Zip Car is not here in Ottawa yet, however back home in Toronto there is a Zip Car parked outside a Donut Shop not to far from where I lived. Ottawa has VRTUCAR, which actually has many cars very close to my house. I have yet to try out either company, but would definitely like to if I had enough of a need.
A post on VentureBeat regarding rumors of the company going public got me thinking about the company. Zip Car has taken a fairly old business model, car rentals, and made it interesting again. I like the decentralized approach, having cars accross the city definitely makes it appealing. Being able to walk to a car rental is very convenient.
A Deal for Students
The main barrier stopping me from using a service like this is their application fee and a monthly/yearly membership fee. I don’t think many students would find their need for this service frequent enough to warrant paying these fees. I did a little digging through Zip Car’s website and found they offer a deal for select universities, such as Ryerson. This deal eliminates any application fees and only costs $25 annually. This makes the service reasonable, even if you are only going to use it once a month or less. As a student, I find I only have the rare time when I wished I had a care for a brief period of time. If Zip Car was in Ottawa and offered this I would definitely be on board.
So if VRTUCAR is listening, they should definitely consider copying this program! I will the first one in line to sign up.
Zip Car iPhone App
At Apple’s WWDC keynote, Zip Car demoed their new iPhone app. The app looks like it takes car of everything required to find and reserve Zip Cars. You can even unlock the car or honk the horn. See for yourself below in this somewhat cheesy presentation:
Testing the comments system..
Testing the comments system..