Skip to main content

Why own a car, when you can go get?

Image
By

That's the slogan of one company providing an alternative to car ownership. Here's our experience with them.

Why not just have our own car?

Another time I'll write a full post about that, but suffice to say that car ownership is a pain in the neck. The servicing, the maintenance, the repairs, the parking, the traffic, the registration, the insurance, the cleaning...

For my wife and I, about 98% of our transport needs can be done on foot, by bike, by train, bus or ferry. Maybe 99% if you include rideshare. So we choose to avoid the pain (and cost) of car ownership.

However, car use (I think of it separately from car ownership) can be handy in certain situations. We had one of those situations last weekend. Here's how it went.

Booking a car

My wife signed up for GoGet, and booked the car online for the time window she needed it.

As a first-timer, she received her little membership card in the mail. On the day of the booking, GoGet sent her a reminder email about 20 minutes before the booking started.

Grabbing the car

The reminder email also gave the exact location of the car, which was about 250m from us.

It was easy to find with the orange branding.

As soon as the booking started, we could swipe the membership card over the built-in sensor behind the windscreen, to unlock the doors.

Inside, the car key itself was attached to the car on a retractable cord. Handy for never losing the key. :)


There's also a fuel card attached if the car need refilling. GoGet pays for the fuel, but we're charged a per-km fee to cover our usage.

Summary

GoGet seems most suitable for short, occasional uses within the city. Convenience trips more so than long driving.

There are also other options available including rental cars, Car Next Door and rideshare. This post is not intended to be an add for GoGet.

On this occasion my wife chose GoGet for the ability to have the car overnight and because car rental prices are a bit high right now. Also it was an advantage to pick up the car just around the corner, rather than at a rental company location.

Psychology of cost

It seems expensive when you first look at the hire cost. But the idea is that it's a replacement to owning a rarely-used car.

So while the hire cost may look high; when compared to paying for registration, insurance and servicing etc, it's quite affordable - if used only occasionally.

I guess that we're essentially splitting the cost of car ownership with the other users. Much better than having to pay the whole lot, when we rarely need a car.

Further reading

How to waste a year's wages (cars are a big chunk of it)

Subscribe to my monthly-ish email for updates of new posts.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Offline

By
Yes, by now we all know that smartphones and social media are doing us harm. How do we harness the benefits of them without the destructive effects. The book Offline makes 5 main points. If you've only got a minute, here they are: The addictive design keeps us on online platforms longer. The 'brain hacks' disrupt our brain's ability to function. Humans need "real" interaction, and social media does not deliver this. Technoference (digital over-riding direct interactions at the play ground, coffee shop, dinner table) result in something valuable being lost. Speed of the transformation is astounding. 75% of people are connected, with almost half using social media. We have no idea what the long-term effects of this real-life experiment will be. Going a bit deeper, here are some of my highlights from the book. So what are side-effects? According to various studies, the effects can be grouped into the physiological (poor sleep, neural re-wiring, and increased str...
Post a Comment
Read more

How to retire on a boat at 40

By
Irish Leonard explains how his family of four lives on a sailboat. No inheritance. No lottery. Just not wasting money - or his time. How does he afford it? He explains by showing the average Irish household expenses, converted into hours worked. Here's the result shown as a working week: We work a lot to pay for our cars. As he puts it: Almost 20% of our working lives is spent so that we can afford to get to our working lives. So Leonard eliminates or massively reduces most expenses. On the family boat, he sails "in a climate that requires no heating or air conditioning, doesn't own a car and generates what energy he needs using solar panels". Remove the unnecessary costs and you remove most of the need to work. He calculates that we can feed and clothe our family on 5 days work per month, or the equivalent. By contrast the average Irish couple devotes 19 hours a day to work, including commuting. Why all this focus on time? In Leonard's words "I...
2 comments
Read more

Big motivator for small living

By
It's been a while between posts here - mainly because we've been moving house. It's been a real motivator for downsizing. Packing each and every item we owned, really makes me wish there were fewer of them. Moving everything from the old apartment to the new one made me envious of those people who live in a "tiny house on wheels". For them moving house simply means towing it to a new location. No packing required. The whole process has reaffirmed our commitment to owning less stuff. So we're going to be intentional about downsizing. It will be an ongoing activity. My environmental heart couldn't stomach a spontaneous dumping of things into the garbage, but it's also more fun this way. Selling things online brings in some handy pocket money. Giving items away is also a great community activity, whether it is to friends and family, to charity or to people in the neighbourhood. I'm looking forward to it as a lifestyle rather than a task to do....
Post a Comment
Read more