These days every person wishes to have his or her own car, but there are many people for whom this isn’t a real necessity, but rather a personal preference. In case you drive less than 500 miles a month, you are the perfect candidate for car sharing.
There are numerous possibilities offered by the manufacturers to make you get rid of your car. These come with numerous modern technologies, including the use of smart cards instead of keys, smart tracking devices for security and also mobile apps for registration.
The people working at BMW have found a solution for one of the most common problems of car sharing: picking up and dropping off locations. This company has presented a solution: offering numerous BMWs and Mini Coopers that could be left at any location.
This is said to be the first car sharing service that offers vehicles at random locations. All this would have been impossible without smartphones, location-based apps and GPS.
Those looking for a car just have to use the app on their smartphone to find the nearest vehicle. According to the promotional video, in case you see a car of this kind on the street all you have to do is to make sure that it is free and just jump in.
To register for the program, you just have to use your driver’s license. Unlike the other programs that use keys and smart cards, this company applies an electronic sticker to your license, and so it is turned into a key.
In order to start the engine there is need for a PIN to be introduced for the engine will not start without it. The cost of the service is of 29 cents and that includes gas and also a parking space in the city which normally implies a lot of fuss and a large cost.
At the moment this service is available only within the city streets of Munich, but according to the company, they would like to develop the idea and make it available for the majority of the big cities.
It’s not only the Germans who thought about such solutions. The service has been available in America since the 1980s and it seems to gain popularity again due to the high gas prices.
Zipcar is known to be the largest project of this kind, having 550,000 members. This company offers the members radio frequency identification smart cards to access the vehicles and reservations can be done with the help of mobile apps.
