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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).