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GM Car Owners With OnStar Now Can Be Their Own Rental Agencies
The Los Angeles Times reports that the world of micro-rentals just got a whole lot more crowded, with the introduction of a nationwide partnership between GM and ride-sharing company RelayRides. RelayRides has been arranging short-term car sharing in just a few cities for several years; car owners can sign up to make their own cars available for short-term rentals to others, so their expensive investment (especially in cities where parking is like a second apartment's rent) isn't sitting idle. Now, the two companies are rolling out that system in a much larger market: the rest of the U.S. Owners of GM cars new enough to be equipped with OnStar monitoring systems will be able to sign up to take part with the OnStar system providing the ability to unlock and track those cars remotely, which might make the bargain more attractive to many owners who'd like to earn money from their cars (and reduce the total number of cars needed in a given area), but reluctant to hand the keys to a stranger. (Cars without the system can still be enrolled, but will require a key hand-off.)
Erm...no, it's covered by RelayRide's car insurance.
RelayRides will take a 40% cut and provide a $1-million insurance policy for the owner and $300,000 for the renter.
Great news for people who want the shit beat out of their cars by random strangers.
Seems like a lot of trouble. Wouldn't it be much easier to steal the car the old-fashioned way? Presumably your method would result in the organisation having a picture of you (from your fake id), and the monitoring system would reveal the car mysteriously disappearing when entering your steel walled warehouse. So basically the police now know your face and your hideout.
Even if that does not lead to your capture, they can put your picture in a database and the next time you attempt to steal a car you'll get flagged and arrested.
So when my car is rented by someone who slips the clutch like a driver's ed student and puts five years worth of wear on the clutch plates in two days, I'm supposed to be happy about this because hey, Onstar?
No thanks.
You don't have an automatic, unlike 94% of cars sold? That's easy, this program is not for you. I bet they wont even enroll a standard transmission car, it's not worth the hassle of requiring another check box on the web form.
If I'm renting my car out under this arrangement, how can I be sure that the renters aren't abusing it in subtle or hard-to-detect ways? Burning up the brakes, doing donuts in parking lots, weird stuff with the transmission... there are lots of ways to damage a car that won't be immediately apparent. By the time it's noticed, it may be too late. And even in the case of overt damage, expect a major fight with the insurance company over just who caused it and whether your insurance or Relay Rental should pay. Dealing with insurance companies is always a nightmare, every time.
For rental recipients, this poses its own set of problems: how do you avoid being blamed for damage you didn't cause? How can you be sure that the car isn't missing basic functionality – you wouldn't be happy to get a rental in the middle of July with broken A/C.
"2) Social engineer the car to be a part of this "rental agreement"."
Uh-huh, because if you want to strip a car, you're not just going to smash the window and hotwire the car with the little box you bought off of e-bay in under 5 minutes. Riiiight.
Of course not. That little box you bought on eBay likely came from some sweatshop in China and, for all you know, contains lead (a product known to the State of California to cause Cancer).
A little social engineering is pure, American made goodness (or maybe Nigerian, but hell, we're all free marketeers here, right?).
Why do you hate America?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!