DriveNow is a car-sharing program launched by BMW and European car rental company Sixt that allows you to locate and rent the nearest car within a given city’s limits via its website or mobile app. What sets DriveNow apart from other car-share services is you don’t need a reservation and you can park and leave the car anywhere you want rather than returning it to a home garage. You could rent a car for 20 mins to drive to work, end your rental, stay at work for eight hours, and rent another DriveNow car to go home.
This flexibility contrasts to services like ZipCar, which require you to make a reservation for a set amount of time and return your car to a specific garage (penalties fees are applied if you don’t return the car by the end of your period).
The service is BMW’s attempt to future-proof itself from the changing nature of car usage and ownership. With car ownership decreasing and urban-living on the increase, having a car that does 150 mph on the autobahn and is parked in your suburban garage will become increasingly irrelevant. Tomorrow’s driver will need a car that can handle 25 mph around town and be easily parked.
DriveNow is also connected with BMW’s upcoming i3 electric vehicle (pictured above), which is the company’s first EV geared specifically to city living. In the future, DriveNow will be connected to charging stations around a city for low-emission temporary urban transit.
Here’s the rub: DriveNow is almost exclusively in Germany, with locations in Munich, Berlin, Dusseldorf and Cologne. Currently, their fleets are internal combustion engines, which enables the flexibility of returns (i.e. you can park on the street rather than finding a charging station). Rates are €29 cents/minute for driving and €10 cents/min for parking. These rates include parking and gas; fuel levels are visible when you book your car. DriveNow also includes on their maps proximity to bike share stations.
They have one US location in the Bay Area, whose fleet is made up of BMW’s ActiveE, an all electric version of their 1 Series car. Because of the need to charge, you need to return the cars to one of the designated garages, though not necessarily the one where you picked the car up. All stations are located near BART stations. Rates are $12 for the first half hour then $.32 each additional minute and $90 for the day. There is a one time $39 registration fee.
Ideally, a service like DriveNow would be brand-agnostic–i.e. not attached to a particular carmaker. But we find the idea of on-demand, restriction-free car sharing pretty exciting. Imagine being able to rent any car parked on the street whenever you want. While the per drive expense is surely much greater than car ownership, the lack of overhead and flexibility seems well worth it. And with bigger fleets and costs spread out over more members, the per drive cost would likely go down while available cars increase.
According to Wikipedia, parallel-parking spaces, the kind that predominate in cities, use a whopping 182 sq ft. If you regularly park in cities, you know where this huge footprint comes from: There’s the length of the car, the space needed to pull out of the space and the irregular gaps that form when various-sized cars come and go. This latter factor often leaves spaces that are one foot too short for your car, rendering large swaths of prime real estate useless.
Considering that the micro-units we’ve been talking about measure 160-300 sq ft, the amount of urban area devoted to parking is a huge issue. A couple decidedly experimental housing concepts are taking different tacts in dealing with parking and living in the city.
The first is Aaron Cheng’s Parking + Housing, which is an entry in the James Dyson Award. The idea is that urban workers are typically not at home during the day, leaving behind tons of unused real estate. Commuters, on the other hand, come into the city and need space for their cars. P + H reconciles these needs by having a pneumatic structure that compresses during the day to provide parking for commuter (above). During the days, the structure extends to reveal a single-unit apartment (below). Furniture moves with space in its transformation (see video below).
Parking + Housing at night. Credit: Aaron Cheng
The idea, while interesting, has some big gaps in logic like late nights at the office. Do the apartment dwellers have to wait til the project is done? Or sick days. Do commuters need to park elsewhere?
The other concept is called upLIFT, which inserts prefab housing units in existing parking structures, such as the parking elevators common in New York City (below). The project was part of the HOME competition run by Building Trust International, which sought to find single occupancy housing solutions for under $30K.
The panels of the structures are made of recycled material and designed to incorporate rainwater collection, solar panels and vine-walls.
What is interesting about upLIFT versus Parking + Housing is that it chooses to design around a less car-dependent future rather than accommodating commuters. Then again, it does little for the present, with it’s full lots and clogged streets.
Both of these concepts seem to dwell in possible futures more than suggest real solutions. In terms of real solutions, congestion pricing is a low-tech, yet effective way of keeping cities free of cars. What the often-unpopular-policy does is charge cars for entering certain zones of a city at certain times. London, a city who has instituted the policy since 2003, charges £10 ($16) for entering its congestion zone. One 2007 study found that traffic within the zone was reduced by 30%. While we couldn’t find parking statistics, it’s fair to say that there was a commensurate effect on parking as commuters who would otherwise park in the city leave their cars at home.
Of course, there are smaller cars and any form of two wheel transportation, both of which take up a fraction of the space that conventional car parking does.
What do you think? Should we design our cities with cars in mind or is that like laying new telegraph lines across the Atlantic?
Last week, we showed a family living an edited rural life, showing that densely-packed, tiny-apartmented cities aren’t the only environments that support pared-down living. We ran across another version of this way of life that is neither urban, suburban, rural or any of the above: it’s mobile.
images via liveworkdream.com
In 2007, René Agredano and Jim Nelson, inspired by their dog’s diagnosis of bone cancer, quit their corporate jobs, sold their home and most of their possessions, bought a truck and an RV trailer and hit the road with Jerry, their sick doggy to evaluate their lives. After realizing they could support themselves from the road through a combination of online businesses, freelance work and some labor, the trip, meant as a sabbatical, became a lifestyle. They have been going at it for 5+ years with no plan to stop.
We shot René a few questions via email regarding their lifestyle–asking about things like the pros/cons of RV living, their carbon footprint and what landlubbers might learn from their perambulating lifestyle.
LE: What is the best part of your lifestyle?
René Agredano: We can sum up the best part of our lifestyle in one word: Freedom. We have the freedom to live as we wish, work where we want and when we want. Being location independent entrepreneurs gives us the flexibility to go where the weather’s nice and experience all that this great big world has to offer, without sacrificing our need to earn an income.
LE: What is the worst part?
RA: Dealing with the unexpected. When you’re stationery, life is broken up into a series of predictable routines that rarely vary. But when your scenery changes throughout the year, unexpected challenges are always around the corner and there’s a big learning curve in discovering how to cope with them.
Unexpected events ranging from mechanical failures with your rig, to severe weather situations you’ve never experienced before, to something as simple as navigating your way through a new grocery store layout. All of these things challenge your ability to think on your feet and be positive while encountering the unknown.
LE: Can you say something about rising gas prices?
RA: We’re glad we have a diesel pickup and a relatively small fifth wheel trailer (24′ feet), which helps to keep our fuel bill down. And as fuel prices go up, our lifestyle gives us the ability to choose how much or how little we want to drive, unlike people who are tied down by a daily commute or suburban lifestyle.
Rising prices used to scare us, and they really hurt at the pump when we have to swipe our debit card twice! But since we’ve carefully track all of our expenses over the last 5 years, we’ve discovered that on average, we spend less than $400 a month on fuel, which probably less than what the average commuter spends driving to and from work each month.
Also, while we might travel longer distances in one shot while getting from Point A to Point B, we still drive much less frequently than most people. Once we’re in one location, we do little driving other than to the grocery store or sightseeing because we work from our rig.
LE: How do you view the issue of sustainability and your lifestyle? We saw on your blog that something about using bio-diesel. Can you say more about that?
RA: We’re from Northern California, where being an environmentalist is the de facto way of life. Before we started traveling, we were avid backpackers. Whenever we saw a big RV hauling down Highway 101, we would scoff and think “gas hog!” But now that we became one of them, we’ve realized that’s not the case for fulltimers anyhow. If someone is full-timing in their RV, even the biggest 40′ rigs have a smaller carbon footprint than the traditional lifestyle of living in a house or even a small apartment.
For example, as RVers who choose to boondock (forego standard electric, water and sewer hookups) most of the time, we are living off-grid in remote areas with solar power and satellite internet service. By not staying in RV parks unless the weather is exceptionally cold or hot, we’re not consuming a whole lot of resources. Also, we don’t consume stuff on the same level as most people, because with less space we just can’t stock up or buy things on a regular basis. We live in about 100 square feet! Whenever anything new comes into the rig, something has to go to make it fit.
One of the reasons we bought our Dodge Ram diesel pickup, was so that we could make and run biodiesel in it (a mix of veggie & diesel), or eventually convert it to run on waste vegetable oil (WVO). But the practicalities of making our own fuel have eluded us, and these days, finding anyone selling biodiesel is like a needle in a haystack. The industry has just tanked because of the bad rap the palm oil industry has received (there is debate about the ethics of harvesting these trees for fuel instead of using that land for food) and it’s really sad to see. We’re still petroleum-slaves, I hate it.
LE: Do you have a storage unit or did you really get rid of everything that couldn’t fit in you trailer?
RA: When we first hit the road, the plan was to do it for one year, then settle down and get back to “the real world” again. We sold off most of what we owned but kept got a small storage unit for things we didn’t want to have to re-purchase, like basic furniture, as well as some sentimental things. Well, one year turned into two and when we finally returned to that storage unit, we saw that we didn’t get rid of as much stuff as we thought we did. It was scary to realize that our mindset about downsizing was so different when we first hit the road. After living in a tiny space for two consecutive years, now we realize how very little we need to be happy, and it comes down to less than 1/4 of what we left in that unit!
One of our lifetime goals was to own some property, so today we own a very nice paid-for RV site on 5 acres in the Colorado Rockies. It also happens to come with a guest cabin for our visiting friends! But the cabin is off-line and not using any resources for about 10 out of 12 months. We only go there occasionally, since we still love traveling too much.
LE: How long do you plan to continue?
RA: Indefinitely! We’re having too much fun to even think about hanging up our keys.
LE: Any living strategies you can lend the non-mobile?
RA: Yes! Whether you enjoy life on the road or in a stick house, the key to living simply and being happy is to remain debt free. Living unburdened by monthly payments allows you so much more freedom. You can enjoy life to the fullest, be prepared for unexpected expenses and not live in fear of losing your job because you have so many bills to pay. Ever since we became debt free, we aren’t working just to pay bills…we have more time to to pursue our hobbies and interests that may not pay a lot of money, but make us fulfilled, like the Tripawds.com community we founded for canine amputees and their humans!
But when it comes down to it, as Dave Ramsey says, debt is a symptom of insufficient income. We have learned that the best solution to staying financially solvent and able to pursue our passions is to diversify our revenue streams and focus on earning passive, ongoing income. Instead of relying one one business for all of our earnings, we have several different endeavors that each bring in revenue streams each month. Cumulatively they all add up and we’ll never go back to a traditional small business structure again. We believe this is one of the best ways to protect ourselves against economic catastrophe, so now our mission is to help others do the same, through our remote home-based business ebook (www.bit.ly/incomeanywhere) and free coaching at Agreda.com.
In his youth, my father’s primary mode of cross-country transport was hitchhiking. A thumb and a clean shave were the currency for a ticket anywhere.
A few well-publicized stories about rides gone wrong, the introduction of cheaper, more reliable cars for the masses and some states banning the practice more-or-less killed hitchhiking in America.
San Francisco-based Zimride has a 21st Century answer for this once-loved, now-maligned institution. On their site, people post where they are going, how many seats they have and how much money they want for those seats. Potential riders opt into the ride, which the driver accepts or not. Riders buy a seat and drivers receive the money via PayPal. A sample fare is $35 to get from LA to Vegas; this is not too much more than gas share for a similar ride. While it doesn’t seem to be the primary motivation, drivers can make a little money if they pack their cars.
There are connections to Facebook and profiles of drivers and riders in order to weed out sketchy chauffeurs and passengers alike. Motor-vehicle and criminal records are checked for all drivers.
Zimride’s other features include an iPhone and Android app for booking on the go, and a large university and corporate network, which is focused more on commuting. Midwesterners might be waiting a while for a ride as most of the rides are on one or the other coast.
Zimride has also launched a beta version of an app called Lyft, which searches for nearby non-professional drivers who are willing to give you a ride. As this is system is of somewhat specious legality, riders are expected to “donate” 80% of what they’d pay for a comparable cab ride. If they don’t honor that, drivers can flag riders as a deadbeat. A Techcrunch article reported there are about 100 drivers in San Francisco using Lyft, so it might be a while before you use it.
The average commuter car carries a measly 1.1 passengers according to a 2009 DOT study. Cars everywhere are begging to be filled, but unfortunately informal hitchhiking has acquired too much baggage over the years. And though Zimride doesn’t have that devil-may-care spontaneity of old-school hitchhiking, it does fill cars, giving people lifts to places they need to go for not too much money.
We’re big fans of Zipcar and similar services. They allow people who don’t need a car full time to have on-demand access to cars when they need them, for as much or as little time as necessary.
A site called RelayRides is trying to get in on that action. Rather than dealing with a corporation however, RelayRides allows peer-to-peer car rentals–sorta like an Airbnb for the automotive world. RelayRides takes people’s slumbering cars and puts them to work as well as making some cash for the owners.
Car owners set their cars price and availability and renters book the cars online. Owners review the request before their car is booked. Protection comes in the form a $1M insurance policy for both owners and renters; 24 roadside assistance comes with the package. Riders are screened to make sure Thelma and Louise don’t rent your convertible.
In terms of money, owners get 60% of the reservation fee. Yep, that’s right–40% go to RelayRide (a hot topic on their comment board). Cars seem to rent for around $7-50/hr, with majority for around $15. Renters cover gas charges.
We wish RelayRides the best, but wonder about their value proposition. Their prices are higher than Zipcar whose prices start at $9/hr in NYC (lower in other regions); oh yeah, this includes gas. RelayRides reservations are not instantaneous and in some cases both parties have to arrange a key exchange (“select” cars can be opened with a cellphone). Zipcar members have a card that allows them to open the door for any reserved car. To be fair, there is a yearly registration fee for Zipcar ($60 in NYC).
I am quite familiar with using Zipcar. I’ve used it for several years, and excepting a few late returns and last-minute reservations switches, I’ve been quite happy with the service.
Have you used RelayRides? What was your experience? Would you recommend it? Are there other similar services we should be looking at? Let us know.
