ReachNow – BMW car sharing service in Seattle
bmwcarsharing.com
bmwcarsharing.com
Shameless promotion:
Android app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.reachnow.c...
iPhone app: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/reach-now/id972572486?mt=8
Also, we are hiring: aj+hn@ridecell.com or http://www.RideCell.com/careers.html
This concept might be a good opportunity for US sunbelt retirement communities where traditional ownership doesn't make sense due to the car sitting empty in 100F+ all summer long. In some of those communities there are plenty of shaded parking spots under the solar panels.
As far as I can tell, they were asking for permission to park anywhere. Maybe there's a general-case problem there to solve for, but I'm not sure why "by-the-minute car rental for rich people" is a pressing problem for the city government to solve given the long list of other possible priorities.
The city has certainly been very supportive of car sharing in general; I've been a user in SF for more than a decade and the city has done a lot to push it forward.
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Car-sharing-firms-gett...
Having met the SF leadership I know they are working on this, and it's a difficult political issue, but I hope San Francisco can allocate more on-street parking to free floating carsharing.
I understand wanting to use your cars for marketing, but at least do what zipcar did: don't place any stickers on the driver side so the driver feels like they're getting into a premium car.
1) chrystal clear advertising 2) differentiation in value vs. an unbranded car 3) easy recognition for users that are trying to find their car2go
DriveNov/ReachNow are nicer cars, but also more expensive and that places their buisness plan under different constraints. Just to prove 3): driveNow's placement of branding on their cars feels more premium than car2go's. But this low-profile labeling comes with a cost. Drive now had to implement a feature in their mobile app for making the car honk or flashing its lights because otherwise you've had a hard time finding your booked car between all the other black or white BMW1s.
BMW wouldn't want to cannibalize their primary source of revenue (selling luxury cars). One way to maintain the value of owning a BMW is to lower the status of their rental cars. Keeps owners happy and likely doesn't bother renters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDr4L6BzpP8
tl;dr A guy who sells $500k reports of cars for competing manufacturers says the i3 is revolutionary (in materials and construction).
I do miss DriveNow, at least weekly. Having an ActiveE or later, an i3 to run errands or take friends around town was really really great, and the pricing was insane ($60 for 24 hours, all inclusive! It started at $30 when they first launched. I was renting cars for a month at a time because it was cheaper than owning/leasing when you consider that parking at my office building was $700/month).
Since they are paying for the parking I don't really see what the issue is. If the cars are out somewhere being charged they won't be in a parking spot. Using parking spots for shared cars is more efficient and should actually increase the turnover of spots while still providing consistent revenue to the city (without having to worry about enforcement or actually collecting the revenue).
> The company says the decision was influenced by the lack of parking permit regulations necessary for one-way car sharing. “Until the current regulations are amended, we must suspend service in the San Francisco Bay Area,” DriveNow reads in a statement. “We fully expect to return once the city reforms its parking policies to allow for one-way car sharing. We will continue to work with the city of San Francisco toward achieving that goal.”
https://us.drive-now.com/ redirects to http://www.bmwcarsharing.com
BMW partnered with us (RideCell) to relaunch in North America.
Also, volcanoes.
> FEMA projects that nearly thirteen thousand people will die in the Cascadia earthquake and tsunami. Another twenty-seven thousand will be injured, and the agency expects that it will need to provide shelter for a million displaced people, and food and water for another two and a half million.
> we now know that the odds of the big Cascadia earthquake happening in the next fifty years are roughly one in three. The odds of the very big one are roughly one in ten.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big-...
(i.e. don't be like SpaceX, Google, Facebook, ... who have all opened offices up there)
I've been here for almost two years but I'm still not used to the lack of sunshine for most of the year.
The fleet management aspect of it is less interesting since I've seen quite a few companies operating in this space already.
Their service works really, really well I have to say. Almost every time there is a car parked close by, you rent them by the minute and park them anywhere. It is also much cheaper than Uber a cab or god forbid your own car.
[1]: http://drive-now.com
Any plans to add premium models like the M series?
The 3 series cars are in the fleet right now. Can't comment on a specific model but there'll be more coming :)
As an engineer myself, consider that you may be underestimating the complexity of working with hardware in the car, something most apps don't have to worry about.
Having driven and really enjoyed the i3, I realized -- why does a premium car make less sense in the electric segment as in the gas segment? Either way, they're unnecessary, but it doesn't matter there aren't tangible advantages over their econobox counterparts.