Carsharing using Getaround?

October 2, 2019 1:50 PM

Has anyone on MeFi used Getaround for car sharing? Tell me about it!

My wife and I live in NW Portland and do not own a car. Work's easy to get to for both of us (I bike, she buses), there's grocery stores easily walkable, and most of our daily stuff doesn't require a car.

For trips other than that daily stuff, we were in the habit of using ReachNow and Car2Go (and Zipcar, but a lot less frequently). Then ReachNow went away, so we were 100% in on Car2Go. Car2Go is now going away, so we're...not scrambling, really, but looking intently for something that might, at least in part, replace Car2Go.

I see lots of ads for Getaround, but I can't quite wrap my head around how it works. Car2Go was great because every cost was baked into the rental rate, and because the cars could be picked up and dropped off in any legal street parking spot.

Near as I can tell, though, Getaround doesn't seem to work like this. It appears that you can pick one up at a designated spot, but then you have to return it anywhere with 24-hour parking availability (in other words, absolutely nowhere in my neighborhood, so leaving the car by my building is not an option), and users are responsible for gas. It seems to lack the flexibility of Car2Go, which was a major draw of using that service. In other words, it combines the geographic inflexibility of Zipcar rentals with some of the costs of owning a car. Hooray?

Do I have that right? Have you used Getaround? Can you explain how it works? Would you recommend it?

posted by pdb to Travel & Transportation around Portland, OR (3 answers total)

Best answer: I've used Getaround in Portland, just a couple of times, about a year ago. It's essentially renting somebody's car (unless something has changed in the last year!). You pick a specific car up from its parking place or driveway, and you return it to the same parking place or driveway. In a situation where the parking place might not always be available, like street parking, they'll give you a general area that you need to return the car to. This is where the 24-hour parking availability part comes in, because they don't want you to leave it in a place where the owner will get a ticket if they don't immediately come check to see if you selected an ok place to park the car!

I only rented two different cars (I was looking for a specific feature) and one had to be returned to the same driveway it came from, and the other to a specific street parking region. Everything worked very smoothly for me! But it's not a reasonable replacement for Car2Go or ReachNow, unfortunately, because you can't just leave the car anywhere.
posted by Secretariat at 3:55 PM on October 2, 2019 [1 favorite]

Best answer: To be clear, it's airbnb but for cars. Private car owners list their cars on this service so that they can rent them out and make a little extra cash when they don't need to be driving them.
posted by Secretariat at 4:01 PM on October 2, 2019

Response by poster: That's a perfect description, and all I need to know. Thanks!
posted by pdb at 8:00 PM on October 2, 2019