http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me ... 2879.story
Personal car-sharing is a new twist on auto rentals
Early adopters in the sharing movement are letting renters take their autos through Web-based services, which get up to 40% of the fee. There's even an app for finding the closest car.
By Lee Romney, Los Angeles Times
February 15, 2012
Reporting from San Francisco -- Emily Castor's metallic gray Honda has been driven by dozens of people she's never met.
They treat it well, pay any tickets they get and do the dirty work of finding a legal parking spot when they return it to her neighborhood near Golden Gate Park.
Castor, 29, is pulling in hundreds of dollars each month through one of several personal car-sharing companies that have burgeoned in the Bay Area over the last year. For $8 an hour or $45 a day, renters can climb behind the wheel of her Civic. Insurance is included.
The Bay Area has become a laboratory for personal car-sharing, as well as the broader "collaborative consumption" movement. Rooms in private homes, outgrown children's clothes, parking spaces and more can be rented, borrowed, bartered or gifted through a burgeoning number of Web-based ventures.
Unlike companies such as Zipcar that finance and maintain a fleet of vehicles, personal car-sharing networks are possible wherever enough owners and renters sign up. There are nine operating in the U.S. — at least one of which has plans to expand in Los Angeles— and 25 globally, said Susan Shaheen of UC Berkeley's Transportation Sustainability Research Center.
For renters, the main advantages of the arrangement are cost, convenience and variety.
Lisa Gansky, author of the book "The Mesh: Why the Future of Business Is Sharing," has tracked more than 5,000 companies around the world that focus on access rather than ownership. Both a renter and investor in RelayRides, Gansky said that although she can't justify owning a convertible, "I'd be happy to pay to have it on a weekend. Likewise, I certainly don't want to be driving the Exxon Valdez, but having an SUV for a half-day of hauling is helpful."
The business model was born one bone-chilling day in 2008, when Shelby Clark found himself bicycling through the Boston sleet to get to the closest Zipcar. As he pressed on, he recently recalled, he noticed how many cars were parked along his route, just waiting to be used.
Clark launched RelayRides in the summer of 2010 and by the end of the year had moved the headquarters to San Francisco.
The company Castor uses, Getaround,debuted in the Bay Area in May and now operates in San Diego and Portland, Ore. Wheelz — a campus-based company — rolled out at Stanford University in September, expanded last week to UC Berkeley and plans to begin rentals at UCLA and USC within the month. Another venture, JustShareIt, has added boats to the mix.
Vehicle owners typically set their own rental rates and the companies take a percentage of up to 40%, a good chunk of which goes to cover insurance.
The companies vet driving records and set standards for the vehicles they accept. Getaround asks renters to fill the tank, while RelayRides and Wheelz track mileage electronically and charge users for gasoline accordingly.
A California law that went into effect last year has guaranteed additional owner protections: Insurance carriers can no longer drop customers for participating in car-sharing networks.
Evolving technology allows renters to access vehicles without a face-to-face key swap. But for some companies, the process has not always worked smoothly.
Zachary Worthington put his Mazda Miata MX5 on RelayRides in October and has earned $700 — enough to make his final two car payments. But Relay's remote-access feature has been balky in his North Beach neighborhood, leaving Worthington and his renters unable to turn on the ignition.
As soon as he gets the Relay kit removed, Worthington said, he will switch to Getaround.
And although renters have left Cheetos crumbs in his Miata, the arrangement doesn't "leave a bad taste in my mouth," Worthington said. "I knew this was a new thing and I really think it's cool to transition into more of a sharing economy."
Another car owner, Emmanuel Zamora, has had problems with Getaround's equipment, which allows renters to unlock the car through a smartphone app. Instead, he put a lockbox on the door of his Mission District flat so renters can get the key.
Both companies say they are working on improvements.
Customers with the Wheelz network use a system that lets them see which cars are available with the touch of a smartphone. Hitting the "Dude, where's my car" link causes a locater map to pop up. Another swipe of the finger opens the car door. The key is inside.
"With these technologies, you have the means and motivation to make the switch," said Neal Gorenflo of Mountain View, who rents a car about twice monthly through Getaround and publishes the online magazine Shareable. "It's really costly to have a car."
Trust is a trickier barrier to overcome. Several independent online companies are developing reputation-rating systems that will let those who share cars and other assets know whether a particular person has proved unreliable in the past or has a stellar record.
In the meantime, Wheelz came up with another solution — launching on campuses, where "there's an embedded level of trust," said Chief Executive Officer Jeff Miller. A stanford.edu email address is required to sign up, as is a Facebook account. If an owner doesn't already know the renter, chances are that a Facebook friend does.
(One student's Honda Accord, named "Simba," rented 11 times last weekend. His girlfriend's Accord, "Night Fury," lagged with five rentals, but her saucy description of her ride as "an elusive combo of sporty yet practical, sort of like Mila Kunis' blend of cute and sexy," may lure more takers.)
Someone with experience as an owner and renter is Carl Spanoghe. His smart car is included in the RelayRides stable. So when he needs a more spacious vehicle, the 30-year-old software developer from Oakland reserves one online.
He recently took some out-of-town-guests for a spin through Napa in a Prius — and left a bottle of wine for the car's owner when he returned. He stocks his car with CDs from his favorite electo-industrial band as a perk for his renters.
Despite such niceties, Castor misses the face-to-face contact. So she's planning a party for her renters.
On a recent Saturday, she also arranged to meet a regular she had texted and emailed for months. Brendan Lin turned out to be a 19-year-old who lives near Union Square — where parking is impossible — and works at Jamba Juice.
Getaround sets renters' minimum age at 19, allowing Lin to avoid the hefty premiums that traditional rental companies demand from young drivers.
"Before Getaround I did Hertz on Demand," said Lin, who often takes Castor's Honda to Davis to hang out with friends. "But it was $13 an hour."
Personal car-sharing, however, isn't for everyone.
Castor once left a pair of crutches and a doll in the trunk — she had taken a load to Goodwill, which would not accept those items — and one of her renters wrote a blog post describing the discovery as "creepy."
"It's car sharing," Castor said, "it's not a sanitized corporate experience."
lee.romney@latimes.com
Copyright © 2012, Los Angeles Times
Personal car-sharing is a new twist on auto rentals
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momopi
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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld ... 2228.story
In Latin America, Chinese cars are gaining buyers
Chinese brands, with their low prices, are selling like hot cakes as Latin America's consumer class expands amid rising incomes.
By Adriana Leon and Chris Kraul, Los Angeles Times
5:51 PM PST, February 9, 2012
Reporting from Lima, Peru, and Bogota, Colombia
At first, Lima taxi driver Mario Segura was disgusted by the thought of buying a Chinese-made car. He had doubts about the vehicles' durability, service and resale value.
But favorable word of mouth, assurances that spare parts are plentiful and, of course, unbelievably low prices won him over.
"Little by little, I heard favorable comments," said Segura, speaking in a Chery showroom in the Surquillo district. He had just plunked down $12,000 in cash for a new Fullwin XR sedan, half the cost, he said, of a comparable Fiat or Renault. "It took a long time to decide, but I'm risking it."
So is Luis Luna, a doctor just back in Lima after working for several years in Argentina. He had planned on buying a secondhand Japanese car. Until, that is, he noticed billboards touting low-priced Chinese brands and listened as his relatives insisted that he kick tires at a JAC dealership, one of dozens of Chinese brands sold here.
"We realized for the same money that we'd pay for a crummy secondhand car that inspired no confidence, we could have a brand-new Chinese car with a two-year warranty," Luna said as he finished paperwork on his new $16,000 JAC B-Cross family wagon. "I'm totally convinced this is the right decision."
Similar buyer testimonials can be heard across Latin America these days, where Chinese cars with unfamiliar brand names like Great Wall, JAC, Brilliance and Sinotruk are selling like hot cakes. Chinese cars were introduced in Peru in 2006 and now one in six new cars sold here is a Chinese make.
There are no fewer than 90 Chinese car manufacturers to choose from, according to the trade group Automobile Assn. of Peru. The Chinese auto industry has yet to undergo the winnowing process that, over a century of competition, has reduced the U.S. car industry to three big players.
The Chinese brands' main selling point is, of course, price: New Chinese cars typically sell for half to two-thirds the cost of a comparable European, U.S. or Japanese vehicle, said Guido Vildozo, an auto industry expert with consultants IHS Automotive in Lexington, Mass.
"What makes Chinese cars so much cheaper? Start with labor," Vildozo said, noting that a typical Chinese autoworker makes $300 to $400 a month, a fraction of the $2,000 to $3,000 in wages that Mexican workers make or the $5,000 to $7,000 a month that U.S. auto workers average.
Another price advantage, said Jian Sun, a partner with AT Kearney business consultants in Shanghai, stems from the "reverse engineering," or design and mechanical imitation, that many Chinese carmakers use in competing models to save them the expense of designing new models from scratch.
Chinese manufacturers are entering the market as Latin American incomes are rising to unprecedented levels, flush from the decade-long global commodities boom filtering down to an expanding consumer class.
Augusto de la Torre, chief Latin America economist at the World Bank, said the region's middle class now encompasses 30% of its population of 570 million, up from 20% in 2002.
In Colombia, where the economy is thriving on global sales of its oil, coal, coffee and bananas, the increase in disposable income is especially dramatic. Bank of Bogota economist Camilo Perez said economic output per capita has nearly doubled in five years, to $6,700 last year from the $3,400 average in 2006.
So it comes as no surprise that car sales are accelerating. New units sold last year in Colombia totaled 325,000, a 28% increase from 2010. New car sales in Peru totaled more than 100,000 last year, up 26% from the previous year.
According to Scotiabank,Brazil'scar sales will grow to 2.8 million in 2012, up 4% from last year, but in a much larger population base than those of its neighbors.
The expanding new-car market is what attracted Chinese automakers, who see Latin America as a proving ground for its plan to conquer the world car market in coming decades. According to AT Kearney, China exported 800,000 cars last year but hopes to boost that number to 2 million by 2015 and to 3 million by 2020.
The Latin focus is also explained, AT Kearney's Jian said, by the fact that Chinese manufacturers are not yet prepared to tackle the U.S. and European markets, which are more demanding in quality and emissions standards. The competition is less intense and the regulatory restrictions are lower in emerging markets, he said. China and these regions share similar road conditions, emission controls and safety standards.
(The domestic Chinese car market, where sales last year totaled about 18 million vehicles, is the largest in the world, far surpassing that of the U.S., where about 12.8 million new cars and trucks were sold in 2011.)
Many buyers, like Antonio Benevides, a 26-year-old theme park worker in Bogota, are first-time owners. In early December, he bought a new Chery QQ model for $9,000, two-thirds the cost of a comparable Renault he had considered.
"That difference in price is what put a new car within my reach for the first time," Benevides said as he drove his car off the dealership lot near Bogota's international airport. "I've heard they hold together well, that they are cheap to operate and, as you can see, they are not bad looking."
Special correspondents Leon reported from Lima and Kraul from Bogota.
Copyright © 2012, Los Angeles Times
In Latin America, Chinese cars are gaining buyers
Chinese brands, with their low prices, are selling like hot cakes as Latin America's consumer class expands amid rising incomes.
By Adriana Leon and Chris Kraul, Los Angeles Times
5:51 PM PST, February 9, 2012
Reporting from Lima, Peru, and Bogota, Colombia
At first, Lima taxi driver Mario Segura was disgusted by the thought of buying a Chinese-made car. He had doubts about the vehicles' durability, service and resale value.
But favorable word of mouth, assurances that spare parts are plentiful and, of course, unbelievably low prices won him over.
"Little by little, I heard favorable comments," said Segura, speaking in a Chery showroom in the Surquillo district. He had just plunked down $12,000 in cash for a new Fullwin XR sedan, half the cost, he said, of a comparable Fiat or Renault. "It took a long time to decide, but I'm risking it."
So is Luis Luna, a doctor just back in Lima after working for several years in Argentina. He had planned on buying a secondhand Japanese car. Until, that is, he noticed billboards touting low-priced Chinese brands and listened as his relatives insisted that he kick tires at a JAC dealership, one of dozens of Chinese brands sold here.
"We realized for the same money that we'd pay for a crummy secondhand car that inspired no confidence, we could have a brand-new Chinese car with a two-year warranty," Luna said as he finished paperwork on his new $16,000 JAC B-Cross family wagon. "I'm totally convinced this is the right decision."
Similar buyer testimonials can be heard across Latin America these days, where Chinese cars with unfamiliar brand names like Great Wall, JAC, Brilliance and Sinotruk are selling like hot cakes. Chinese cars were introduced in Peru in 2006 and now one in six new cars sold here is a Chinese make.
There are no fewer than 90 Chinese car manufacturers to choose from, according to the trade group Automobile Assn. of Peru. The Chinese auto industry has yet to undergo the winnowing process that, over a century of competition, has reduced the U.S. car industry to three big players.
The Chinese brands' main selling point is, of course, price: New Chinese cars typically sell for half to two-thirds the cost of a comparable European, U.S. or Japanese vehicle, said Guido Vildozo, an auto industry expert with consultants IHS Automotive in Lexington, Mass.
"What makes Chinese cars so much cheaper? Start with labor," Vildozo said, noting that a typical Chinese autoworker makes $300 to $400 a month, a fraction of the $2,000 to $3,000 in wages that Mexican workers make or the $5,000 to $7,000 a month that U.S. auto workers average.
Another price advantage, said Jian Sun, a partner with AT Kearney business consultants in Shanghai, stems from the "reverse engineering," or design and mechanical imitation, that many Chinese carmakers use in competing models to save them the expense of designing new models from scratch.
Chinese manufacturers are entering the market as Latin American incomes are rising to unprecedented levels, flush from the decade-long global commodities boom filtering down to an expanding consumer class.
Augusto de la Torre, chief Latin America economist at the World Bank, said the region's middle class now encompasses 30% of its population of 570 million, up from 20% in 2002.
In Colombia, where the economy is thriving on global sales of its oil, coal, coffee and bananas, the increase in disposable income is especially dramatic. Bank of Bogota economist Camilo Perez said economic output per capita has nearly doubled in five years, to $6,700 last year from the $3,400 average in 2006.
So it comes as no surprise that car sales are accelerating. New units sold last year in Colombia totaled 325,000, a 28% increase from 2010. New car sales in Peru totaled more than 100,000 last year, up 26% from the previous year.
According to Scotiabank,Brazil'scar sales will grow to 2.8 million in 2012, up 4% from last year, but in a much larger population base than those of its neighbors.
The expanding new-car market is what attracted Chinese automakers, who see Latin America as a proving ground for its plan to conquer the world car market in coming decades. According to AT Kearney, China exported 800,000 cars last year but hopes to boost that number to 2 million by 2015 and to 3 million by 2020.
The Latin focus is also explained, AT Kearney's Jian said, by the fact that Chinese manufacturers are not yet prepared to tackle the U.S. and European markets, which are more demanding in quality and emissions standards. The competition is less intense and the regulatory restrictions are lower in emerging markets, he said. China and these regions share similar road conditions, emission controls and safety standards.
(The domestic Chinese car market, where sales last year totaled about 18 million vehicles, is the largest in the world, far surpassing that of the U.S., where about 12.8 million new cars and trucks were sold in 2011.)
Many buyers, like Antonio Benevides, a 26-year-old theme park worker in Bogota, are first-time owners. In early December, he bought a new Chery QQ model for $9,000, two-thirds the cost of a comparable Renault he had considered.
"That difference in price is what put a new car within my reach for the first time," Benevides said as he drove his car off the dealership lot near Bogota's international airport. "I've heard they hold together well, that they are cheap to operate and, as you can see, they are not bad looking."
Special correspondents Leon reported from Lima and Kraul from Bogota.
Copyright © 2012, Los Angeles Times
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williamworth
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Re: Personal car-sharing is a new twist on auto rentals
Bundle of services are also available in our country. More than 3,000 complaints and 50 collective claims were caused by complaints of carbon monoxide poisoning in the cabin of the new SUV. Owners across the country report persistent migraines and dizziness. To date, owners have filed more than 3,000 complaints and 50 lawsuits against Ford. Owners complain of nausea, headache, dizziness and other symptoms while driving the updated Explorer SUV. Obviously, carbon monoxide seeps into the cabin. The same information for cultus carzaamin(.)com/blog/suzuki-cultus-for-sale-in-lahore-pakistan/ is confirmed by some police stations that used the model as official vehicles. Complaints mainly relate to Ford Explorers, built between 2000 and 2018. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) began exploring problems in 2016. Until a decision is made, and if NHTSA considers these cars unsafe, a million model recalls can be arranged, and Ford will receive huge fines. All of our tests to date have shown that these machines are safe," a spokesman for Mike Levine said in a statement to Bloomberg. "The Ford study did not reveal a level of carbon monoxide that would exceed the usual daily level in the life of every person. Thanks
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