathetic, but I've yet to see that be the case.

In this case, for instance: I'm interacting with you, the app, and buying a
ride. You're selling me a ride. For the same reason we have food safety regs,
you're required to make sure your fleet is safe and up-to-date. Why,
precisely, would you be exempt from that just because you source your fleet
differently than a traditional rental car company? There's nothing about the
app/service that negates that concern. The business, in the relevant respect,
is the same - so why should they get a free pass on the regs? Because they've
chosen a different model for sourcing cars?

Fundamentally, no one is owed a business model. IF your business model is
"same old business, peer sourced supplies, and an app" \- that is to say, in
most functional respects the same business that is already regulated - then
yes, you should be subject to those regulations. The very fact that these
business are so very easily slotted into existing regs is _because_ they're so
similar to existing businesses. AirBnB didn't have trouble with regs when it
was actually people letting spare rooms; it ran into trouble with regs when a
large percentage of their rooms came through single owners of multiple
dwellings dedicated to airbnb. That is, when they became a hotel.

~~~
philipodonnell
I dunno, you're sort of assuming that all regulations are equally important
for safety, I think most people would agree some regulations are only there to
protect existing businesses from competition. But all regulations have to be
followed, so what do startups do about that?

When AirBnB and Uber started they ignored all the regulations except the ones
they wanted.. and it wasn't that bad. It was just, do you trust that a random
person will let you sleep in their house or give you a ride without having a
bad experience. All the existing regulations that applied said "no, of course
you need taxes to pay inspectors and check all these boxes to protect people",
but it turned out... yeah, you could just let people do their thing and it
would turn out ok and not cost that much.

Doing the same thing slightly differently and claiming the regulations don't
apply is risky, but ultimately whether you win or not is if you can deliver
better service for lower prices safely. If so, the public will back you and
you'll eventually be allowed to operate but with some negotiated subset of
regulations that will emphasize the safety parts (because the public likes
those) and limit most of the anti-competitive stuff (because the public hates
those parts). That's exactly what happened with Uber and AirBnb. There's
really no other way to change regulations these days.

I think we need companies like that to come along and show just how badly
entrenched businesses can regulate their way to being protected against
competitors and capture higher prices.

------
jonknee
I was rooting for disruption for a while, but after signing up for one of the
loyalty programs I mostly just don't care anymore. My major gripes have been
fixed, I can just walk up and take a car at most airports and unless there's a
major event going on the pricing is very cheap.

I can't imagine wanting to go through the hassle of something like Turo unless
I was trying to rent an unusual car for a special occasion. The last thing I
want to do after getting off a plane is jump through hoops.

Update: I should also add there are often promo codes available on the likes
of Retail Me Not that can make things even cheaper. Combine with a loyalty
program which results in frequent upgrades and it's a great combo. I recently
drove a brand new BMW X5 for a week for something like $30 a day after fees.

~~~
Analemma_
> My major gripes have been fixed, I can just walk up and take a car at most
> airports

Maybe we have very different patterns of flying, but this has never been my
experience. It's always exactly the opposite: there's a line of ten families
at the rental desk, each person takes at least ten minutes (!) to process, and
the desk has one, maybe two people, for a total of half an hour in line or
more. It's so phenomenally aggravating once you've finally gotten off the
plane and just want to get to your hotel that it has left me with no sympathy
for these rental companies whatsoever.

Which I suppose is the real brilliance of both Uber and Turo: if you're going
to disrupt an industry by breaking the law, pick a business that absolutely no
one is going to go to bat for. Despite how brazenly illegal Uber was in many
cases, nobody cared because the taxis were just that awful.

It's possible that things will turn out differently for Turo now that people
are wise to Uber's game, but the rental companies would still do well to
remember that one of the things that helps these illegal disruptors prosper is
when people are so sick of the status quo that they happily turn a blind eye
to the law-breaking. Make your business suck less, and then maybe people might
actually stick up for you.

~~~
jonknee
> It's always exactly the opposite: there's a line of ten families at the
> rental desk, each person takes at least ten minutes (!) to process, and the
> desk has one, maybe two people, for a total of half an hour in line or more.

That was me until I signed up for the loyalty program (it's free, like
frequent flier programs). Now at most airports I just go right to the vehicle
(they email the parking spot number) or special booth in the parking lot or
choose any vehicle in a special lane. Not only do you not have to wait behind
families, but you don't go through that whole pitch where they try and sell
you insurance and gas.

------
fwdpropaganda
Someone tell me what I'm missing.

From this article it seems that the appeal for renters is that it's a more
friendly process to rent from Turo than e.g. Hertz. A renter doesn't care if
the car is owned by average Joe or by Hertz.

So can't Hertz and others simply fight this by improving their renting
process? What's stopping Hertz from coming up with an app and completely
destroy Turo? They already have the cars, they already have the distribution,
they already have the compliance. Now just get an app.

~~~
notyourday
It is a lot more than that. I have spent last month doing quite a bit of
sporadic rentals and it is a pain in the neck.

(a) pricing is not transparent what so ever. I can get estimated price but I
cannot get the total out of the door price. It makes _zero_ sense in 2018.

(b) i can never get a car that I am "ordering". I fail to understand why a
Zipcar can do it, but neither Hertz nor Enterprise nor Budget can. If I'm
getting an Tahoe, which is expensive which you claimed you have, I'm baffled
why the barely coherent employee thinks that a minivan is a "similar vehicle".

(c) daily insurance scams - luckily it does not apply to me because $25/trip
premium insurance via Amex is easy, automated and just pure awesome but oh my
god people who do not know about it are just getting screwed.

(d) And finally... why is it that I still cannot search _all_ the locations
within a certain area for the cars and prices that I need? Why do I have to
repeat the searches for the twenty Hertz in NYC when with a Zipcar or Maven i
can just scroll through the map or get a list?

If rental car companies were to fix this 99% people like me won't be likely to
use "peer-to-peer" because there's nothing worse than driving someone's non-
standard, modified, coolant-gauge-may-not-actually-work car.

~~~
fwdpropaganda
Thanks for this. Could you explain (c)? I don't understand what you mean.

Regarding the rest, it sounds like they got used to offering a poor service
because they don't have enough competition or something. You might have a
point there, but for a competitor to take advantage of that they just need to
execute better on those points. They don't really need to source their cars
from average Joes...

I'm not saying that Hertz isn't shit, I'm just saying that I don't understand
how where the cars are sourced from is a real differentiating point. EDIT: I
just re-read your last line and it seems you agree.

~~~
jdpedrie
Rental car companies always try to sell you liability coverage for accidents
and damage for about $25/day. Almost every major credit card already includes
the coverage for free, so when you opt into the rental coverage, you're
needlessly paying a significant premium for something you likely already have.

~~~
throwaway_80bf3
This is not true. _Most_ cards do _not_ cover at fault general liability, most
cover the damage to the car and that's usually secondary coverage, which is to
say if you have insurance already, you will have to utilize that first in case
a claim is required.

If you fall asleep and drive a car into a house or hit a pedestrian, you
better have to have some third party liability coverage. If you have car
insurance already you probably have this coverage, but if you don't... you
don't.

This is a pretty complicated topic and I've done some deep dives into it and
found it's not as clear cut as most people seem to believe. What kind of card
you have matters, whether you have insurance already matters and even with
both of those you need to understand what exactly is covered by who and when.
If you don't have insurance you should always get liability. If you don't have
insurance and rent a lot you should call up Progressive or National and
request a quote for non-owner liability coverage.

What one shouldn't do is go around telling people to waive all coverage and
that rental car insurance is a scam.

~~~
ams6110
Rental companies will also hit you for "loss of use" while their damaged car
is being repaired. This will likely be claimed at $hundreds/day. Most personal
auto insurance and even many credit card liability plans will not cover this.
I have a State Farm Visa for the sole reason that if I rent a car using that
card I am fully covered including for loss of use.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> Rental companies will also hit you for "loss of use" while their damaged car
> is being repaired. This will likely be claimed at $hundreds/day.

This is much more than the cost to the consumer of renting the car. How can
they possibly defend it?

------
julienchastang
Having rented a number of cars recently I can attest that this is an industry
that is in major need of disruption. Renting a car today at any car rental
company I know of is phenomenally inefficient:

1\. Long rental lines at airports. 2\. Asking for information that could be
provided ahead of time via apps. 3\. Having to make your way to the car rental
facility.

What I would like and I would be willing to pay a premium for is order the car
of my choice via an app. Have said car delivered to my location by a driver
that then takes Lyft/Uber back to headquarters. Also it seems like the car
rental companies could benefit from economies of scale by having a small
number of large lots instead of numerous little lots peppered throughout a
geographic area. If this existed, I would use it all the time as I only need
occasional use of a car.

~~~
brianbreslin
Check out SilverCar. They are mostly app based.

~~~
julienchastang
SilverCar sounds promising, but from my research you still have to travel
somewhere to get the car. I want the car to come to me. :-)

~~~
shiftpgdn
SilverCar is amazing. Traditional rental agencies look like garbage in
comparison. SilverCar also has shuttles at most major airports so you don't
have to go far.

------
dreamcompiler
I have mixed feelings about this. Uber is a horrible company but they created
real competition for a lazy industry that sorely needed some.

Turo is doing the same. When I wanted to rent a Tesla for a few days Turo was
the only viable option. The majors all wanted around $1000/day; I found one on
Turo for a little over $100 and the free fuel brought that down to around $80.
It was a delightful experience.

~~~
ghaff
The majors are really in the business of mass-market utilitarian rental. And
they mostly do a competent job of that. To the degree they offer anything
outside that framework, they do tend to charge a huge premium if they offer
the option at all. (For example, good luck renting a 4WD Jeep.)

I would question the wisdom of someone renting their Tesla out like this but
that's their decision.

------
wcfields
From what I've noticed here in Los Angeles, Turo is exploiting the greymarket
of wildcat car dealers. There are lots of people here that own 10+ late model
economy cars at any one time and there are areas where you'll see 5-6 cars on
the street with For Sale signs.

A friend of mine who's car was totaled used Turo for a month or so until she
bought the car from the guy.

~~~
subroutine
This is the first thing that occurred to me after browsing the cars available
in my area. Nearly all of them look like they are listed by boutique /
independent used car dealers (like the one I drive by every day:
[http://imgur.com/J3yi9qL.png](http://imgur.com/J3yi9qL.png) ).

This is interesting given that...

 _Title 13 California Code of Regulations, section 260.02 states: (B) Former
taxicabs, rental vehicles, publicly owned vehicles, insurance salvage vehicles
and revived salvage vehicles shall be clearly identified as such if the
previous status is known to the seller._

If the used car lot owner is renting-out his cars on Turo, it seems like they
are required to disclosed this to potential buyers. I highly doubt this is
happening.

------
alkonaut
Just like Airbnb is a hotel business, Uber is a taxi business (meaning a ride-
for-hire business and nothing else) having a car rental business is having a
car rental business regardless of whether the cars are “shared” or whether
there is an app involved.

And just like Uber has to follow any regulations surrounding rides for hire
(regarding taxes, insurance, accessibility, right to deny service, ...), so
must this company with regulations surrounding car rental.

I don’t see how making sure startups don’t get away with some loophole is a
“legislative war”. It’s no different from cities where Hotels say AirBnb
should pay hotel taxes and have hotel level fire security.

If the regulations surrounding the established market is too rigid then
address that. But don’t “revolutionize” markets by using some loophole and an
app.

~~~
nate_meurer
Your examples aren't helping to prove your point though. It makes zero sense
to require single-family houses or duplexes to have hotel level security.
Requiring a homeowner to retrofit sprinklers and fire doors, or provide
24-hour video surveillance or an onsite security guard?

A hotel is fundamentally different sort of facility than my house. Insisting
they be regulated the same is pure rent-seeking on the part of the hotel
industry.

~~~
alkonaut
If you rent it out you _are_ a hotel. Or, possibly, a landlord (which comes
with different but quite burdensome regulations in most countries).

What a lot of these startups do is expose areas of markets that may be too
rigidly regulated. Perhaps the reasonable level of regulation for Airbnb
renting is just working smoke detectors, a basic escape plan map and good
insurance? Perhaps most of the remaining hotel regulations could be lifted?
It’s very likely that the advent of “not quite hotels” and “not quite taxi”
calls for new regulation. But what the established players “war” against is
newcomers completely dodging regulation on account of being “not a hotel”,
“not a landlord” or “not a taxi”.

~~~
nate_meurer
> "If you rent it out you are a hotel"

This kind of semantic conflation isn't helpful. A house, rented or not, has
almost nothing in common with a typical hotel with dozens of rooms and
unrelated guests, complicated egress paths, commercial kitchens, industrial
services and controls, etc.

It absolutely makes sense to require hotels to have automatic fire suppression
systems, heavy fire doors in every room, video surveillance, or 24-hour
guards. And then there's ADA, a whole other conversation.

Hotels aren't pushing for hotel regs to be applied to houses out of some even-
handed desire to prevent loopholes. The AH&LA is a cartel trying to have their
competition outlawed.

~~~
maxsilver
> Hotels aren't pushing for hotel regs to be applied to houses out of some
> even-handed desire to prevent loopholes. The AH&LA is a cartel trying to
> have their competition outlawed.

Sure, but the opposite is equally true. AirBNB, Uber, and others aren't
blatantly lying about their core business out of some even-handed desire to
prevent loopholes. They're doing it exclusively to illegally escape regulation
-- regulations their competitors are all bound to by law. They're trying to
replace a cartel with _their cartel_.

The question to the public at large is: would you rather have an existing
cartel that is subject to regulation, or a new cartel that also believes it is
above the law.

~~~
saint_fiasco
You make it sound like the regulations somehow bind and constrain the existing
cartels. Another point of view is that the regulations are the mechanism by
which the cartels keep competitors out.

I'd rather have "above the law" cartels than "makes the law" cartels.

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yardie
Almost nothing in this article seems unreasonable. If I give you money for
your goods for X amount of time, that is renting. You are engaged in commerce
and fall under the laws and regulations of commerce. Not sure why it’s being
called a war. None of the legislators have called for an outright ban.

~~~
cornholio
I think enforcing by legislative means the profit-sharing system traditional
players have with the airports is completely unreasonable. They go out as far
as to call it a safety issue.

Yes, the playing field is not level, but that's what competition means: the
sharing companies have found a way to go around the onerous taxes imposed by
airports and there is almost nothing the airport can do to stop a private
individual drop a car in it's short term parking lot for another individual.
There's no safety or congestion issue, it's the entire point of the short time
parking spaces.

~~~
CPLX
There's no obvious reason why airports charging people who use the airport as
a transportation hub is unreasonable or onerous by definition.

~~~
cornholio
For a completely private airport that builds its own road and transit
infrastructure, sure. Most real airports have massive public investment and
infrastructure and enjoy a strong local monopoly - with the specific purpose
of acting like a public transportation hub.

Therefore, any charge that moves from services provided, on a needs basis, to
an indiscriminate tax, on a per person basis, can be seen as onerous in light
of the public investment.

~~~
CPLX
But if there's a precedent that people landing in the airport and renting cars
pay a tax why should some companies be able to avoid it and not others. This
argument is nonsensical.

~~~
cornholio
Because the new players don't need the services airports provide. Which turns
into a tax or a monopoly rent, there is a long a list of such "precedents"
that the market and regulators shut down.

~~~
CPLX
If they don't need the service the airport provides they can meet people
arriving on planes somewhere that's not an airport. Otherwise it seems to me
that they need the service the airport provides.

~~~
michaelmrose
The service the airport provides is the fact that lots of people are there. In
other news if I meet you in starbucks to buy a laptop from craigslist they
aren't getting a cut.

If they meet the car at Walmart do we expect the walton family to get a cut?
If they drop the car off at their home do we expect the HOA to get a cut?

At some point we could acknowledge that the airport isn't a party to the
transaction.

~~~
CPLX
Yes, if you set up a commercial for-profit business selling things, or
delivering rental cars, in a Starbucks or Walmart parking lot they would
certainly expect a cut, or otherwise stop you from doing it. This concept is
spectacularly non confusing.

~~~
michaelmrose
Meanwhile in reality people seem to be dealing drugs regularly in walmart
parking lots and I bought my Craigslist laptop in a coffee shop. I didn't give
the coffee shop a cut and I'm pretty sure the shady characters meeting in the
walmart parking lot aren't giving the waltons a cut.

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joelrunyon
I don't understand the appeal of Turo. I hate car rentals, but can't believe
renting from a random to be a superior experience to them.

SilverCar on the other hand, is amazing. They just need better accessibility
at airports.

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kozikow
Although car rental user experience is not perfect, it gets the job done well
enough. Not every type of business in the world needs VC funding, react.js
SPA, chatbot and "sharing economy".

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pjc50
Ctrl-F "insurance" \- no results. If I use a startup to lend my car to
someone, and they're involved in an accident, whose insurance covers it?

~~~
dazc
The reason I rent from Enterprise is that I don't have to worry about
insurance or breakdowns. My financial loss is set at £100 maximum and the cars
are nearly always brand new so unlikely to breakdown.

To start using some unregulated operation like 'AirBnB for cars' I would need
do be paying virtually nothing as an incentive. And, from the examples I've
seen so far, this is no way the case.

~~~
switch007
I must be super unlucky. I find their maintenance well below par. They're the
only company that attempts to rent me cars/vans with: oil service lights, bald
tires, cracked windscreens. This isn't limited to a single branch either.

Also £100 is not their standard excess, so you're paying for the reduced
liability. (Also, they like to tell you every time in the hard sell that the
£1,000 excess is for each and every incident and the full amount will be taken
immediately... ?! Not sure how true that is)

However, they have the most branches in the UK of any rental company, so
they're often extremely convenient.

~~~
dazc
Never had the hard sell, tbh, but I find the standard £1,000 excess a bit too
much of a risk. Having rented a dozen or so times my only damage, thus far,
has been a scratch on the door which, likely, only cost £100 to fix?

In theory then, I'd be better off taking the bigger risk but there is also
Murphy's law to consider.

Maybe I have been lucky but I've found them to be much better than the
alternatives and a lot more laid back about stuff like fuel levels and return
times.

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mmjaa
How feasible is it that companies like Turo can route around this issue by
offering things other than cars to rent/lease from their owners? Like, if that
F150 came with a bunch of shovels for schlepping soil, for example ... or if
the Tesla came with a tour guide in the passenger seat?

Wouldn't that make the whole "a duck by any other name" more of a "well, its a
platypus really" kind of issue?

Or are there regulations which preclude this kind of bundling of services?

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theonealtair
Taking on a CARtel will never be an easy process.

