Does Zipcar Leaving UK Have Any Meaning For Robotaxi Dreams? – Pure technique

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The news this week that Zipcar is leaving the UK is interesting in many ways. I was an early Zipcar user from 2004-2007. I loved it and it helped that I didn’t own a car. So over the years I have been a big supporter of car sharing programs and even tried to start one myself. My colleagues and I never got the funding we needed to start a carsharing company in Poland, but other companies took off. These cars were then all over the city where I lived, and I used the popular program a bit myself. However, the program did not last because it never made more money than it apparently spent.

This has already happened in many markets. I remember being in Paris and seeing tons of totally beat up car sharing cars. (Carsharing cars in Wroclaw often had 10+ points of damage.) This Parisian carsharing program Autolib’ was shut down 7 years ago due to massive financial losses.

While carsharing is very useful for many people, the finances of these programs are usually not sustainable. Is carsharing the same as robotaxis? No, but there are some similarities. In either case, you expect the cars to be used by a high volume of customers – the cost must be low enough to attract them, but high enough to make a profit from usage. In both cases, you have to manage the maintenance, repair and cleaning of these highly used vehicles.

There are also some differences. The car doesn’t do that with carsharing otherunnecessary driving. The user takes the car from where it is to where it wants to go and leaves it there. Robotax will come to you from somewhere and after dropping you off, it can stay in the same area or it can go back to its home base or some favorite area. More driving means more charging costs, more maintenance, more depreciation. On the other hand, the person using the car doesn’t have to focus on driving while using the car, so it provides more value (which means the company can theoretically charge more). Also, the car will come to you, so you don’t even have to walk down the street to get the car. That means you have to too Wait to the car and the wait could be extended by traffic or confused navigation or something. As a CleanTechnica a reader pointed out yesterday: “What are the chances that Waymo or Tesla will send someone to clean all the cameras on their self-driving cars? It’s not like if it gets covered up they can drive into the warehouse armored…Also who is responsible for the accidents/injuries that become enviable?” Yes, there are additional costs to consider.

The bottom line here is that many of the same costs that have plagued car-sharing programs will apply to robotaxis. Will the cost be higher or lower? That’s a real question. Will the value be much higher than carsharing?

Both carsharing and robotaxis can find passionate, loyal users. “The news that Zipcar is set to close the doors of its only remaining UK operation (in London) has sparked a wave of frustration from loyal users,” Coach writes. “Restaurant critic Jay Rayner wrote on Bluesky that he was ‘dismayed’ by the decision. ‘The availability of the car club was at the heart of our decision to abandon car ownership about five years ago,’ he added.” But having passionate and loyal users is not enough to make a company profitable.