
Turo and Getaround Get Heat From the Rental Car Industry - pseudolus
https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2019/05/car-sharing-apps-hourly-rentals-peer-to-peer-turo-getaround/589087/
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maxkwallace
The problem with this article is that it doesn't go into detail about what the
"taxes and fees" pay for, aside from airport surcharges. Without knowing that
it's impossible to determine who should be paying for what.

Airport surcharges should just be a toll gate (E-ZPass) when you enter and
exit the airport. Same for roads, ideally. A single fee schedule for everyone.

Parking shouldn't be free. Someone with 3 cars on Turo shouldn't be penalized
any more than someone with 3 cars who doesn't rent them on Turo and just
leaves them parked most of the time.

I use Turo and Getaround. With Turo, I always end up meeting or interacting
with the car owner. I'm not renting luxury vehicles, but in my experience the
owners are always regular middle-class people. From what I've seen, "Tesla
fleet" Jason Chan from this article is not representative of the average Turo
renter. Except perhaps in niche luxury markets, Turo rentals won't be
massively profitable because renters are competing against Zipcar, Enterprise,
Uber, etc. and there is maintenance, cleaning, depreciation, etc. you have to
handle for the cars.

I think we can all agree that regulations and taxes should be fairly and
equitably applied. I'm fine with my Turo charges going up to comply with this.
But I don't think this article is very balanced. It spends a lot of time
talking about Turo without acknowledging the massive inefficiencies in
traditional car rental business models, as well as the big difference in
customer experience.

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eropple
_> I think we can all agree that regulations and taxes should be fairly and
equally applied._

I get what you mean, so this is not a dunk on you, the words "fairly" and
"equally" are at odds in this sentence. "Equally" implies a steady disinterest
in marginal utility and situational value; it's where we get Anatole France's
"the law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under
bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread." I would suggest
"equitably" over "equally".

I agree with the general thrust of your point. But this is the door through
which nasty shit sometimes sneaks.

~~~
maxkwallace
Thank you for that! I completely agree with your comment, and I appreciate the
attention to detail. I'll edit my post to change "equally" to "equitably" in
that sentence.

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hn_throwaway_99
I certainly have no love list for the big rental car companies, but I don't
see any logical reason why I should have to pay additional taxes and fees when
renting from Hertz but not GetAround or Turo.

The article didn't go into it that much, is the current issue that Turo is
arguing that, as just a "platform", that hosts are the ones responsible for
taxes and fees and they're just not collecting or paying them? Similar to what
AirBnB said in the early days? Because I don't understand why existing laws
would apply only for traditional rentals but not peer-to-peer rentals.

~~~
kevin_b_er
These companies are very much about externalizing the cost. They externalize
cost onto the public for what is free pickup/dropoff of friends/family. They
externalize the cost of maintenance and insurance onto the owners. They
externalize the cost of public parking area to "store" the cars when not in
use.

What you most often are looking at is corporations exploiting benefits to the
public for their profit.

~~~
sct202
There's a guy in my city who is apparently parking 40 turos by his house and
using up a lot of the street parking to do it.

~~~
freewilly1040
This is a flaw caused by unlimited free on street parking, a zoning flaw that
needs to be fixed

~~~
AlexandrB
So instead of regulating a multi-million dollar “startup” we should regulate
everyone else instead.

~~~
arcticbull
I guess so, yeah. Free parking is a tax on everyone, but especially the lower
class. This happens because the extra space needed raises the cost of goods,
of adjacent property, and so on. The poorest and those without their own cars
have to pay for it too. Regardless of why we're looking into it now, it is a
problem, and we should address it. [1]

[1] [https://www.vox.com/2014/6/27/5849280/why-free-parking-is-
ba...](https://www.vox.com/2014/6/27/5849280/why-free-parking-is-bad-for-
everyone)

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brogrammernot
Rental car companies have refused to adapt or change their model for many
years. They’re built upon antiquated systems with the thought that they could
never be touched, and to be blunt I don’t feel much sympathy for them.

They’ve been approached numerous times with more innovative uses of their
fleet and they’ve turned up their noses so many times at it because they felt
they didn’t have to change.

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username223
> Steven Webb, Turo’s director of communications, says that 95 percent of the
> platform’s hosts rent out three or fewer vehicles.

Three or fewer, like the guy his own mini-fleet of two Tesla 3s and an X
mentioned earlier in the article? I doubt many people have 3 cars to "share"
without having bought at least one purely as a rental. And how many people can
afford to buy/lease more than 3 vehicles for their fleets? I'll bet that 95%
would be much lower if we looked at "one or two vehicles" instead.

These negative-externality-based "Uber/Airbnb for X" companies are getting
ridiculous. Has someone started one for prescription drugs yet? "We're not a
pharmacy, we're just a platform facilitating transactions between patients and
independent drug contractors." (Or was that Silk Road's business model?)

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RcouF1uZ4gsC
>(Turo takes a 25 percent cut on each transaction.)

Let's at least stop using "sharing" to describe what these companies do.

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capsulecorp
No lets not, the term makes perfect sense how its being used. It has
absolutely nothing to do with how much of a cut the business takes, not sure
where you picked up that impression but its not correct.

~~~
yeahitslikethat
If you share something, you don't charge. If you charge, it's called renting.

They are implying benevolence when there is none. Especially on the part of
the hucksters.

~~~
capsulecorp
That is incorrect, it may be what your kindergarten teacher taught you was the
nice thing to do, but it doesn't make it the definition of the word.

share /SHer/ verb 1.have a portion of (something) with another or others. "he
shared the pie with her"

synonyms:split, divide, go halves in/with;

edit: seems like a lot of people have the same misconception that sharing
implies free of charge, here is a link to the definition for those who are
unfamiliar: [https://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/share](https://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/share)

~~~
yeahitslikethat
Rent

verb 1\. pay someone for the use of (something, typically property, land, or a
car). "they rented a house together in Spain" synonyms: hire, lease, charter

I'd say _rent_ is a better word. Because you're _pay_ ing. Share definition
says nothing about paying. Plus, when you share, the other party keeps what
was shared. Otherwise it's _borrowing_.

Words have meanings for a reason.

~~~
capsulecorp
>Words have meanings for a reason.

Yep and just because you don't like them doesn't mean you can change them.
Share is being used correctly and you have a massive misunderstanding thinking
that it has something to do with the company profit, but it doesn't. Not
interested in continuing discourse with someone who is willfully ignorant, go
believe what you want I couldn't care less. Cheers!

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KingMachiavelli
> 4 states pocket excise taxes on rental cars, in addition to standard sales
> taxes and airport surcharges.

Initially, I was going to argue that the existence of random taxes on car
rentals and other mostly benign services is already an arbitrary unfair
practice for state governments to raise more revenue.

Then I looked at my own state's, Colorado's, rental tax - it's $2 on top of
sales tax which seems pretty reasonable. $2 seems pretty reasonable and small
to the overall rental cost especially when tha artical says they can add up to
an extra 30% on the car. Would I be happier if the extranalities of car
rentals were collected some other way? Absolutely but I don't think the extra
$2 is what car rentals are complaining about.

If the users of these apps are cheating and not paying the sales tax and
rental tax, then the rental companies have a 100% valid point but I have a
hard time thinking they just want these ride sharing/lending apps.

On the other hand, I would much rather have no random excise taxes on
arbitrary services and more taxes on the actual externalites they produce such
as taxes on fuel and conjestion pricing in dense areas.

~~~
brogrammernot
$2 per day plus an additional 7.25% tax from Colorado, plus 2.9% sales tax.

This has nothing to do with protecting rental companies and everything to do
with states being pissed they aren’t getting their cut.

~~~
KingMachiavelli
My mistake. I'm quite curious as to how the additional 7.25% tax is justified.
Perhaps it accounts for taxes that would have otherwised been payed when
purchasing a vehical?

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johngalt
Rental car companies have more to worry about with ridesharing than any
competitors.

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thinkingkong
What a conundrum. If you ask for permission, follow the spirit of the existing
regulatory environments, but arent actually breaking any laws then what
incentive do you have? You’d just be the foolish one while other companies who
don’t jump through all those hoops capture market and mindshare and the
regulatory bodies catch up.

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atwebb
>Analysts predict the global market will double in value by 2022 to more than
$120 billion.

Double in 3 years? That seems excessive.

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notfromhere
Analyst predictions about global market values are basically made up and
shouldn't be used for decisionmaking

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yeahitslikethat
Analyst firms take money from their clients and the vendors they analyze.

They can't be trusted _at all_.

