Uber & Car2Go

[thelamb]

Hope this is a fun little discussion, not overly serious.  I live in Columbus and have a stupid clown car that is underused and should've never been purchased.  Whoops.  Oh, and it's financed.  Double whoops.  Have been planning to get rid of it in the near future, but I've been waiting to see if Columbus would get a car share and if I could just go completely car less or if I'd need to buy something cheap.  Well, as of tomorrow, we will have car2go. 

This past weekend I was in San Fran and my buddy was using uber to get around.  If anyone doesn't know what uber is, I'm not going to fully describe, but it basically makes it easy for regular folks with cars to be ad-hoc taxi drivers.  Anyway, I got to thinking maybe I could do that. 

There are many obvious considerations, such as whether one would want to spend evenings hauling people around, possible safety issues, cost versus benefit in terms of the degradation of the car, but...  what do people think:  ditch the car and go with car2go or double down and be an uber taxi driver? 

Anybody have experience with either? 

PS, the chances of the latter are super slim, but it's still fun to ask. 

[KatieSSS]

DC has had car2go for a while now, maybe 2 years. I have been using it for a year. At first I thought "why would I drive this little car around?" Now, I love it. I mainly take public transportation everywhere (or walk), but in the event that I need to get from A to B quickly or need a car late at night (cheaper than a taxi), then I use car2go. My primary use of car2go is to drive me home from my waitressing shifts when it is too late to take the bus. I took a cab once and it cost me $15 to get home. With car2go, the rate is 50 cents a minute, so it costs me around $5-6 to drive home. I only use it for short trips and really don't recommend it for more than that. I've spent just under $300 this year using car2go, but I pay for most of that out of what I make waitressing, since the second job is what I need it for.

Also, I avoided the sign-up fee ($50, maybe?) because I signed up with a student code. I'm no longer a student, but now that I'm signed up they don't charge an annual fee. I use zipcar (which does charge an annual fee) for big trips, like if I need to go to Ikea or Home Depot, because it makes more sense (more space, comes out to be cheaper to use zipcar for longer trips).

Hope this helps!

[dragoncar]

Uber is pretty expensive with a $15 min fare.  You can also use them to hail a can for a $1 fee, so doesn't seem very mustachian (compared to just taking a cab).

That said, you can really work the promotions a referral system for the following car p2p ride services to get plenty of free rides:

Uber
Sidecar
Lyft
Instantcab

[thelamb]

Glad to hear someone has had a positive experience with car2go. I would hope to use it in a similar manner-minimally.  As for uber, just to be clear, I'm not considering using it in place of a car. That would be hella expensive. Instead, I'm looking at the possibility of being a driver on the side. Long shot.