Users without a cell connection find they can’t get back into their Zipcar | Hacker News Reader

Users without a cell connection find they can’t get back into their Zipcar

wsj.com

61 pointslxm104 comments

This is specifically a Zipcar (multiple vehicle vendors, less car infotainment integration) problem, even happens in urban garages. Similar article written about this a year or two ago.

Reachnow (BMW based) when it was around solved the issue by having a pin code you enter, Car2Go (Mercedes based) probably also did I think.

Here's the other hn post from 3 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20873234 , and my more detailed comment from then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20884046

Car2Go just allowed you to take the key with you during stopovers, so you don't have to deal with that.

Also, GIG Car Share will mail users an RFID card free of charge to solve this problem: https://gigcarshare.com/gig-card/

You have to watch out though, if you hold the card to the reader too long it will end your (perhaps prepaid, multi-day) reservation.

The gig card never worked for me in Seattle, not sure why but always needed to use the app to unlock. The card was one of the in theory “best parts” of Gig for me but oh well. Haven’t needed or used the service in over a year

The weird thing is I was told in the past that Zipcar's telematics module would retain the last 'active' card when it's out of cell coverage, plus has a fixed set of 'local' cards programmed to it (eg, for fleet service).

There is also typically a 'local' card available in situations like parking garages where the Zipcar is valeted up and away from the public. It'll always start the vehicle session, signal or no.

That "lodge" the 3 girls had to stay in was the Salish Lodge & Spa [0], which is pretty damn expensive. I recognized it from a stay there once, it's a beautiful area, I think it was $300-$400 for the cheap rooms.

Hopefully, these companies can figure out a way to prevent this, or to warn the users when they might lose access to the car, or else someday this will be a national news article when a whole family dies in a desert somewhere.

[0]: "Salish Lodge & Spa, Railroad Avenue, Snoqualmie, WA 98024"

Snoqualmie is 4 hours away from Forks by car, but the article says that it took them 45 minutes to drive back to the trailhead next day, so it must've been some other place. The photo in the article is probably from earlier in their roadtrip - if you're driving to the Olympic peninsula from the east, stopping somewhere in the I-90 corridor is natural.

There was also some mention of Rattlesnake Lake, which is in about the same area(ish) of the Salish Lodge, but equally as distant from Forks as Snoqualmie. So I don't know what the whole story is, either. OTOH, the point of the story has nothing to do with their exact location in WA, either. :-)

Confirmed. Live near the falls, have driven to Forks. That’s a 4+ hour trip not 45 minutes.

The natural area around there had very bad cell service, plus I recognize the little store they made a call from in the article as the little store inside Salish lodge. Plus, it was 45 minutes from the trail where they got picked up by the couple, not 45 minutes from Seattle that they mentioned in the article?

There are many natural areas around Western WA with poor-to-non-existing cell coverage. It's pretty bad around the Lodge specifically, true - I live in North Bend (which is also near the Snoqualmie Falls and the Lodge), and coverage on the outskirts of the city is bad enough that when we moved here a few years ago, we had to get phones that could do GAN / WiFi Calling to have reliable service.

But the article specifically talks of the Olympic National Park, which is also mostly uncovered. And even if they were hiking somewhere in the eastern parts of it, there's no trailhead anywhere on the Olympic peninsula that's 45 minutes away from the Salish Lodge. OTOH 45 minutes is exactly how long it takes to get from the Lodge to Seattle in normal traffic, so it would make sense if the car was already towed there by then. But then the article specifically talks about "45-minute drive back to the trailhead".

I suspect it's just a case of a non-local journalist misunderstanding some of the pieces from the interviews and cobbling the story together the best they could.

Ah I see, yea I’m not from around there either, so maybe things got mixed up in the article because I totally missed that they were hiking in Olympic park. Hopefully the girls didn’t need to eat the unexpected hotel stay, wherever it was.

The article mentions Zipcar paying a $365 cab bill for another family, so it's possible?

It's also the iconic Great Northern Hotel from Twin Peaks.

We downloaded some shows from netflix before we went off grid so we would have something to watch in case there was some down time.

Sure enough, we couldn't watch them. The netflix app needed to phone home before it would allow us to see them.

That's why you sail the seven seas and download them from places other than Netflix

That's DRM for you. Never trust it. Get a phone with expandable storage and fill your SD card(s) with GBs of non-DRM encumbered media and you can enjoy having it all instantly accessible to you whenever/wherever you want it for as long as you like.

Control is what DRM takes from you, but we have the technology to take it back for ourselves.

The 'R' does not stand for "rights" (but I'm sure you know that)

Not your (the consumer's) rights anyway.

Or run your own server like emby or plex both have offline access / download for their mobile apps...

Plex offline has never worked for me. It always freezes and never downloads anything. It's astonishing how janky the Plex app is, even after so long.

VLC is available for both flavors of phone/tablet, you don't need an SD card, builtin storage is fine.

builtin storage is tiny (typically 128 or 256 GB) to force people into keeping all their data in the cloud, which doesn't help you when you're offline.

On Android, you can usually plug flash drives into the phone's USB port (either USB-C drives or using the correct dongles/adapters). They might insist you format them first so make sure you start by plugging them in and formatting on the phone before adding media. I think there's some apps that can read, for instance, NTFS (although I remember it being a little flakey)

I never heard about that before, but if that works it'd be amazing! Now I just have to dig up an adapter...

A feature to look for is OTG (USB On The Go) connectors and devices.

This allows storage, peripherals (wired headphones!) to connect to the USB-C port:

<https://www.minitool.com/news/what-is-otg.html>

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_On-The-Go>

You can also do this with iOS/iPadOS devices, although it won’t write NTFS.

You get what you pay for, iPhones, for example, top out at 1TB.

If the tiny built in storage is to "force people" to do things, what are the models with lots of storage for?

Or, if that's your thing, feel free to cheap out on the phone and make up for it with a microSD card, that's why they still sell those models. I'm sure it'll get lots of security updates too, right?

Point being VLC doesn't care whether your phone has a headphone jack. Sorry, I meant SD slot.

> Sure enough, we couldn't watch them. The netflix app needed to phone home before it would allow us to see them.

I had this happen before. I was able to work around it by switching the phone to Airplane Mode. Then it allowed me to see the downloaded content.

Airplane mode usually snaps the app out of its phone home setting. Amazon Video is much less buggy about offline downloads.

ObX: <https://xkcd.com/488/>

I've been a member of ZipCar for well over a decade, from when they first came to London and issued the plastic NFC cards. Then it was the smaller ones that could attach to a keyring, and for the past 5 or so years - just the mobile app.

This is very anecdotal, but I never really had any issues - even more so, the last ZipCar hire I did took me from downtown SF to the Muir Woods (no cell reception at all). I had no issues locking / unlocking the car during the trip - I'm fairly certain it uses bluetooth for the connection between app and car; but likely needs data for starting or ending a trip.

I remember having issues with locking when going to Muir Woods, though I don't remember the details. I think one time years ago I just left it unlocked for our whole home (not my most responsible move)

The most surprising part of this to me is finding parking at Muir Woods!

Not really much about being "off-grid", only relevant to see how much absurd tech is build and offered...

While I'm not off-grid, building my new home I try to reach a certain level of "local backups" to be "off-grid for some time", the real result is that so far all tech is designed to keep a door open to the vendor as much as possible, typically AGAINST formal owner/buyer interests.

There is no "really off-grid" solution so far. There is really no protections so far because most of people DO NOT CARE being connected not together, a natural thing being social animals, but to few giants who master all "connections" like shepherds who manage their flocks.

Cars? Oh, that's a nice part of the hall of shame: formally BEVs can be really off-grid since POTENTIALLY you can recharge them from local p.v. so virtually having years of limited autonomy. Well... ALL BEVs (and all new cars, in general) I know off are so stuffed of crapware and connected crap including ways to push the user connecting the car to craphones that being off grid for sure means being able to switch planet or perhaps try some far lands in Central Asia, South America or Antarctic...

I do not know how much ability to survive in nature we lost while evolving vs how much actual earth is less fertile than the past, but well... I feel that the war to be off-grid in the sense of being a bit autonomous is simply an already lost war like privacy, for mere lack of fighters for the defending front. We can just spend money in expensive potential backups of various kind hoping those who have designed them will not use the big pile of backdoors a day.

I laugh, but then again I recently lost my job a few weeks ago. Thought I would fly home to check-in with my mother and take a sabbatical holiday from the 15 years. I got out of the taxi, hadn't realised that my phone had fallen out of my pocket; ran for the taxi but was too late.

The first feeling was anxiety. After accepting that, it was jealously. Walking past all the strangers in the airport on their phone while I wait for my flight with no music proceeded to anger. I wanted to lash out at someone for my own mistake; delayed flight or something would of given me a perfect excuse. However everything went smoothly surprisingly as the flights home are normally delayed. And then after three hours of flight finally acceptance that for the next four weeks I won't have a phone.

In these four weeks, I've gotten a interview (tomorrow), surprised my mother as I've never been a museum fan and become really eager to wanting to visit more. Found and finally resolved things about myself and have been reading more books than I have ever of thought. Tonights book was on surrealism.

It does have it caveats which really it doesn't. I have gotten in contact with the taxi driver, they being scottish had their line of "enjoy your holiday without the pish of technology".

I wanted to be offgrid and I have been. Maybe this is the wine speaking, but back to my book on surrealism which I never ever thought I would be reading. But to do something simple living life for a bit without technology really does wonders, more good than bad. Sounds scary, but eh, I don't want it back. Would recommend.

I really enjoyed your comment. I feel like it is vaguely unusual in structure. Typically a story that is dominated by tangents like this will be wheeling off in random directions. This is instead one cohesive story -- a single long tangent -- which is continuously walking away from the original topic, but is somehow linked back by the occasional tenuous connection. That book must have put you in a good writing space.

I once flew to SF for a weeklong work onsite and realized as I was going through security that I'd left my phone on my bed at home.

People at work looked at me like I was an alien, but honestly I had a better time in SF than I ever had before, just organically discovering different things as I walked around (which I always do anyways when I visit cities, much prefer walking to trains, and prefer trains to taxis/cars).

Having a good book or two and journal helps alleviate the boredom in a much more fulfilling way. And then just allowing yourself to be bored and sit and think feels good too.

For those that have grown up with smartphones, they probably have never learnt the skills required to navigate the world without one. I am guessing you subconsciously fell back on your childhood skills, where you needed to be mostly independent. What happens when you don’t have those skills to fall back on?

Sort of like being with your older relatives and seeing them easily fix an engine, manage without power, garden (edit: food and looks), or apply so many skills learned through necessity. Some of that is an independent attitude, especially prevalent in anyone with a rural background, which appears less prevalent with modern devices and helicopter parenting styles.

As a Zip Car user, it sure is a serious PITA...and sometimes worse than range anxiety...

I'd like to learn how to take my cellular-enabled car off the grid permanently.

There may be a fuse you can remove.

Move to the Yukon

A lot of cars completely disable the modem when service expires (which makes sense since they don't want to pay $5/month to keep it active) which makes your car harder to exploit. But if you want more assurance, it takes less than an hour to unplug the antenna in your car. Look for leaked service manuals, repair videos on YouTube, or search for a replacement module so you can look at diagrams on parts websites.

Once you know where it is, you can pry the interior panels and find the module (it should have an IMEI on it). Then find the cellular connector (it's often a standalone coaxial antenna/cable).

For example, my Hyundai has cellular connectivity integrated into the head unit. I removed 2 screws to pry off the dashboard trim, removed 2 screws and 2 bolts, and pulled out the head unit (10 minutes). There were multiple coax connectors (such as for the FM antenna and satellite radio), but the cellular module was clearly visible through the ventilation slats so I yanked its connector (5 minutes). I taped the connector to the wiring harness so it doesn't rattle and reassembled everything (10 minutes). Less than 30 minutes overall, not bad for a hardware mod!

I'm not against these systems because they offer a lot of convenience for people who need them. Some people need to pre-cool/pre-heat their car when it's parked several blocks away from their home or office, or they need warnings if they absentmindedly leave a window open or a door unlocked. Not to mention you could get to your car quickly and deter a thief if it sends glass break notifications. That's not worth the software vulnerabilities nor $10/month to me, so I disconnect the antenna for peace of mind. But some of my family members are glad to use these features because it improves their QoL. So I'm in favor of legislation that mandates a few years of security updates, and requires that a disable switch will actually disconnect the modem.

Zipcar sent me a "zipcard" (a credit card sized card with an RFID chip) that I keep in my wallet. I find app unlock to be convenient but it doesn't work everywhere.

The article mentions the cards wouldn’t work, either.

My experience having used Zipcar for 7+ years is that if you hold the card up to the reader for ~15 seconds, it unlocks even in areas with no connection.

I generally find using an app to unlock a car less convenient than a key.

I think the use cases where the reverse seems true are pretty subjective at best. Or maybe I just grew up before cell phones ruled the world...

I agree with you completely. It seems likely companies prefer app lock/unlock because it scales better, faster, cheaper. car shares are advertised as “download the app then drive”

For distributed rental cars this creates a key collect and return problem. The whole point of zipcar is cars in your neighborhood that you can book, walk to, unlock, and go.

I don't know of a solution but ... it makes me think of all the quick rental bikes in the city. The moment they lose power/wifi no one can use any bikes.

Maybe that's ok since you're likely only going a few km

But it reminds me of vending machines in Japan. If I understand correctly they're set supposed to allow dispensing in the event of an earthquake. Of course Japanese society has less petty theft and vandalism which is why they can have the vending machines in the first place.

Why would the solution be the physical key, stored in a lockbox (inside glovebox, perhaps). Initial unlock with phone, then use physical key, then use phone to lock at end of rental.

Anyone know what the backend protocol is for those ZipCar mobile connections? Now I'm curious if anyone's tried hacking the cars by GSM spoofing.

I usually do rentals for $35-$65 a day and have them for 24 hours + unlimited miles. Zipcar starts at $11/hr (more for bigger cars), with $90/year subscription, and up to $104/day, limited to 180 miles.

I can't get what drives minds of the morons who introduce the types of "features". My frigging cat knows that mobile service can be unavailable for the whole shebang of the reasons or the phone itself might be non operational.

As Apple is making emergency satellite communication a consumer thing, I expect other companies will follow.

So at least in unusual situations like this no-cell-service one, spending a cold night in the woods is hopefully less of a risk.

Apple’s satellite connection is still very experimental (you need to initiate it, you have to find the range and do the ritual, and it’s on one of the worst connected provider with limited coverage), and feels more like a checkbox for marketing than an actual mass ready feature.

I’d put it in the same bin as lidar: it’s cool they got something working at all in such a constrained package. Hopefully it will become better/more generally useful within a decade.

(nowadays satellite phones or portable modems are actually pretty small, capable, and not that expensive. Consumer level access is already a thing in that regard)

> Hopefully it will become better/more generally useful within a decade

This is kind of what Apple has always done: bring a new (cool) thing to the consumer, even if it isn't as good as it sounds. But so far they seem to catch up and make it good after a couple of iterations.

And in this case it puts that checkbox in the consumer's mind, so other manufacturers will probably put some effort into matching or exceeding it.

If I were planning on being in places with no coverage and some risk, I would buy one of the relatively inexpensive Garmin satellite comm/safety devices. But most normal, non-wilderness-adventure people are not going to do that. Maybe this Apple feature will save a few people.

The funny thing is, that approach used to be from Samsung or Google: bring in a shiny looking, but immature and still kinda useless feature and try to make it decent in the next iterations. Like always on display, the foldables, pen support on the Note series, or project Soli on the Pixel 4 etc.

Apple used to wait for a good implementation to jump on the bandwagon. Now we have all the makers throwing uncooked spaghetti at the wall, and so many recent Apple headline feature are kinda half-assed (including the other Watch “leaps” like ecg or blood oxygen levels which are just not there yet and might never be)

I worry when this is an issue for all cars.

I think I'm going to buy an old series Land Rover and electric convert it myself if that happens.

This is only an issue for a few kinds of rental vehicles, and I doubt that will be the case for much longer. Teslas work just fine when out of cell range, as they unlock using your phone's bluetooth or an NFC card. If the car is in cell range, you can lock/unlock it remotely using an app on your phone.

I get the impression parent comment is less concerned about pragmatism and more focused on “freedom of choice”. An EV converted Land Rover would be awesome

Or: don't take your rental car that relies on cell service out of cell range.

Was anyone else expecting a story about actually going off the grid, you know, permanently?

This hasn’t happened to me, but I would have thought it was your phone over Bluetooth that unlocked the car after you book it.

I don’t 100% know how zipcar operates in each market but I’m guessing these long-distance bookings are pre-booked and you can’t just leave the car in the middle of nowhere.

Your phone and the car would only need to phone home at the start of a reservation.

I guess the car itself doesn’t have cellular at all and relies on the user’s phone? Could easily run into issues where the user has service but the car does not.

Could also see this playing out in underground garages.

It’s unclear why the car needs to phone-home for each unlock/start (but no restrictions on operation) within a reservation within its geo-fence. Common sense would be if the car is where you last dropped it off, it should allow you back in within the time of your reservation.

Kind of, but it is the WSJ.

Tangent, but it is interesting to me, how many people now seem to be unwilling to go out of cell range. It reminds me of people decades ago who would go camping, but only with a car. If you had to leave powered-travel range, they were out.

This is less the case for me now, but there was a time when leaving my cell at home was a huge luxury. And I still enjoy days when I can go do things without it - pretty much the only time anymore when my time is truly my own.

We just ran into this for my yearly Boundary Waters canoe trip where cell coverage is spotty at best if you're a couple lakes in. Some of our significant others, especially those who just had or were expecting kids, convinced us to rent a satellite communicator for emergencies. I get it, but part of the experience is being completely disconnected and knowing you're on your own if anything goes wrong.

> … part of the experience is being completely disconnected and knowing you're on your own if anything goes wrong.

Frankly, that’s silly.

In the very unlikely event that something goes seriously wrong, having a satellite-based emergency beacon is easily the difference between life and death or serious life-long injury.

I’ve spent plenty of time in the backcountry where cell service is not just spotty, but nonexistent. Now that beacons are cheap and widely available, I always take one.

Being self-sufficient and disconnected are good, healthy experiences — having an emergency communication mechanism for emergencies that you cannot handle yourself doesn’t detract from that.

It's much more than that. If you are leaving your sat device at home to "up the stakes", you need to let SAR know that this is the game you are playing. You need to make sure they know you do not want or expect a rescue under any circumstances and you need to make sure that the absolute safety of all other parties, including the SAR team themselves, will take priority over a search on your behalf.

And if their response is "that is stupid, take your sat device" then do so.

> but part of the experience is being completely disconnected and knowing you're on your own if anything goes wrong.

I've done a fair number of non-trivial self rescues due to ice fall, rock fall, injuries, and fast-moving weather while exposed at elevation. I value self sufficiency and take pride in the fact that I have never had to press that SOS button, even under extreme duress and real objective danger.

That said, I do think intentionally refusing the carry a sat comm is downright immoral unless you tell SAR that you do not under any circumstances want a rescue.

SAR's operating assumption is that you will want a rescue if you are not able to self-rescue. When someone notices you are missing, SAR will begin a search. If you don't have a sat comm, SAR will have to waste valuable resources on a wide search and possibly even put SAR professionals at additional unnecessary risk. If the emergent event is the result of something that impacts a large area -- storms, earthquakes, avalanche, rock fall, etc. -- other people may die because SAR spent too much time on you.

To be clear: I won't judge you for playing life-and-death with self rescue. That's fine. We all play dangerous games and risk is highly personal. But at least TELL SAR the game you are playing! Tell them you do not want a rescue prior to starting your trip. Otherwise, you are not only risking you own party's life, but also the lives of SAR professionals and other parties who may need their services at the same time.

How was this ever allowed? This sounds like litigation central. How you can rent cars that will brick themselves in tunnels, valleys, and in the country? Do cell phones even work in most parking buildings?

I can't find it now but I read an article a couple months ago where a customer was stranded in an underground parking garage due to lack of cell signal.

> Do cell phones even work in most parking buildings?

This is why Zipcar issues a card for unlocking the car. I'm not sure why the people in the article didn't have one.

I have talked with someone else who didn't seem to have a card, so maybe it is now optional? It was admittedly a really annoying--if totally understandable--delay when I first went to use the service, and they probably lose a ton of customers who would otherwise impulse buy their way into their first ride were it not for "and now wait forever for your card to arrive". The card definitely solves this problem, though, as as far as I can tell the car does have local storage for how long you are allowed to unlock it. (Your big problem is if you then get back to the car late and the car re-locks. It has no concept of being home or being done other than your time as determined by the service when you last talked to it is up.)

The article notes that the card won't work in those situations either.

The card was also nonfunctional, though whether this was related to the lacking phone coverage isn't clear:

The next morning, the family tried to leave for sightseeing, but Mr. McCarthy couldn’t unlock the car with his app or RFID card.

From TFA.

Th car doesn't shut off or fail to start. It just won't unlock. And yes, you can get stuck in underground parking just as easily as a National Park.

It's unreasonable to expect everyone to critique the engineering of their rental car before renting it. It's the engineers job to make sure the product is capable of being fit for the task it's intended for.

Fair, sort of. I shouldn't blame the victim too much. That said, engineers have to make assumptions somewhere. I suspect remote camping trips are just too far out of the envelope that ZipCar was designing for, that envelope being cities.

But really I'm just irritated by the bait and switch title, that to me promised a much more interesting topic than "here's a thing that can go wrong with one car rental company in situations it clearly wasn't designed for".

Isn’t the stereotypical use case for zip car to take it on a weekend trip out of town where public transit doesn’t go? National parks are very popular recreational attractions.

Not to mention, there are plenty of places in cities without cell service, like parking garages.

Or recently Telus, one of the big 3 Canadian COM companies, went down for a whole day. Imagine cars stopping to work because of that.

Don't you mean Rogers?

see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32026637

Yes. Thank you.

Maybe it's pivoted since I used it but I always thought they where for people who needed cars for a couple of hours. Not weekend trips. Real car rental companies were far cheaper for that use case.

Many traditional rental car companies won't rent to college aged customers, or will add large daily markups. For a significant market segment Zipcar-esque companies are the best, or only, option.

Not sure about pricing, but I had friends who lived in downtown DC and they'd use Zip for overnight trips to visit in the suburbs. I imagine it was easier to stick with a service they already used (and had cars locally) than schedule a rental with pick-up/drop-off. But for longer trips, they used normal rentals.

Or the ferries (where a number of cars have gotten stuck I think).

If they aren't going to design for taking the car out of range of cellular, then they should geofence the thing.

Of course it can't just turn off when it hits the fence, but a notification would be a pretty good idea.

If the car was designed to stay in the city, they need to stop saying things like:

"Select your Zipcar, pack your tent and pick your spot, from national parks with campsites to choice spots listed on USACampgrounds.info." [1]

Besides, even driving on the freeway between two cities, you can often find dead spots. Imagine pulling into a rest area in the middle of nowhere for a bio-break, only to find yourself stranded.

[1] https://www.zipcar.com/ziptopia/best-vacations-for-solo-trav...

Alright, you got me. :D I still think I'm probably right about the implicit assumptions in the product design, but that does mean their advertising is misleading at best.

The Blue Ridge Parkway in the mid-Atantic has massive stretches of cellular dead zones. The entire road is a popular destination, and many at the most popular destinations for views and hikes are dead zones.

Peaks of Otter comes to mind as a fantastic day-trip or weekend destination from DC. Despite being a very popular spot for day hikes, and having a lodge, it does not have cellular service. Nobody would think their rental car would be inaccessible at a popular resort area.

The default state for the consumer is: “it’s a car, it doesn’t require cell service”

If zipcar put a huge banner prior to checkout saying that you will not be able to access the car if you don’t have cell service, I bet a lot of people would think twice, which is why they don’t, which is what makes it shitty

> Or: don't take your rental car that relies on cell service out of cell range.

The company advertises weekend camping/hiking trips as a use-case on their blog [1].

Also: they weren't an hour down a dirt road on BLM/NF land. The women were at a popular trail in a national park. The trail is a beginner class 1 five mile loop. Hardly a weird edge-case... literally an afternoon walk in the park.

Good thing they were in the PNW and during good weather, because this could've easily turned deadly in many other parts of the country. Being locked out of my car unexpectedly after a light&fast winter objective in the mountains or a light&fast summer objective in the desert -- especially solo -- would get pretty serious pretty fast. Hopefully I would be able to bust the windows and get at my water and bivy; if not, that would be a scary and dangerous night.

> Was anyone else expecting a story about actually going off the grid, you know, permanently?

Not per se, but definitely didn't expect a story about a parking lot at a roadside trailhead of a popular beginner day hike...

[1] https://www.zipcar.com/ziptopia/camping

> Was anyone else expecting a story about actually going off the grid, you know, permanently?

Yep, I clicked on it looking for an article about pitfalls experienced by someone (or several someones) building off-grid housing. Oh well

> The trio had rented a technology-reliant Hyundai Elantra from Zipcar Inc.

I've used Zipcar for a while in NYC and until relatively recently they didn't allow mobile unlock because a lot of parking garages don't have cell service. You had to use the card that comes with the subscription.

Do you really think the people who rented the cars knew that this service relied on cell coverage?

Happened to my daughter and friend at a trailhead in Shenandoah national park. They defo need a better (bluetooth at least) system.

I've had trouble with zipcars not connecting in parking garages... Where the zipcars live/supposed to return to.

Going off grid and all the related complexities is quite an interesting thing. Unlike this article.

It's amazing how discussions are conditioned by titles.

I've changed the title to something more specific now.

This reads like a hit-piece against ZipCar. The author doesn't give any advice, and merely retells a few anecdotes about people being stranded by parking a ZipCar in a place with poor cell service.

This isn't a problem I'd thought of before, but with the title "How Not to Go Off the Grid", I some advice. (The author doesn't even seem to offer the somewhat-obvious conclusion of "don't park a ZipCar somewhere without any cell service".)

It doesn't read like a hit piece to me. I doubt most people would think to check their cell phone signal before parking a car.

After reading this, I will be checking car connectivity before renting one. That is, try to get one without connectivity

To be fair, this is a pretty bad issue. I've used two other car sharing services, and neither of them had this problem, only requiring cell service only when you picked up the car:

- One issued keys which worked independently once activated

- The other worked via bluetooth.

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