
BMW to Let Car Owners Rent Out Vehicles Like `Airbnb on Wheels' - fludlight
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-25/bmw-to-let-car-owners-rent-out-vehicles-like-airbnb-on-wheels
======
UVB-76
Such an unbelievable number of ways in which this could go wrong.

Renters could mess up a vehicle in any number of ways, from making a mess with
food and drink, to damaging parts of the interior, to getting in accidents and
causing serious damage. Are owners expected to do a full damage assessment
pre/post every rental? Nobody will accept any liability otherwise.

That's overlooking any "drive it like you stole it" issues which can ruin the
mechanicals.

Think of all the nefarious activity a renter could get up to. Road rage
incidents, motoring offences. Drug dealing or trafficking. Congratulations,
your car is now on a watchlist.

Imagine the disputes over how much gas is left in the vehicle. Let alone what
type of gas a renter puts in there.

There's no way any ordinary insurance policy would cover this kind of scheme.
Your premiums can, and should, skyrocket.

Then contemplate the practicalities of all this. A renter will have to pick
the vehicle up from a location, then presumably return it to the exact same
location. If that requires payment for parking, who pays?

Don't get me wrong; I can't wait for the future where nobody owns a vehicle
and we all travel in autonomous electrical vehicles that are efficiently
utilized, monitored and cleaned automatically as needed. But this halfway
house is a nightmare.

~~~
deegles
That's not even the worst of it. Not even a million-dollar policy would save
you from the effects of renter having a serious accident:
[http://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-
finance/101013...](http://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-
finance/101013/beware-liability-sharing-your-car-strangers.asp)

In the above case, the survivors sued the car-sharing company, the estate of
the (deceased) driver, and the _vehicle owner_. I would not expose myself to
that kind of liability without _very_ well established law around it.

~~~
blazespin
Pretty sure BMW would manage this.

~~~
ghaff
Perhaps manage in the sense of providing legal representation, indemnifying,
etc. However, I would still be concerned with having to deal with the hassle
(if nothing else) of dealing with a lawsuit--especially if there were the
remotest possibility of criminal charges related to maintenance or whatever.

------
mrdrozdov
This already exists as GetAround and I used it all the time when I was in San
Francisco. Similar pricing to ZipCar, but I found that there was typically
better options/availability (YMMV). The other big plus was that I was able to
get approved by GetAround within something like 24hrs, where ZipCar I had to
wait to get my key delivered (~2 weeks) or pickup my key at their office
(during business hours only).

[https://www.getaround.com/](https://www.getaround.com/)

~~~
bduerst
Yep, and if anything, BMW is going to struggle because it's yet _another_
asset sharing service.

They'll likely get some BMW fans and aficionados, but given the small
marketshare that BMW holds, most users are not going to use this as their go-
to for getting a car.

~~~
r00fus
Could it turn out to be something similar to AirBnB where it starts out as
niche and blossoms from there?

Other thing - if you look at this service as a marketing channel to sell more
BMW vehicles... then it doesn't really have to be a dominant service.

~~~
mrdrozdov
> if you look at this service as a marketing channel to sell more BMW
> vehicles...

I think that's almost certainly what it is. Getting a BMW is a status symbol
or a dream for many early drivers. There are lots of ways to get a beamer for
cheap, certified pre-owned being a well known one. Maybe being an Uber driver
is another way people have tried to finance their cool purchase, but this
channel seems like a much more direct one.

------
rdl
This could be the first "pimp your car out" service I'd consider using. If the
manufacturer were behind it, on a leased car, and absolutely guaranteed any
damage would be restored, plus compensated me enough to cover
depreciation/lease mileage fee/etc., the only inconvenience would be "make
sure your car is totally empty when you leave it parked".

I tend to buy/keep cars ~forever, so it wouldn't work as well for me now, but
if I could lease ~3-5 BMWs for ~20-30 people to share (at a remote company
office or something which has a lot of people cycling through, and where some
cars are needed), and then add them to a fleet pool otherwise, I'd be in.
That's somewhere between Zipcar, Uber, and leased company cars.

Managing maintenance, cleaning, insurance, repairs, etc. for them for me would
be great, too.

~~~
nmrm2
But at that point, what are _you_ offering? (Genuinely curious. Capital?
Taking on the risk? Insight/market research?) And is that worth the overhead
that goes into your pocket?

Sharing economy type stuff makes complete sense when it's something you share
often enough to want first dibs, but not often enough that renting it out from
time to time is an inconvenience. But if you're renting it out full time then
I'm not sure I understand how the incentives line up. Seems like if they
notice you're doing well they could just swoop in and under-cut you next time
the contract is up.

~~~
rdl
Guaranteed demand, parking (there are legal issues where being an individual
or first party business owner of vehicles is easier than being a ZipCar).
You're leasing cars for ~$500/mo for 36mo each. That gets paid regardless of
demand. If your stable gets used enough to bring in >$500/mo in external
customer net revenue per car, that would be pretty exceptional. Most likely
you'd make $100/car/mo and get a bit of extra professional maintenance for the
fleet vs. just owning them and having a dealer service.

What's interesting is if car manufacturers start to develop vehicles
specifically for this kind of market. I'd love to have personalization
settings (nav, seat, climate, driving controls, etc.) which follow me as a
driver across a fleet of identical or related vehicles. You might also have a
"valet mode" (some cars do now), "renter mode", and "owner mode", with
different performance limits (I can ruin a $1-2k set of tires in 10k miles of
spirited driving, but if I ran the right profile on the car, I could make them
last 30k miles). Might also make some maintenance/safety things non-
overrideable for renters -- you can't start the vehicle if the
brakes/tires/fluids/etc. are not good, for insurance and vehicle-damage
reasons.

------
blazespin
Very courageous and visionary. BMW is canibalizing their sales as this will
cut down on car wastage. Short term pain for long term positioning. This could
be the tipping point as it forces other manufacturers to follow suit.

Likely they are getting ready for self driving cars business model that come
will come at a press of a button.

I can see Tesla probably the next to do this.

The world is a changin'.

~~~
adventured
Or it'll enable BMW owners to make enough money on their rental car, to buy
another separate car just for personal use, boosting BMW's overall sales and
expanding their market reach.

~~~
blazespin
IF they had that kind of money, they'd just settle for the simplicity of one
car.

------
gist
> ‘Never, ever will I lend my car to strangers.’ Then there’ll be others
> who’ll love the idea of halving their leasing rate.”

For luxury cars it appears that it would tend toward "never ever". Having a
luxury car isn't for practicality and you tend to feel very possessive about
what you have and it possibly being damaged. Having it tarnished in some way
lessens the joy of arbitrary non essential ownership. The idea that someone
might have some heavy perfume or cologne or smoke in or near the car (however
prohibited) would be enough to give many people pause. Also what if someone
drove the car and by accident left some contraband in it?

------
chillacy
I'm curious to see how this plays out (how much of the logistics will be
handled by BMW vs outsourced?)..

I also wonder if the stack fallacy could be coming into play here:
[http://techcrunch.com/2016/01/18/why-big-companies-keep-
fail...](http://techcrunch.com/2016/01/18/why-big-companies-keep-failing-the-
stack-fallacy/)

------
victorhugo31337
Who would think this is a good idea? Who thinks Airbnb is a good idea?
Strangers leaving pubic hair all over your car and home--sounds great!

~~~
nmrm2
Airbnb is great if you're out of town for a week to a month or more (for
business travel, vacation, etc.). The $ you make more than covers a
professional cleaning service for when you get back, which leaves the place
cleaner than when you left.

------
netsharc
[https://en.drivy.com/](https://en.drivy.com/) is another "Like AirBnB, but
for cars" I recently learnt about, which is available in some European
countries. I like the idea, unlike AirBnB which eats up the rental market,
there are too many cars not being used.

~~~
radiorental
> there are too many cars not being used.

What do you mean by this? Do you mean too much infrastructure dedicated to
cars or inefficiencies in the average cars' usage?

~~~
mirimir
The latter, I think. I owned a car when I lived in Manhattan. Its rent was an
appreciable percentage of mine. In retrospect, I should have sold it, and
rented. But I was emotionally attached ;)

~~~
radiorental
Right, I see. I think that's a completely different issue, especially given
where you lived.

The idea that cars sit idle too much does not hold water. Cars age through
usage, not over time.

------
Paul_S
Most issues people cite are easy to solve by recording all car drive
parameters and several cameras - inside and out. Combined with a reputation
system this makes sure no one will wilfully abuse the car more than once (and
even then they will pay for it).

------
maxxxxx
That's pretty interesting. I remember some years ago there was car sharing
service like Zipcar (do they still really exist?) where you could rent out
your car and they would pay you for the miles driven. Not sure how that worked
out.

~~~
praveenster
Zipcar was acquired by Avis for $500 million in 2013.

[http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014241278873243740045782171...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324374004578217121433322386)

------
csours
The article seems to indicate that the non-owner drivers would not be the end
users of the service, but would be Uber-like drivers. This is not a great
article.

~~~
pmontra
The last two paragraphs are about a Uber like service which is different from
the main subject of the article. However if I want to get my car back to where
I parked it and not on the other side of the city, the last user must drive it
back or BMW will. The first option will make the service totally unappealing,
worse than all those failed parking to parking car sharing services. The
second one costs money to BMW. So maybe the only users of this service are
Uber drivers. They get my car for some hours, make some profit out of it, park
it where I left it, go get another one. The cost of the rental must be low
enough for them to make a meaningful profit though.

------
DougN7
BMW "let's" owners rent out cars that they _own_? Why do the owners need BMW's
permission?

~~~
FireBeyond
Most likely it's for vehicles financed through BMW, which has a financial
interest in the vehicle and whose financing might otherwise not have a sub-
lease / use for rental / whatever clause. Or maybe it's just the language of
an "offering" \- "a new service that lets Mini owners do x, y, z".

------
noipv4
Will there be a launch control disable when the vehicles are rented out?

------
reiichiroh
Isn't this what Turo (formerly RelayRides) is doing?

------
walrus01
Little known fact: The Germans in the BMW marketing department at first wanted
to name the new "ReachNow" service in Seattle "ReachAround".

~~~
Roritharr
Having a worked with BMW Marketing I instantly believe that.

~~~
walrus01
"I'll be there in 15 minutes but first Bob has to get me a reacharound"

