Helixx: $6 a day EV subscription service could disrupt the auto industry | Hacker News Reader

Helixx: $6 a day EV subscription service could disrupt the auto industry

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50 pointsteleforce54 comments

there used to be a handful of companies that tried the subscription model of vehicles 4-5 years ago. Now I don’t see them on the streets.

Basically you pay a “membership fee” to access their fleet of vehicles. Their vehicles would often be parked in random places in the city. Occasionally there are dedicated spots reserved for these vehicles.

The idea of it sounded great but execution was awful. You may get a vehicle that was poorly maintained, or vandalized. Or it wasn’t cleaned in a long time. Tires gone flat or popped. In general, people didn’t treat these cars with any respect.

How is this going to be any different besides the “ICE” vs “EV” aspect?

Also I don’t look forward to cars taking up more space in urban areas. The scooter litter is bad but the car litter is even worse.

What I do like about the cars from this company: they do seem practical unlike the modern truck/SUV in the USA.

It seems like these are commercial vehicles, designed to replace delivery vans and tuk-tuks, not a service like Zipcar.

Here in Germany car sharing is a real thing. Many people don't own a car here because it just works. My employer also has the same subscription as business cars.

Number of EVs is limited, but you can also rent those as well as hydrogen cars if you like. Still you need to pay per km and hour but prices are realy reasonable. Subscription is 7 EUR per month. An hour costs 1 EUR. The km 0,21. 1,2 EUR per use. Cars are reasonably well maintained and there is a 24/7 hotline in case of issues.

Can confirm, in my city it is pretty popular and I personally had a great experience while using it for a few month while my own car broke down.

Only reason I bought a car again were regular, multi-day trips to other cities (where I couldn't return the car sharing car). Apart from that it would have been much cheaper to go with car sharing.

Copenhagen has a couple of these companies. They don't have a subscription fee, only a usage fee, which is much more suited to my twice-a-year car needs.

One of them only has EVs: https://www.greenmobility.com/dk/en/

I've never had a dirty or poorly-maintained car.

I did this in San Diego many years ago. It was truly awesome. Picked up a Jeep 4x4 and drove it out to Whale Peak for a date.

quite common in the Netherlands and in Sweden. many services have no membership fees. pay per minute+km. works perfectly for the one time a month I need a car.

Posts bitching about both the conditions of the cars and the quality of users/drivers on my local subreddit are an evergreen topic. And yet the car sharing service persists year after year.

Zipcar is still going strong around my neighborhood. I use it occasionally. It's a much better deal than owning a second car.

The services were actually broadly functional and honestly were reasonably successful as a product. I think the thing just didn’t work as a venture backed high growth idea. Some are still around.

And of course there was that incident in Chicago where people figured out how to steal them all at once, so execution matters a little.

I don't think they disappeared because the vehicles were in bad shape. These companies realized they could charge the same hourly rate for the rental of a $500 scooter as they could for, say, a $20,000 Smart ForTwo car. I expect the same race to the bottom here.

We rent electrical scooters for $0.25/min and they can't seem to make the economics work, but $0.25/hr for a car would work? I have my doubts.

Different market and different market, I'd guess.

It sounds as if they're aiming to let each vehicle to a single paying customer almost all of the time, and in countries where the hourly cost of maintenance is low. Not like those scooters, which spend most of their time waiting on street corners in high-cost countries.

The $6 may well be the yearly price for a fleet of ≥5, expressed in a marketing-friendly way.

VC and growth pricing not to be confused with net revenue pricing. This is to establish soundbytes and traction and only that.

$6/day is roughly $180/month. The cheapest car lease deals right now are ~$300/month (including cash down).

That doesn't seem that outrageous that these can be viable - especially if there's a future secondary market for them.

Anecdata: I lease an EV for $200/mo on a 3 year 30k miles/year lease. Definitely can see this work.

How are these companies making any money considering the depreciation and repair costs for these cars?!

Leased cars would logically depreciate much faster too considering people won't look after them as if their own. A car worth 30k would most likely be about 15-20k after end of third year; but company would've made 36x200=$7,200 excluding any upkeep costs!

The only explanation must be what we are sold for 30k must cost something like 5k at the factory for these companies to be viable.

There have to be some shenanigans going on. I also wonder where all these lease cars end up. People grind through them like cracy. Are they in a landfill on the ocean floor somewhere?

Abroad

My guess is that they massively miscalculated resale value... Most reasonable explanation to me.

Where? What model? If you don't mind sharing. This has me intrigued about possibly starting a lease.

There a bunch of EV models around leasing for that much, e.g. https://www.quirkchevy.com/new-vehicles/bolt-euv/lease-offer... https://www.nissanusa.com/vehicles/electric-cars/ariya/deals... .

Guessing they are maybe keeping the federal/state incentives for themselves?

Last time I was looking around Tesla and others let you give the tax credit to them as well for an equal (or sometimes better) price reduction.

Is it a Renault Tweezy or equivalent?

There is no way the owner makes any profit from that for 30k+ USD car.

The economics are completely different. E-scooters have all but zero resale value, most of them are completely custom-made for each company, but vehicles? These get sold after a year or two, and as long as the income from them is larger than the depreciation loss + fuel/insurance cost, it works out.

Another side income is data (every movement is being tracked by GPS) and pretty insane fees regarding traffic tickets, accidents and whatnot.

There are many makers of small, low-cost electric trucks. Here's a review of one.[1] Search Alibaba for "small electric truck". The SF bay area even has a startup, Telo, making them.

Helixx, interestingly, is a UK startup.

The subscription service thing is kind of weird. That means you need the infrastructure of a car rental company - parking lots, repair shops, staff.

[1] https://electrek.co/2022/07/25/electric-mini-truck-how-its-h...

I would love to get one of these Pickman trucks https://www.thepickman.com/pickman-classic they would be great for my usage (I live within 3 miles of work and a hardware store where I occasionally buy lumber) but base model has gone up to $16999. That's way more than I would consider.

I would love to own one for the short 1-2 mile trips to shops and the hardware store, but alas, these are not legal to drive in the US (safety & crash testing standards), and it's especially illegal in California if they are gas powered and not EV.

Which is interesting because the trucks you rent for 100$ a day are probably just as unsafe in a crash because they were built in 1990

They are not built to drive faster than 50km/h (30 miles/h). They are for the city or bicycles roads (yes, they will be allowed on bicycle roads due to their speed limit and size). I'm not sure about US but in EU one, as far as I remember, can't drive such vehicle on a 80+ km/h (50m/h) road. So it may be an issue to find how to get to shops and stores.

> There are many makers of small, low-cost electric trucks.

I'm pretty sure the Goupil G6 is the biggest in this market and is readily available and used in a lot of places (on industrial scale).

The Citroen Ami EV (legally not a car) in France can be rent for $22 a month. As far as I know, it hasn't disrupted the car industry here.

A month? :o You must mean day?

https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1127423_france-s-citro-...

Weird.

> $23 a month, for a 48-month period with $2,900

2900/48 = ~60..?

Still, 60/month is very low. 43 mile range would be a dealbreaker for me though (not that you'd wanna venture very far at 28 mph).

70 km range, seems reasonable for running errands in most European towns. Not for massive shopping, but let's say clothes or run to restaurant. And 3k price for that is acceptable.

I find them nice, but I think I saw like 3 of them since their introduction. Meanwhile Teslas and Zoes are growing. Hopefully the AMI doesn't fail, I like the concept.

I've seen plenty of Amis at least personally..I find them perfect for cities and commuting

Interesting actually and not a pricing model thats doomed.

Assume for 22Rs an hour (USD to INR roughly) you could go like 7-8kms within the city. If someone was to instead lease out the entire vehicle for the day (or 2 people for half day each), they could just be a ride share driver without having to invest in the vehicle costs. Electricity is not included so they would have to find EV spots (electricity is quite cheap in India) but for those that think this is very cheap, realise it's not actually very cheap and a good pricing model in fact. Good EV rickshaws can be had for under 3000$ which this pricing model can recover in under 2 years for each vehicle after which any income is basically a profit. The real challenge is in finding charging locations in India as of now but I totally see this working as the barrier to entry will reduce a lot for those looking to become a driver.

You cannat just rideshare cars. ever hear of rushhour - you know the time of day when most people are going into the city? Now all your cars are in the city and not needed until the next when everyone wants to leave. And you need cars when someone needs to leave early.

They don't need to find a charging spot. The batteries are swappable. You can charge them at home and swap when needed. Also if it gets good user base, battery swapping stations will be everywhere.

If you are in San Francisco and drive around 1-3x/week, try Upshift (www.upshiftcars.com). Get a hybrid car delivered to your door on the days you need it - guaranteed available, cleaned, gassed, and maintained. Subscriptions include deliveries and insurance and start at $299/mo for 4 days/mo of access. Fractional so car subscription for those looking for a solution between carshare and car ownership.

“The Helixx vehicle platform can take up to six 2 kWh LFP (Lithium iron Phosphate (LFP) battery packs for a total capacity of 12 kWh and a range of 200 km (124 miles). If that's not enough for a taxi shift or a delivery run, it's just a matter of swapping batteries to be productive again. Charging times become irrelevant.”

The amount of charging time it takes to get your Tesla 120 miles of range might be comparable to the time it takes to swap these batteries. Fast charging is pretty fast once you’re plugged in, it’s the other stuff (finding the charger, waiting in line, etc.) that takes most of the time, and presumably that would be the same in this system.

Also EV mile ratings are possibly achievable, but due to battery life longevity concerns, you generally keep the battery between 20-80%, so the actual effective range is 60% of what’s rated. I’m assuming whoever is swapping these batteries doesn’t want you taking them to 0 and isn’t giving them to you at 100 because they don’t want them rapidly degrading.

Rapid charging and more battery seems to just be more efficient in every way than battery swapping.

Just a note regarding battery longevity: LFP batteries like in the Helixx can be charged 0-100% with hardly any impact on battery lifetime [1].

Even NCM or NCA batteries can be charged 1-100%, because the battery management system doesn't actually fully charge or discharge the battery, even if the car shows zero or 100% charge. However, 20-80% or 10-90% charging does increase live time.

[1] https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1149/1945-7111/abae37/... Page 6, Figure 3, graphs 'd' shows the number of cycles until the battery can only hold 80% of a charge for LFP, NCM, and NCA batteries. Note that electric cars have a battery management to prevent the most damaging situations in those graphs (too hot/cold, full charge/discharge, too fast, etc.).

Rapid charging takes time, and time is money. Swapping a battery is very quick and easy, it can be done anywhere. In this regards it becomes even more convenient than a gas station since such charging/swapping station doesn't require permits and much space.

More range will decrease efficiency and won't be needed for the main purpose of the vehicle. And it's possible to take more than one or two batteries. Just swap them at the next stop.

10 miles per kWh seems very optimistic even in 100% city driving only in nice weather.

Although if it’s not classified as a car or van then it doesn’t need to pass crash tests or have a high speed so then maybe it’s just a glorified golf cart and at low speeds 10 miles per kWh might be realistic.

This reads like a blatant advertisement. $6 a day is probably an unprofitable VC subsidized rate to gain market share.

> $6 a day is probably an unprofitable VC subsidized rate to gain market share

..if it were in *North America.

One of Helixx's goals is to replace the two-stroke tuk-tuk. Completely different market with very different economics. It may be viable, maybe at $8/day and not $6 considering current inflation, but still.

We should replace city cars with tuk-tuks in NA as well

Edit: Or, ideally, e-bikes

Probably comes to residual value and interest rates. 180 month is low, but maybe doable with volume and if price of vehicles is very low.

It is. Everyone’s distracted by deciding if they could make end’s meet at this tiny price, but I think the easier question is, “if I was a business and you gave me the capex to buy all these assets, could I do better than $180/mo each by doing something else?”

Also… of course it is. This is how every startup behaves.

Aka the “teaser” rate.

Ahh yes. Another subscription based “disruption” to a market that’s already too expensive for the middle and lower classes.

We all know how this works and have seen it countless times

Step 1) identify a market that needs “disruption”.

Step 2) introduce a subscription based model where the price is “too good to be true” (I.e. sold at a loss backed by VC money).

Step 3) Capture said market by underpricing most/all of your competitors.

Step 3.5) introduce ads. (Optional but highly encouraged)

Step 4) raise the subscription fees.

Step 5) lower the quality of the service to save money.

“You will own nothing and be happy”

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