Phillyist: Zip It

Marc Lostracco

Sun, 30 Mar 2008 21:32:57 -0500

Zipcar recently descended on Toronto (and I wrote a comparison article on Torontoist), which ruffled a lot of people's feathers because the multi-city American company was instantly competing with the local homegrown car sharing co-op, AutoShare. AutoShare instantly had older cars, less dramatic technology, and wasn't able to make fat deals with the big parking lot conglomerates to get some really key spaces. Since then, I'm not sure how the companies are doing, but Zipcar is quite a bit more expensive and AutoShare seems to still be doing well. They have slightly different offerings from each other, vehicle wise—for example, AutoShare has minivans with the seats removed, while Zipcar has pickup trucks.

Kingpin

Sun, 30 Mar 2008 18:23:56 -0500

Goodluck PhillyCarShare, kick those nogoodnick SOBs in the arse and send them packing!

CDC

Sun, 30 Mar 2008 16:27:40 -0500

I hope PCS runs ZipCar right out of town. Competition is one thing, but no reason to be a bunch of jerks about it.

Jillian Ashley Blair Ivey

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 13:32:12 -0500

The interesting thing about all of this is that Zipcar bought FlexCar, who, when they came to Philly, made it very clear that they were NOT PCS's competition because they're for profit and PCS isn't.

Eric Smith

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 12:57:07 -0500

Not at all. :)

bonzombiekitty

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 11:57:39 -0500

Is it bad that when I first saw a zipcar parking space my first thought was "fuck them"?