Rent a car vs Zipcar vs own one?

How would you imagine a world where owning a car is not a norm? One day, it´ll happened, just because there will be a more efficient way to move from A to B, which is going to make owning a car worthless.

Last week Zipcar went public, for those who don´t know Zipcar, it´s a membership-based car sharing company which provides automobile reservations to its members. It requires a $50 annual membership, a spotless driving record and that you’ve had your license for over 1 year. What makes it different to any other rental is that you can rent it hourly and you can pick it up from hundreds of spots in the major cities from the US. Costs are $8/hour or about $75/day and it includes insurance and gasoline.

Most rental car companies are significantly less than that, always that you have your own insurance that covers a rental. They start on $12/day but they usually cost $20/day, not including gasoline or insurance, which probably doubles the price,  however is still half of Zipcar.

One of the major rental car companies, Enterprise, is actually moving into the hourly space to compete with Zipcar, with a separate brand called WeCar. Works exactly like Zipcar (reserve online, pay for gas with a fleet card and hourly based rentals), however their pick up spots are not as popular as Zipcar yet.

I hope both companies learn from each other, which will continue the transition to don’t own. It has to be different in 50 years.