
Airbnb Is Popular, but Renting Out Your Car Is Another Story - JumpCrisscross
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/02/your-money/airbnb-is-popular-but-renting-out-your-car-thats-another-story.html
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jakelarkin
Had two car-owning friends that did RelayRides (now Turo) during the peak
sharing economy a few years ago. Both cars were involved minor collisions
within months. Turns out renting in the city to people that don't drive much,
might be prone to accidents. Making sure cars weren't parked on street-
cleaning side and dealing with tickets also seemed like a huge hassle. Cars
have a really high administrative burden compared to homes, especially when
things go wrong, which they do at a higher rate.

I've rented cars myself via Turo a couple times in the past few years. Two of
the guys were operating their own small rental businesses (5+ cars, parked
around on local streets). At a couple hundred bucks profit per vehicle per
month, depending on utilization, having a few cars like that seems the only
way to make it worth the while. As a part time job of sorts.

In the East-Bay, AAA is making a massive investment in car-sharing with GiG. I
wonder if it will work out financially given state of the world with cheap
ride-sharing by Uber/Lyft.

~~~
sillysaurus3
_Making sure cars weren 't parked on street-cleaning side and dealing with
tickets also seemed like a huge hassle. Cars have a really high administrative
burden compared to homes, especially when things go wrong, which they do at a
higher rate._

Oh gosh, don't get me started on this. It's theft, plain and simple. Or rather
tax. Owning a car in a city is a massive pain in the butt, and it's cost me
like $2k per year. Whether it's bullshit tickets, street cleaning gotchas,
expired plates (got a ticket _one_ day after it expired just yesterday), being
parked in a valid parking spot that is nevertheless a tow zone for mysterious
reasons, having to go in front of a judge to point out that it was bullshit
for me to be towed because the facility that I had to visit to pay for the
ticket was closed due to a holiday, on and on and on. You get the idea.

I've sort of resigned myself to it just being "car stuff," so whenever another
crap ticket appears on my window it doesn't bug me much. Just more tax for the
city. Whatever.

I know a few of the tickets are my fault, but geez, it seems almost impossible
to be a perfectly law-abiding car owner in a major city over the course of
five years.

It's actually tempting to rent out my car to someone else just to cover the
administrative cost of owning a car in a city.

~~~
snug
If you're playing $2k/year in tickets, you should be paying closer attention,
at that point you have nobody to blame but yourself.

~~~
sillysaurus3
It's not just tickets. It's tickets + permits + insurance + plates. I wasn't
blaming anyone else, either. I assume you're perfectly vigilant in every
aspect of your life? Meh, never mind.

By the way, a friend just tried to park in the spot that I got towed out of.
That's how unassuming it looks. That's just a thing you get to learn if you
happen to live here, and the only way you learn it is after you get towed. Not
a damn thing you can do about it other than pay up.

And how about the $120 ticket the other day for making a left at a light that
was green but happened to be labeled no left turn without an arrow? No reason
not to be able to turn left, as long as it was green. There wasn't any
oncoming traffic. Yeah we missed the sign, and for that we get to pay $120 to
follow the silly rule. The tickets add up faster than you think.

~~~
pavel_lishin
> _And how about the $120 ticket the other day for making a left at a light
> that was green but happened to be labeled no left turn without an arrow?_

Are you complaining that you got a ticket for committing an infraction?

It's one thing to complain about regulations that seem to make no sense to
you; it's another for breaking those regulations, and then bitching that you
got caught.

~~~
Hydraulix989
Often the rules of parking, etc. and the differential enforcement thereof are
intentionally designed to boost city revenue.

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payne92
Different analysis: it's much more likely that a car can be damaged &
completely unusable, leaving the owner in an expensive and inconvenient bind.
We read about the occasional Airbnb horror story, but I think that scenario is
relatively rare for property.

Second, idle cars have a lot of value to owners. The car in my garage right
now is giving me optionality and convenience, and that is worth a lot. In
fact, I may exercise that optionality after posting this comment!

~~~
ghaff
OTOH, one could argue that damage/theft/etc. to a home could involve much
larger sums of money and be less easily resolved with a check from the
middleman handling the rental--especially if it's not specifically a rental
property.

Another issue with car sharing is that a fair bit of the depreciation is going
to be mile-based rather than time-based. A "good" renter is going to put
fairly minimal wear and tear on a bedroom. A good car renter is still going to
put miles on a car.

Once you capture that cost and add it to your profit, it's unclear to me why
you'd expect to be competitive with an outfit like Zipcar which is probably a
generally better experience for the renter in any case.

~~~
gav
I disagree and argue that any damage to a home can be repaired in a way that
makes things better, while most car repairs have a negative impact to the
car's value.

Somebody damaging a wall: the drywall can be replaced and the whole room
repainted, the end result is a nicer room.

Somebody damaging the side of your car: it's never going to look quite the
same as it did before and the resale value is going to be impacted when it
shows up on a Carfax report, etc.

~~~
ghaff
My concern wouldn't be some minor damage to drywall or similar incidental
damage of the sort that happens around a house on a semi-regular basis. It's
the big party that leads to possessions being trashed and waiting six months
for a contractor to repair major damage.

I agree that a lot of "routine" house damage is probably easier to deal with
than similarly routine damage to a car. But the outlier incidents with housing
are probably worse. Assuming Turo or whoever honors their obligations, at
worst you just buy a new car.

ADDED: I can't imagine renting out either in any case.

~~~
GVIrish
The thing with a car is that it can easily be badly damaged or totaled by
simple driver error. A house can be destroyed by fire maybe but that's far
less common than car accidents.

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jboggan
I've used Turo for a 3 week rental and I learned a few things.

I wanted to buy a new Jeep Wrangler Unlimited, but as you may know those are
enthusiast vehicles and not without their quirks, so I wanted to live with it
awhile and really be sure that was what I wanted. Also I was going elk hunting
in Idaho for 2 weeks and I didn't own a car so I thought, how perfect?

The trip and the Jeep were great, but it got me thinking about the economics
of the whole thing. I noticed that my "host" I was renting from had about a
dozen identical Jeep Wranglers on Turo, not multiply listed but completely
different vehicles. I realized that the "Uber landlord" model was already
taking hold here. I did the math - Wranglers are some of the lowest
depreciating vehicles right now even with heavy mileage, and even with 2-3
days of rental a month the owner would likely break even at the end of the
loan. Interesting business.

~~~
ghaff
In the right area of the country I could see a decent market for renting Jeep
Wranglers and Rubicons as the rental options for that type of car tend to be
fairly limited.

That said, off-road vehicles will tend to be taken off-road and beat up a bit.
It's unclear whether the insurance covered by Turo covers the vehicle being
used off-road etc. Of course, if someone is running this as a business, they
can presumably get their own commercial insurance.

~~~
inimino
Insurance doesn't really change the economics if you have a fleet, right?

~~~
ghaff
I imagine that if you have a fleet it's more practical to negotiate a business
insurance policy than for one-off rentals a few times a month.

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siliconc0w
I do really like the idea of a 'shared fleet' to get cars off the road and
encourage alternative transport (walking, biking, public transport, ride
sharing) and reduce our 'car culture'. Because these alternatives don't cover
all use-cases, I need a car _sometimes_ so I'm mostly forced to bear the
rather large expensive of having a car all the time. I'd totally consider
ditching my car entirely if I could press a button and reliably get a nice-ish
car valet'd to my door in a reasonable amount of time for a reasonable cost.
It's unclear if this is where we're at with these companies (and I already
have a car sitting in my driveway so i'm already pot committed for awhile)

~~~
xur17
I'm in a similar situation. I rarely used my car, and was considering getting
rid of it for a while. About a year ago I got rear-ended in a hit and run that
totaled the car, so I decided to just try using Uber / Lyft, and decide if I
wanted to buy a car.

It's been about a year, and I'm pretty seriously considering buying a used
car. There are some use cases that Uber and Lyft don't cover, and my only
option is to go rent a car, which requires some lead time, etc. Being able to
get a car valet'd to my door would be nice, but what I'd really like is to
find a neighbor that has 2 cars that they use to drive to work, but would be
willing to let me use an extra car of their's on the weekend (for a fee of
course). Our city has car2go, but the cars a really tiny, and you can only
park them in a small part of the city.

~~~
arm
Have you considered an electric bike?

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Eridrus
I put my car on Getaround for a few months in Oakland, got tired of it
smelling like weed and McDonalds eventually. Damn device also ended up
draining my battery.

~~~
CydeWeys
That's seriously impressive to drain a _car_ battery. Makes you wonder what in
the hell that thing was doing. A phone-sized battery should probably be
sufficient for their use case.

~~~
fudgy73
There is no battery in the 'connect' device; it uses the car's battery for
power. Major mistake not including a battery as it is the reason I and many
others have taken our cars off the service.

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mythrwy
One has to put in a lot of effort to render a residence unusable (not talking
about having to replace carpet, I mean irreparably ruined).

One only has to not pay attention for 30 seconds at the wrong time to do the
same to an auto.

~~~
GVIrish
Hell, inattention for less than 3 seconds at the wrong time can cause a huge
accident. Then there's the issue of willfully bad driving when it comes to
sports cars, bad weather, and drunk driving.

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creeble
Curious about people's experience w/Turo. Seems like a good way to enhance a
new car-buying experience.

Other than that, it seems weird from the car owner's perspective.

~~~
vilius
I had great experience. Rented BMW Z7 and Porsche Boxster on two occasions.
Picked cars in SF and dropped them in LA for an extra ~$300 fee. The owner
then would fly over and drive them back. Total price was significantly cheaper
than any rental company could offer. The biggest advantage to me is that you
get the exact car you see in the pictures.

It also allows you to test the car you always wanted. After a week spent
driving a powerful convertible I have decided that I don't want one.

~~~
alexitosrv
somewhat tangential, but why didn't you like the convertible idea?

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chx
The problem here is that accidents happen. We are humans and especially during
travel we might not be at our sharpest.

If your attention slips in an airbnb and drop a mug and the handle breaks off,
well, that's a few dollars and an apology to the owner.

If your attention slips in a car and get in a fender bender and even if no one
is injured that's a mess with insurance and at least several hundred dollars
of repair.

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hannob
There were a couple of German car-via-internet-sharing startups (tamyca was
one of them, seems they're still in business) and I tried them once. My
impression was at the end that I payed not much less than when I would've
rented from a commercial car rental company, but with much more overhead.

So that was the experience for me as a customer. With airbnb it's completely
different. I feel I often get more from the things I want (e.g. kitchen access
is very common in airbnb's, no Airbnb ever tried to charge me for wifi) and
the prices are often massively cheaper than hotels.

~~~
bujak
I am using drivy.de in germany and it's cheap with a lot less hassle than a
regular rental

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godzillabrennus
I rent regularly from Turo.

They have been a much easier option than a traditional rental car company.

They meet you at the airport.

You can rent hybrids.

You deal with a consumer who owns the car not a customer service rep who could
care less about their job.

My complaints are that the app and website have terrible user experiences.
Terrible is an understatement.

They were cavalier with my drivers license data going so far as to email it
around to vehicle owners as an image. Though I emailed their CEO and he
stopped that years ago.

Still, I'm a big fan of Turo.

GetAround is my second choice. They have much more restrictive mileage limits
so I stay away.

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spraak
I don't see the point (if any?) that the article makes.

~~~
zghst
All articles push a narrative some way or another, true or not.

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mooreds
Marketplaces are hard since the main thing you can sell is liquidity. If I
were these car companies I'd focus in a benefit that helps users without
requiring liquidity (single player mode) to bootstrap the marketplace.

~~~
Hydraulix989
That's what ZipCar did.

FlightCar shut down because it offered monthly parking at the SFO airport for
free, on the condition that you rent your car out for them. I did this because
I wanted to keep my car, but I did not want to pay $400/month for a parking
spot in SoMa, and my car hardly got rented out.

They eventually started doing some shady things like moving some of the cars
to Oakland behind owners' backs. I ripped them a new one when I found out they
did this to mine, but still stayed with the service because it was such a
sweet deal.

When FlightCar finally kicked the dust, I went to pick up my car and saw a lot
full of barely-used other cars from other people presumably exploiting the
monthly parking in a similar way that I did.

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seibelj
I can keep an eye on what's going on in my spare room. Can't keep an eye on
the rented car as easily

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horsecaptin
There are also more specialty car rentals like Vinty and RetroMotion.

Does anyone know how successful these companies are? What kind of volume do
businesses like Turo see?

