Car share program (Zipcar or iRent)

I just saw that they have a car sharing program in Taiwan. Does anyone have experience with that?

Zipcar

They have them at the Nei Hu Carrefour (in the parking lot, they have 2 dedicated spots). Seen people take them out but haven’t looked into how the service works or how much it is.

The local one (irent) is much more popular and they are available pretty much around the island. Hourly or daily rates.

Seems like you just download the app and put a credit card on file. No membership fees and you can rant from 1 hour to 7 days at a time.

So, iRent is Toyota and Zipcar is VW!

But the price depending on your needs is more expensive than taking a taxi.

Now, why would both sites only be in Chinese?

Can I have just a 30 minute rant? :joy:

I guess once you take one, it just charges you min 1 hour no matter what.

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Zipcar, is it true that they have to be dropped off at the same parking spot where you pick up or can they be returned to different locations?

Has anyone signed up and tried one of these services? There are a few parking spots close to where I live just wondering how they deal with fuel and damage. Seen one parked in a local spot last week with a rather large dent and rub mark from the rear door all the way to the back of the car.

I used to use Zipcars when travelling within the US a few years back. Insurance and fuel is included in the hourly rate. They tend to have a fuel card, so when the tank is low you go to a gas station and use the card to refuel. Damage usually gets repaired at regular intervals, unless safety critical. Not sure if there are deductibles, but if there are, they should be fairly low. I think they do charge you a fine if you return the car late or in dirty condition.

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Do wonder how the damage repair and dirty condition is checked. The car are picked up and returned to car parks spots around the city so who checks for damage? The next renter? Similarly for dirty condition. One of the big issues with renting any car in Taiwan is the lack of 100% insurance coverage if that is still the case with these guys then there’s a huge incentive for any renter to not declare any damage and hope the next guys get screwed with it.

The next user will report it. Since they have a record of when the next user checks in, they have a fairly good indication on whether the damage/dirt was there before and if it hasn’t been reported earlier, it’s clear who is responsible for it.

That’s the theory. In practice, I have spotted tyre damage caused by a previous user after I already used the car. The customer service center was very helpful and even offered to send someone to pick me up from my current location.

In the US, they have a very good insurance coverage as well.

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I tried signing up for irent, but not for the likes of us.

I managed to register with ARC and local driving license. Took them a day to approve it. So far I used it to rent a scooter. I’m using Wemo scooters for last 2 years and there is lot of difference between these two. iRent is better than wemo in terms of price 1ntd per minute and 600ntd per day, Wemo is 2.5ntd per minute. When you run out of battery on iRent you can go to nearest battery swap station and change it, so you can use scooter outside of Taipei and when you finish bring it back to Taipei. When you run out of battery on Wemo you have to park it, so means you are limited to use it in available area. I’m 190cm tall and Wemo is small for me but iRent scooter is even smaller :slight_smile: To rent Wemo takes me 15 seconds and to rent iRent more than 3 minutes. I’m not sure how insurance works with any of them but I noticed if Wemo is scratched or something is broken they fix it without looking who is responsible for that. iRent is asking you to take pictures of scooter before and after use, from all sides and to take pictures and notes of damages if there was any before you took it. Also Wemo app is in English while iRent only Chinese

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how does the irent …renting work?
wemo and goshare are both great but not for exploring.

both cannot be left outside of their zones. wemo can be left if you pay for several hours. but the battery is so shit that if you go outside of taipei its not going to last long.
goshare has battery swap, so its better for battery but it doesn’t have the ability to buy time on it yet. how about irent?

I’m also getting an error trying to sign up for iRent with an ARC :thinking:

[帳號],請填寫有效的身分證字號
[Account Number] Please fill in a valid ID number.

Has anyone had success registering as a member (加入會員) with an ARC?

my ARC is not accepted for sign up either …whats the solution?

Sign up in one of their offices.