Alternative Transportation Week: Car Sharing and Zipcar

Next up in The Optimist's Alternative Transportation week is one of the first start-ups I'd heard of that was really trying to reinvent the way people think about driving.

I remember first reading about Zipcar in Business 2.0 in 2004. Next thing I knew, a buddy in Boston was singing it's praises.

Zipcar is so logistically different, it reminds of me what legendary Pepperdine entrepreneurship professor Charles Morrissey says about early reception of Fedex' business plan: "You're going to take all the packages and fly them into Memphis over night, and then send them back out by the ten the next morning?"

(photo: I saw two Zipcars waiting patiently at a very urban gas station in San Fran.)

As in, "You're going to leave a bunch of cute cars around the city, and people who can't afford their own wheels can go up to it and swipe their membership key and get in and drive it around for a few hours and bring it back?"

But it's not about people who can't afford their own car. It's about the new kind of person, the Careful Consumer who lives in a city and considers it financially dumb to own their own car, not to mention environmentally irresponsible. Besides, they're still in business after four solid years. So here's to Zipcar.

Also look at: Flexcar. The predictable effect of at least two credible competitors in car sharing appears to be a price war and a turf war; it's fun to keep track especially of their new location announcements.

News and What They're Saying About Zipcar and Flexcar:

Hydro Kevin on car sharing with hybrids
Elliotte Rusty Harold on the Zipcar user experience
Environmental Leader on Flexcar's carbon offset membership