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Comment by karamazov | Hacker News Reader

Renting out your car while you're not using it negates the advantages of owning one that GP points out. In addition, you're now taking on the risk of damage and the onus of maintenance for a car that's used as a taxi. I don't think this will be a popular option.

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Also if you want to go home now, or go to the store now and it's rented out by some one: you're basically fucked.

You can program a range limit and certain hours (be no farther than 30 miles away by 4pm and not in use) sure but when anything unexpected comes up (on either end) you don't have a car for X period of time.

Even just sharing the car has this problem, oh it can drive back home empty, but the logistics of making sure it can drop Bob off drive home get Alice drive her some were pick Bob back up up drop him at home in time to go get Alice are only barely more convenient than "sorry I need the car today" for twice the mileage cost natch.

I don't think within-family-car-sharing would be a HUGE deal, certainly. But there are a lot of situations in which I end up chauffeuring my fiancée or vice versa because one of us needs to get to point A, but the other needs the car for the day. And there's lots of little friction points in terms of lining up our schedules there. It's not a huge pain point, but my car would be noticeably more valuable to me if it handled these situations for itself.

It might not be wildly convenient, but it's even less convenient for me to drive my fiancée to where she needs to go and then drive back.

uhhh, essentially we already have this service. It's called Lyft, and it is wildly popular. The only difference, is that the owner has to drive the car.

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