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Comment by Someone1234 | Hacker News Reader

Related to this I have the "best-worst" idea for a business...

So everyone hates car dealerships. But we need to test drive vehicles (or physically look at them). Right now car demos are linked to buying, and therefore the dealership.

What if there was a business that ONLY did car demos? You go in, and there's a row of SUVs from all the major manufacturers.

This saves you from driving all over town for the different dealership, and because they aren't selling you vehicles it is a no-pressure situation.

I'd pay money for this. But people are cheap and I doubt it would work as a concept, unless buying cars online became the norm.

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I thought this post was sarcasting and only halfway through I've realized that you're actually serious. Renting. It's a thing. You can rent cars for short periods.

Yeah but no one is doing a one day rental on the 4 cars they want to drive. Not to mention finding the exact make/model they are looking for.

If I’m interested in a car, I’ll try and rent one for a few days on Turo. It’s a great way to see what it’s like to actually live with the car. I’m never buying without renting again.

It's difficult to rent a specific car from most traditional car rental businesses. They generally take reservations for a class of car (economy, intermediate, full-size, etc.)

I thought of this idea recently as well. You pay $20 bucks or whatever and get to drive X number of cars, book your time slot online, etc.

You would have to have enough volume to justify the inventory that is sitting on your lot. And what if someone wants to test drive a 2017 instead of a 2018 or a 2014 etc... The number of combinations of various makes, models, and years, seems like you could never cover the overhead and be profitable unless you specialize in specific niches.

You can rent other people's cars with turo. https://turo.com

The carmax experience isn't too far off from this. Carmax specializes in used cars. However, most of their used cars are 3-5 years old. I've always used them as a starting point when I'm not sure which make or model I want for my next car.

I suspect the capital costs of this would make the business unsustainable. The company would have to maintain essentially a dealership sized inventory of cars, but instead of having the revenue stream of car sales they'd just have to rely on this test drive fee. How many $20 test drives would people have to take in order to offset the costs of buying millions of dollars worth of cars?

It would make more sense for the manufacturers to just have test-drive centres.

I’ve been doing my test drives with Getaround. They don’t have everything, but for the cars they do have, you can actually spend some time with the thing on your own terms.

And the developers can call the process test driven development!

Providing the latest vehicles for people to try is expensive. It only really works if you make the money from selling them.

Car shows.

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