Searching for a Zipcar with the company's new iPhone app.
(Credit: Zipcar)SAN FRANCISCO--It's like the ultimate yuppie geek convergence: there's finally an iPhone app for car-sharing company Zipcar. To put it in the most stereotypical of terms, you now no longer need a computer to book that Prius for your weekend Whole Foods run.
Apple gave a green light to the free download earlier this week, so Zipcar members can now use the app to find and book available cars using GPS-enabled maps, access account and car database information, contact the company's headquarters, and use a "virtual key fob" to lock and unlock their reserved cars. It's the first-ever mobile endeavor for Zipcar besides text-message alerts, something that may be surprising considering the company's outside-the-box, next-gen image.
"This is an entirely new channel of communication with members," Zipcar Chief Technology Officer Luke Schneider told CNET News in a meeting at the company's San Francisco office, adding that over a quarter of the company's 325,000 members (which it calls "Zipsters") own iPhones. Applications for more mobile platforms are tentatively on the way, he added, as another quarter of Zipcar members own non-iPhone smartphones. But he said the company hasn't decided which to develop next.
Zipcar, founded a decade ago in Cambridge, Mass., is designed as an alternative to car ownership and rental. You pay by the hour, gas and insurance are included, and cars are scattered in parking spaces across cities and university towns (the places where living without a car is most feasible) so that once you've booked a vehicle, you can show up and unlock it with your membership card. Schneider came on board when the company merged with a rival, Flexcar, about two years ago.
With its iPhone app, Schneider said, Zipcar hopes to achieve a twofold goal: first, making the membership experience easier by allowing for mobile reservations and database information; and two, attracting new customers by letting them toy with the app even if they aren't already members. Load up the "virtual key fob" without logging in or having a reservation, and a pop-up message will appear saying, in quirky Zipster fashion, "You do not have a current reservation, but you can make fun sounds anyway." In other words, you can push the horn-honking button until your friends want to wring your neck. It's about "the experience" of the Zipcar brand, Schneider explained.
For the company's management, the mobile app can also fine-tune some of the data that Schneider says they're "constantly obsessed" with: which car models are in demand at which times of the day and year, which locations seem over- or under-served, and so forth. It doesn't collect any sensitive personal data, he assured me.
I had a chance to test drive the new iPhone app on Wednesday, when I picked up a Zipcar to drive to Mountain View for the TechStars Investor Day event. The app is extremely well-designed, and making a reservation is a no-brainer. It's overall terrific branding for Zipcar: newcomers will certainly get the idea that this is a company that's tech-savvy, rooted in convenience, and has a sense of humor.
And Zipcar needs to keep up that image, now that the car-sharing trend is catching on with rivals from both the nonprofit space (like the Bay Area's City Car Share) and the mainstays of the rental car industry.
The Zipcar iPhone app's 'virtual key fob' is cute, but more gimmicky than convenient.
(Credit: Zipcar)"Zipcar established a category that didn't exist yet," Schneider said of competition in the market. "It validates the space when bigger competitors come in."
My gripe with the app, unfortunately, is with the nifty part that everybody's talking about. The unlock-by-iPhone feature is more of a fun toy than a utility; it simply isn't as convenient as it should be. First, you've got to load up the app and let it log you in--which takes a few seconds, enough time for me to fish around in my wallet and find my "Zipcard," the ID card that also locks and unlocks reserved cars. Then, upon hitting the lock or unlock button, the app has to communicate with Zipcar via data connection--not a short-range signal like an automatic door opener--and sometimes that can take another second or two. (Once, in fact, it just didn't seem to want to work.) Typically, I just got impatient and dug out my card.
Additionally, the app won't replace the credit-card-sized "Zipcard." They'll still need to use the card, not the iPhone interface, to unlock a car when they initially pick it up.
But that's a security regulation more than anything else, Schneider told me: "We don't want you to be stranded if your battery's run out."
Co-eds enrolling at the University of Washington at Seattle this fall should be able to zip to class on electric bikes rented through Intrago Corporation's self-serve system.
The company plans to launch its first stable of 40 rental electric bikes at four stations around the campus around August.
Coming to a campus near you?
(Credit: Intrago)Intrago's goal is to offer rental wheels around the world at transportation hubs like train stations, so people can reach their final destination without having to cab it, hoof it or pedal uphill on a manual bike.
Each user will get a key that works on any Intrago bike. They can pick up and return a bike from any docking station, unlike car rental services, which require a round trip. GPS tracking of each vehicle should prevent rush hour parking bottlenecks, according to Intrago.
The bikes will be locked to stations through a cable that also bundles data wires feeding information about customer usage patterns to Intrago's servers.
Intrago is developing a franchise business model to spread its technology around the country and abroad. It would sell or rent its systems to regional operators and take royalties from use of its software.
At the Cleantech Forum in San Francisco, Intrago founder Dan Sturges said Tuesday he plans to establish rental systems at college and business campuses, followed by cities.
The next Intrago stations are due to be set up at a business park later this year in Walnut Creek, Calif.
Sturges said he hopes to see bike rentals become even popular in U.S. cities as they are in Paris, where 1,400 stations offer 20,000 foot-pedaled two-wheelers for rent.
London earlier this month unveiled a plan to make 6,000 bikes available for rent every 300 meters starting in 2010, as part of that city's $1 billion effort to encourage cycling and walking,
As oil costs $100 per barrel and traffic increasingly clogs roads, Sturges said he foresees a future era of "restorative mobility," in which people can give up their cars without feeling stranded or adding to global warming. He finds encouragement in the growing popularity of Zipcar car-sharing service, which serves more than two dozen cities. It bought rival Flexcar in October.
In the 1990s Sturges invented the GEM NEV electric "golf cart" car, which General Motors later bought.
Intrago has raised $1.2 million and is seeking another $5 million.
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