I’m in Seattle for the week (hi Julie Timm, Franz Loewenherz, Anna Zivarts!) and I noticed a new shared mobility option: car-share by the minute called GIG. I don’t think this a totally new concept, but it’s one I don’t often see in New York and I haven’t obviously seen it in other places I’ve traveled in the US. I did see it in London. The specific use case: my traveling buddies and I needed to move heavy luggage from their flat to the Crystal Palace Overground station relatively quickly. A rideshare was too expensive, walking or biking wouldn’t have worked and a full-day or even an hour-long car rental made no sense—too expensive. This option was the type of car-mobility solution that had a perfect use case.
A question is: can it scale? You’ve got to think that this can’t be profitable—so what’s the incentive? I asked the same thing about GIG when I saw a few of them parked around the Othello Light Rail station. Here’s the rate schedule for a by-the-minute, pay-as-you-go scheme:
There are a few back-of-the-napkin calculations you can make here, and I’d think that the app would calculate the lowest-cost option for you. You’ll be charged by the minute up to 34 minutes, then you’re on the hourly plan—but can you be on the hourly and minute plan? The same goes for the day plan: over 6 hours you’re better off using the day rate. (You can prepay for a day rate at a discount).
I think the GIG cars are a great deal for certain niche trips like the one I described above (moving luggage from home to the train station), but car-sharing apps like Turo are likely a better deal for day or multi-day trips. Both are better than traditional, clunky car rental services. If you’re bent on renting or borrowing a car for mobility—in Seattle, the obvious use case here is a trip to the mountains—having both GIG and Turo will provide you the options you’d crave. Of course, a better option exists: accessible trails by public transportation.
Is GIG profitable? Will it survive? Maybe not this particular iteration, but carsharing has come a long way since the OG Zipcar launch in 2000. Hopefully, we’ll continue to innovate across all mobility options so that people can get around their place using the best option for them.