Comments on: ZipCar, Google, cars and the inevitability of the Internet

By: Suraya Adnan

Suraya Adnan — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 14:47:44 +0000

Great story – so true that these traditional businesses need to learn and embrace ideas from the tech industry to be able to cater to changing consumer demand.

By: Maarlon1

Maarlon1 — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 11:51:42 +0000

In a close future we will be forced and motivated to become more efficient and savy in everything, from our time to spending on vehicles, houses etc. Zipcar kind of a solutios will pop in many industries.

By: tobinw

tobinw — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 02:48:57 +0000

This thread reminds me of a talk that I witnessed by the great Peter Drucker at a JD Power conference many years ago. I vividly remember the talk, because you could hear a pin drop in the room. His speech focused on the day when the automaker’s brand would become obsolete, because the consumer would eventually pick and choose pieces of vehicles from different makes based on their excellence (e.g. – Audi, quattro drive, Toyota engines, Honda bumpers) to assemble their own custom car. He envisioned a day, when this would all be done on a system – by picking, clicking and then having the vehicle built offshore or wherever and ultimately delivered directly to your home. No dealer, no brand, just a custom made vehicle to your specs. This was way before the internet. Interesting to see how close we are coming to his vision from some 20 years ago. It would not surprise me to see this actually occur in my lifetime.

By: Marlon Feld, WebINTENSIVE Software

Marlon Feld, WebINTENSIVE Software — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 22:14:03 +0000

Zipcar is a fascinating example of this trend, and so are Google’s ventures into automotive technology. Maybe in the not-too-distant future people will think of cars as just one more kind of mobile device. Since automation will free up the occupant’s hands and attention for other things, I can envision cars becoming fully interactive environments, complete with downloadable apps, that just happen to be able to take you places while you’re working, studying, surfing the Web, etc. But who in the future economy will be able to afford these iCars? That’s going to be a big question. This piece is great food for thought – thank you.

By: Eddie

Eddie — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 12:46:44 +0000

Om, I wouldn’t hold your breath for power utilities to be hot to trot as change agents. They will likely do some experimentation in the hopes that great sites like GigaOm will write stories about them (giving the perception that they’re really out to help the customer). Utilities are regulated localized monopolies and there is very little incentive for them to change (where the changes would be harmful to their bottom line). Just ask Al Gore!

By: Mark

Mark — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 10:39:14 +0000

Om, your “revenue chart” is totally fake. It reflects not at all Avis, but instead Avis + Cendant and then Avis. While Avis has nothing near the revenue growth of Zipcar, it’s a growing company and has been for years. Quite frankly, I have no idea what that Y-charts chart is showing or why you felt it was worthy of inclusion in what is otherwise a well thought out post, but it’s just… wrong…

Avis annual revenue in 2006 was $5.7 billion, up from $5.4 billion in 2005. It was $4.8 billion in 2004, $4.7 billion in 2003 and $3 billion in 2002.

My source, by the way, is Avis annual report, filed with SEC, not some ridiculously inaccurate Y-charts file that is for all of Cendant, presumably. It’s here: http://ir.avisbudgetgroup.com/secfiling.cfm?filingID=1193125-07-44472&CIK=723612

The business is slow growing and dull — certainly Zipcar might provide some “zip” if you will — but it’s not falling off a cliff like your highly misleading chart would indicate.

By: Guru Ashish Sidhu

Guru Ashish Sidhu — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 07:59:34 +0000

Really like the article. The analysis and the advice is what a good eco-site should give so as to put the story in to perspective for a novice reader

By: Larry

Larry — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 01:24:26 +0000

Last Paragraph: free advice

By: gr8bkset

gr8bkset — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 22:27:15 +0000

I read somewhere that owning a car in the US costs about $5000 per year. The average person drive 1 or 2 hours per day and leave our cars unused and depreciate for the other 22 hours . When I visited S. America, I found that people there could not afford their own cars, yet have access to efficient transportation through buses, van-pools and taxis for around $2 – $4 per day.

The recent recession have forced citizens in America to find ways to get by with less income. The marriage of ZIP and Avis provides opportunities to improve transportation efficiency by making use of Avis’ under-utilized fleet of cars to provide ZIP with mass ubiquity in urban areas. Using smartphones, user are able schedule access to rentals in realtime. When hourly rental mass adoption becomes significant, users may no longer need to “hang-on to their cars” when they plan to park for more than an hour. They simply make their car available when they park and use their smartphone to reserve the closest available car 15 minutes prior to needing transportation.

By: dsandrowitz

dsandrowitz — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 22:09:41 +0000

So a shrinking behemoth buys a money losing upstart…I fail to see how this is a good thing. ZipCar seems revolutionary 12 years ago when they got started, but just stale to me nowadays. And I think it is a big stretch to suggest that the drop in revenue or profits for large rental car companies had anything to do with a timesharing model that was about 1/25 the size, at least as far as financials go. The rental car companies suffer far more from changes to insurance rates and laws as well as fuel price volatility than car sharing, although I do think that a sharing model could actually allow rental companies to do a better job of baking in fuel price and of smoothing out some of the peaks over time.