Car-Hip Enterprise

Enterprise and other rental companies move into car-share market

Posted at 9:22 AM on 07 Feb 2008

Enterprise Rent-a-Car is zooming ahead with a car-sharing program à la the successful Zipcar. The Enterprise venture, called WeCar, started on the campus of St. Louis's Washington University last month, but will kick off in urban style in the city downtown next week. WeCar will begin with nine Toyota Prius hybrids and will target employees who commute without a car to work and then need a vehicle during the day. (Zipcar, which targets residential areas, is not available in St. Louis.) WeCar joins a U-Haul program with the self-explanatory name U Car Share, available in college cities like Ann Arbor, Mich., and Berkeley, Calif. Car rental companies Hertz and Avis are also eyeing car-sharing. Because, as we all learned in kindergarten, sharing is caring.

source: The Wall Street Journal
see also, in Grist: Rental and car-share companies get hip to hybrids

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Comments: (6 comments)

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Good Or Bad Idea?

If car sharing gets people out of individual cars and into shared ones, it could be a stepping stone to getting people out of cars altogether, which would be great for the planet.

OK, now that I've awakened from a pleasant dream, this looks like another way to get more people to drive, which is awful. Notice that the program "will target employees who commute without a car to work and then need a vehicle during the day," though this doesn't make sense. If people are not driving to work, how could they be using vehicles during the day? And who needs a car while at work?

by Wolverine at 5:17 PM on 07 Feb 2008

Perhaps...

If people are not driving to work, how could they be using vehicles during the day? And who needs a car while at work?

Perhaps they take mass transit to work, but then need a car to get to a conference or business meeting dusing the day or somethin'. That's 'bout all I can figure.

by Tasermons Partner at 6:45 PM on 07 Feb 2008

Go WeCar!

Folks who'd use this service:
Realtors. Attorneys. College professors on dispersed campuses. Physicians working at multiple locations. Reporters. Social workers. Architects. Business executives. Any office worker needing to make a visit to a child's school function or meet a dental appointment without taking the whole day off.

In a few American cities with truly effective public transportation cabs, buses and subways are faster and more convenient (no hunting for parking spots at your destination). Everywhere else, a busy professional can't spend two hours on cross-town bus commute to a mid-day meeting if a car takes you there in ten minutes. So though there may be commuter transit available at the beginning/end of the work day s/he drives to work to cope with those interim trips. And as the car's sitting there why not drive to lunch as well...

Certainly, good public transportation is better than car-share. But until the general infrastructure gets up to Manhattan's standards, these services can undoubtedly help reduce congestion and emissions, especially if high-performance autos like the Prius are the vehicles of choice.

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.

by spaceshaper at 8:27 PM on 07 Feb 2008

I Would Love to Have Access to This!

I live in Green Bay, Wisconsin where the mass transit is poor at best (primarily because people in this city are way too in love with their cars and feel above riding the bus). My boyfriend and I share a car so most days we carpool to work and I am left with no vehicle. The nature of my job brings me to a lot of meetings. Sometimes I have access to a staff vehicle and sometimes I don't. A program like this would open up so many doors for me and keep me from having to mooch rides from all my co-workers. I hope enterprise brings this to our area.

http://greenmadesimple.blogspot.com

by luannrudolph at 7:11 AM on 08 Feb 2008

Sharing is Much Better Than Owning

Car sharing really works pretty well. It makes people think before using it and it also makes people pay the full cost of a trip including maintenance, depreciation and insurance. If people own a car, it is simply way to easy to use it all the time and since the fixed costs of owning and operating a car are much larger than the operating costs, people have little financial incentive once they own a car, to use it less.

People can also choose the type of vehicle that is appropriate for the trip. If they are carrying a lot of people or transporting bulky items, they can use a van or SUV. IF they are driving by themselves, they can use a small fuel efficient car.

Sharing a car between 5 and 10 is sustainable. Everyone owning their own car is not.

We have 2 car sharing firms in Vancouver and it works well.

by racc at 10:07 AM on 08 Feb 2008

Sharing is Loving

It is indeed a very affordable to rent a car but owning a car is very different. But everybody loves to have one, am I right? Car-Hip Enterprise is cool enough to offer this kind of service. I could feature this on Autopartswarehouse Blog, could I?

by bOlogOs at 1:29 AM on 30 May 2008

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