Comment by jellicle | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jellicle | Hacker News Reader

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Like so many of these other startups, people don't have a sense of what, exactly, they are disintermediating.

Automobile rental: visible damage, invisible damage, wear and tear, tolls, tickets, hit-and-run accidents on five-year-olds... Invisible damage and wear-and-tear are priced in, everything else is laid squarely at the feet of the renter by the rental company, often with punitive fees attached.

Flightcar: ha ha ha ha ha ha ha it's all on you, for $10/day.

And there's no easy way they can actually put those things back on the renter where they belong. This automobile owner doesn't know it yet, but the same renter who blew through the tolls on the Golden Gate also racked up 12 parking tickets for parking next to a fire hydrant, which he crumpled up and threw away... It'll be a nice surprise when he tries to renew his registration two years from now.

We're working on getting a system in place to manage the tolls.

Our renters are vetted with an extensive Driving Record Check, so they're highly unlikely to get a red light/speeding ticket, though it's possible.

Visible damage is covered by our insurance policy as well as liability, and we now take pictures of the cars' interiors and exteriors to keep track of this. Invisible damage is covered by our mechanical damage policy, which owners can make claims from when they notice something happened to their vehicles.

Invisible damage of the type people driving rental cars tend to impart (largely excessive wear) may be manifested as premature parts failure and expensive repair bills years after the fact. Is this something that the insurance policy and claims process is able to handle?

how do you propose that flightcar solve this issue and put the violations back to the renter?

Work with local governments to get the fine information easily accessible - it would improve both the gov't 'customer service' as well as the fee/revenue collection.

That's a different area of business, but it's something that might be useful both for residents and maybe for a separate startup.

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