
FlightCar (YC W13), the Airbnb for Cars, Launches at San Jose International - edward
http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_27451696/flightcar-launches-at-mineta-san-jose-airport
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aantix
Not sure if anyone here has used FlightCar, but definitely consider them next
time you need to rent a car.

I reserved my car on my phone at my layover in San Diego, received an email
that provided a link that I should click once I got to SFO.

Got to SFO, clicked the link and I was provided a realtime map of where the
driver was in route. The black car picked me up, took me to the FlightCar
offices five minutes away and I rented a compact car for $119 for the entire
week.

Fantastic experience.

~~~
mathrawka
$119/wk for a compact car is pretty expensive though, at least where I am used
to renting cars at. Did you check something like PriceLine as well?

~~~
aantix
I just checked Priceline, SFO, compact 2/15 - 2/22\. The lowest I get is $160
and then it jumps to $240 for the week?

~~~
mathrawka
I always do the "name your price" and get a full size car for $98 - $105 a
week. Smaller sized cars should be much cheaper.

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caboteria
AAA estimates that it costs roughly 40 to 97 cents per mile to own a car
(depending on the type of car and how much you drive)[1] so I'm having a hard
time seeing that a lot of people will let random strangers abuse their cars
for 5-20 cents per mile. Because let's face it, nobody treats rental cars as
well as their own cars.

[1] [http://exchange.aaa.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/your-
driv...](http://exchange.aaa.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/your-driving-
costs-2013.pdf)

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ryanx435
couple huge problems that come to mind immediately.

1) owner risk. you are letting a complete stranger rent your car for x days.
You have no control over how good of a driver they are or how many miles they
will drive. as mentioned in other comments (and a fact that my dad, who owns a
brand name car rental franchise CONSTANTLY harps about) is that people who
rent cars treat them like crap. Rental cars lose value almost 3 times as fast
as cars driven by their owners.

2) insurance complications. My current insurance doesn't even let my
girlfriend drive my car, technically. If the person that flightcar rent my car
to gets in to an accident, not only am I liable, but my insurance won't cover
it.

3) uber/lyft is a much less risky method of using my personal vehicle for
extra income, plus I maintain control of my car. Why take on that extra risk
for such little return? doesn't make sense. I'd rather be an uber/lyft driver
to make the extra $$.

4) return not worth the risk. article states $15-20 parking fees per day that
would be avoided. lets say i'm gone 1 day, thats $20 cost. An uber from my
place to the airport is currently $10 each way, so $20 bucks total. I can
either park for 1 day or take an uber for the same cost. Anything longer than
a 1 day trip would be dramatically cheaper taking the uber, so I don't park
there. I'm not letting a stranger rent my car to save $20.

thoughts?

~~~
boomzilla
Another challenge I could see is the chicken and eggs cold start problem.
Until there are enough people willing to rent their cars out, the supply would
be minimal and no one would even consider this when flying. I can't see any
easy way to bootstrap this marketplace. Uber could bootstrap their marketplace
because there are a lot of repeated business in downtown, and even then it
took a huge amount of capital to do that.

Maybe it's Thursday late afternoon blue, but I am seeing less and less start
ups from YC that really make me go "wow, what a neat idea to solve a problem
that's been bothering me". Now all I am seeing is a lot of solutions going
around looking for a problem.

~~~
cjbprime
Today's actually FlightCar's two year anniversary of opening at an airport lot
(SFO), and we're now open at ten airports nationwide, so the initial
bootstrapping has long since happened.

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edward
In January 2014 I rented a 2006 Mercedes S-Class at SFO for $20 per day from
FlightCar. Pretty amazing.

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lifeisstillgood
AirBnB for Cars ... So, you pay to sleep in a car ?

Edit: OMG it's worse than my sarcastic initial thought. I drive _my_ car to
the airport and _they_ rent _my_ car to random fools to abuse and sift through
my glove box.

I can see renting out the second mortgage investment houses. But who the hell
has an investment car?!

God just give the VC cash for this to the GPG project.

~~~
devindotcom
I'm not exactly thrilled at the ingenuity here either but lots of people leave
their car at the airport for a week, two weeks, sometimes more in long-term
parking. If you could wipe out that cost by letting someone use your car, why
wouldn't you? Or if you want to avoid the usual rental rigamarole, why
wouldn't you? Seems pretty sensible to me, if not particularly original.

It's weird that your thoughts jumped straight to an 'investment car.' Many
people only use their one car occasionally, opening it up for rental, and two-
car households can save or even make money by renting out one when it's not
necessary to use both.

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Zhenya
Do people not realize that a car is consumable good. There are many costs
which people are not considering when renting out their cars including tires,
brakes, oil changes,and of course the incalculable wear and tear that will
bite you in the ass later. The rates for these "rental" cars are just screwing
the car owners and raking in cash for the platform.

/rant

~~~
raisedbyninjas
Owners earn 5-20 cents per mile. So an average of 12.5 cents, works out to $30
per 6000 miles. Just considering the oil, it doesn't sound appealing as a full
synthetic oil change costs about $60. If you consider the savings from free
airport parking around DFW for 6 months, that's 182 days x $7 = $1274. I'm
still reluctant.

~~~
cjbprime
> Owners earn 5-20 cents per mile. So an average of 12.5 cents, works out to
> $30 per 6000 miles.

Not sure how you got this -- 12.5 cents * 6000 miles = $750, not $30.

(Disclosure: I work at FlightCar.)

