All of the perks, none of the hassle: Exploring Boston's car sharing options

Depending on your needs and location, car sharing may be cheaper than you think. In Boston, Zipcar starts at $60 per year, plus $7.75 per hour you’re borrowing; Mint starts at $40 per year and $6.00 per hour, and both companies give you access to their fleet of cars, dispersed throughout the city. RelayRides, which starts at just $5 per hour and doesn't charge an annual fee, is a little different: With them, you're borrowing cars owned by other people in your neighborhood.

RelayRides is currently only available in select areas (including my neighborhood of Jamaica Plain), but thanks to a new strategic partnership with General Motors, it won’t be that way much longer.

“We have plans to be expanding outside of where we are now in early 2012,” said RelayRides founder Shelby Clark. “In terms of the suburbs and other areas around Boston, it’s coming soon. We’re expanding aggressively.”

The company recently received $3 million in additional funding from GM, and the vehicle manufacturer also announced that RelayRides will now be optional on all of its OnStar-equipped cars. Since that technology has been installed in every GM vehicle sold since 2005, that means RelayRides will be available to about 15 million car owners, who can add the function simply by visiting the company’s website.

The expansion potential is huge, given that RelayRides currently only has about 200 cars in its Boston- and San Francisco-based “fleet.” Conversely, even though RelayRides’ membership isn’t massive -- there are only about 4,000 drivers (like myself) across both cities -- it could be big news for GM as well.

“The car companies, including GM, seem to be realizing that they’re marketing to people who just don’t want to buy a car. You can’t make them buy cars,” said Clark, "but what you can do is make it so that when they are ready to buy a car, they’ve been driving GM cars for a long time.”

Zipcar, meanwhile, has reportedly grown its membership by 25%, to 650,000 people, in the last year. "We made significant progress during [the third quarter] on several fronts, including increased activity and revenue growth across our consumer, business, university, and government memberships,” said Scott Griffith, chairman and CEO of Zipcar.

With that kind of growth, you can bet there are a lot of companies wanting a piece of the action -- including Ford, which recently struck a partnership with Zipcar to add their vehicles to fleets at 250 college campuses across the United States.

“Ford is targeting the college and university business at Zipcar,” Clark said. “The partnership is really focused around universities. They’re targeting people who aren’t buying cars now, but they will be.”

The idea of using car sharing for test-driving has resonated with a number of other manufacturers as well. Daimler now has a one-way car sharing service -- sort of like Hubway bicycles -- called Car2Go; it's available in Austin and San Diego, as well as Canada and various countries in Europe. Volkswagen and BMW are testing car sharing in Germany, and Toyota is testing it in Japan.

Although they’re all competitors to some degree, each of these different car sharing companies serves different niches. Car2Go’s one-way car sharing couldn’t work for peer-to-peer car sharing like RelayRides hosts; BMW’s tests are clearly meant to serve customers interested in luxury vehicles.

“I think that car sharing is really an extension of mobility,” Clark said. “If you imagine the whole spectrum of mobility -- cabs, public transit, car ownership, etc. -- car sharing is an addition to all that.”

With that new addition, you now have an option if you need occasional, rather than constant, access to a car (or another car). “We talk a lot about 1.5- or 2.5-car households. I think people usually round up," Clark said. "What we can do is help them round down."

If you’re in need of a fraction of a car, do yourself -- and maybe even your neighbors -- a favor and round down by signing up for car sharing. The options are only growing more numerous in Boston.

Photos by Shockingly Tasty (top) and Lightpattern Productions (bottom) (Flickr)

About Kyle -- I'm obsessed with what's next, especially when it involves truly helping people live better, more fulfilling lives. I believe this is where creativity and creation become innovation. The founding editor of the online publication BostInnovation and a former staff writer for the New England Patriots, I'm lucky to now spend my days building a brighter future for consumer banking at PerkStreet Financial, where I also manage a daily blog. Follow me on Twitter @KylePs80.

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