I really miss DriveNow in SF and the South Bay. It was really convenient if I missed my shuttle in the mornings, or if I had to come back to the city on the weekends. One more reason to ditch SF and move to Seattle I suppose.
If you're trying to keep people from moving to Seattle, at least mention the earthquakes and tsunamis.
> FEMA projects that nearly thirteen thousand people will die in the Cascadia earthquake and tsunami. Another twenty-seven thousand will be injured, and the agency expects that it will need to provide shelter for a million displaced people, and food and water for another two and a half million.
> we now know that the odds of the big Cascadia earthquake happening in the next fifty years are roughly one in three. The odds of the very big one are roughly one in ten.
Seattle isn't at a significant risk of a tsunami thanks to the large mountain range between it and the Pacific, but it is an issue for those on the peninsula and even more so for coastal Oregon (higher population). A big quake will happen, but that shouldn't deter someone from SF.
You'll get used to the rain. Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are rare. If you want to keep people away, tell 'am about the astonishingly shitty drivers, because after sixteen years they continue to annoy me on a daily basis.
What's wrong with the drivers? I find they drive slowly sometimes but it's not really a big deal. I find driving in SF to actually be scary on the other hand with people forcefully merging into your lanes.
I've been here for almost two years but I'm still not used to the lack of sunshine for most of the year.
You mean you haven't noticed the "you go first" wave battles that can last minutes on end? And the fact that, no matter how many lanes an Interstate has, they'll all be going exactly 59mph, making passing or trying to make your exit near-impossible?
The reason why I don't live in seattle is because the only big employer HQs you have a choice of is MSFT and Amazon, both a negative in their own way. In the SFBA you have far more choice
Especially don't move to Seattle to start technology startups to take advantage of all the great Amazon and Microsoft people who would be great hires 5 to 5000 at new startups (as well as a lot of other big companies), great university, etc.
(i.e. don't be like SpaceX, Google, Facebook, ... who have all opened offices up there)
> The company says the decision was influenced by the lack of parking permit regulations necessary for one-way car sharing. “Until the current regulations are amended, we must suspend service in the San Francisco Bay Area,” DriveNow reads in a statement. “We fully expect to return once the city reforms its parking policies to allow for one-way car sharing. We will continue to work with the city of San Francisco toward achieving that goal.”
IMHO As one of the top DriveNow customers i'm pretty upset that they shot themselves in the foot here in SF by attempting to get 100's of on street parking permits for ELECTRIC cars which need to be constantly charged. I really don't understand who thought that would be a great idea for a parking constrained city like San Francisco.
I do miss DriveNow, at least weekly. Having an ActiveE or later, an i3 to run errands or take friends around town was really really great, and the pricing was insane ($60 for 24 hours, all inclusive! It started at $30 when they first launched. I was renting cars for a month at a time because it was cheaper than owning/leasing when you consider that parking at my office building was $700/month).
> IMHO As one of the top DriveNow customers i'm pretty upset that they shot themselves in the foot here in SF by attempting to get 100's of on street parking permits for ELECTRIC cars which need to be constantly charged. I really don't understand who thought that would be a great idea for a parking constrained city like San Francisco.
Since they are paying for the parking I don't really see what the issue is. If the cars are out somewhere being charged they won't be in a parking spot. Using parking spots for shared cars is more efficient and should actually increase the turnover of spots while still providing consistent revenue to the city (without having to worry about enforcement or actually collecting the revenue).
I really love using Car2Go in Brooklyn. I transit/Bike/Walk 95% of the time, but it's great to have a one-way option when I take a trip that doesn't line up well transit lines.
Actually saw one of their BMW i3s driving on Bellevue yesterday. Was impressed at how quickly it accelerated. Doubt the battery life lasted long driving like that though.
100% torque at zero RPM means even a Leaf is zippy from 0-20mph. After that it transforms back to an underpowered compact car. I3 had more horsepower and torque, so I imagine that it's even more fun. Spirited driving does take its toll on range, though.
I ran an i3 up to low 80s and it felt pretty quick the whole time. Even though I'm a BMW owner, I questioned why anyone would buy a premium electric car, because I pictured them as being economy first, everything else second.
Having driven and really enjoyed the i3, I realized -- why does a premium car make less sense in the electric segment as in the gas segment? Either way, they're unnecessary, but it doesn't matter there aren't tangible advantages over their econobox counterparts.
It's not clearly advertised on their landing page, but it looks like the lifetime registration fee is being waived for a limited time, so if you're interested at all you should consider signing up now.
Why provide premium cars and then cover them in decidedly non-premium ReachNow stickers? I'm surprised this service is actually _by_ BMW.
I understand wanting to use your cars for marketing, but at least do what zipcar did: don't place any stickers on the driver side so the driver feels like they're getting into a premium car.
Sure, but BMW's branding is that they only make premium cars. This would be a bit like Apple plastering its iPhone SE or Apple Watch Sport in poorly-designed stickers because hey, it's their low-end model.
I just walked around and saw a bunch of their cars and thought it was neat that there were so many. If they weren't labeled I would have had no idea. At the moment it's great advertising.
shrug seems fine to me. Doesn't change the enjoyment of the car. Yeah, it's got a sticker on it, but likely an urban dweller without a car who only rents one for occasional trips would be relatively proud of their lifestyle, not embarassed by a sticker on the car.
BMW wouldn't want to cannibalize their primary source of revenue (selling luxury cars). One way to maintain the value of owning a BMW is to lower the status of their rental cars. Keeps owners happy and likely doesn't bother renters.
Take car2go as an example. Their product branding scheme achieves
1) chrystal clear advertising
2) differentiation in value vs. an unbranded car
3) easy recognition for users that are trying to find their car2go
DriveNov/ReachNow are nicer cars, but also more expensive and that places their buisness plan under different constraints. Just to prove 3): driveNow's placement of branding on their cars feels more premium than car2go's. But this low-profile labeling comes with a cost. Drive now had to implement a feature in their mobile app for making the car honk or flashing its lights because otherwise you've had a hard time finding your booked car between all the other black or white BMW1s.
I just walked around downtown Seattle and saw about a half dozen of their i3 cars. Impressive visibility for launch day. I haven't driven an electric vehicle before so I think I'll use the free sign-up just to get behind the wheel of one.
Yet another reason to hate the San Francisco City Government -- they killed DriveNow SF by refusing to issue a (fairly common in most cities) bulk parking permit to BMW DriveNow (basically, all the cars would be bundled into one account and would pay parking tolls collectively -- either based on estimated usage or observed usage.)
Given that San Francisco's parking situation is not like most cities, what makes you think this was a mistake? As opposed to a reasonable choice you just happen to disagree with.
As far as I can tell, they were asking for permission to park anywhere. Maybe there's a general-case problem there to solve for, but I'm not sure why "by-the-minute car rental for rich people" is a pressing problem for the city government to solve given the long list of other possible priorities.
The city has certainly been very supportive of car sharing in general; I've been a user in SF for more than a decade and the city has done a lot to push it forward.
Unfortunately these spots are currently allocated to services that almost entirely do A -> A carsharing, meaning you have to return the car where you picked it up. This all but eliminates the possibility that users can use these services for short trips with long stops (e.g. going to work, going for a shopping expedition that will take some time etc) because it is cost prohibitive.
Having met the SF leadership I know they are working on this, and it's a difficult political issue, but I hope San Francisco can allocate more on-street parking to free floating carsharing.
Looking forward to trying it but the app crashed hard, twice (got the iOS "charge your phone" screen when I tried to turn it off despite being at half battery), then just told me I needed to contact support. Will try again though, really want to try out the i3.
Any plans to add premium models like the M series?
Hi joshcanhelp. Sorry to hear that. ReachNow ordinarily handles customer support but if you email me the account you signed up with at support@ridecell.com we'll have the iOS team check it out.
The 3 series cars are in the fleet right now. Can't comment on a specific model but there'll be more coming :)
One very hard working engineer made the iOS app but we do have an iOS team so that person can take some well deserved time off.
As an engineer myself, consider that you may be underestimating the complexity of working with hardware in the car, something most apps don't have to worry about.
Hi everyone, we built the end to end technology that powers ReachNow - the apps as well as the operations engine. The in-car hardware was all BMW. We're kind of like an operating system to run new mobility and transit services. I'd be happy to answer almost anything :)
Hi there. No, DriveNow uses technology from BMW's partnership in Europe that started some years ago. For North America, BMW chose to partner with us to power ReachNow.
Could your services be used to manage private car-sharing networks? For example, a group of neighbors or residents of a gated community put their vehicles in a car-sharing pool? Mostly would be used for grocery runs or road trips with the same start and end location.
This concept might be a good opportunity for US sunbelt retirement communities where traditional ownership doesn't make sense due to the car sitting empty in 100F+ all summer long. In some of those communities there are plenty of shaded parking spots under the solar panels.
Yes it can. I completely agree - both in dense urban cities with very little parking and in retirement communities, universities etc private car-sharing networks would be a win-win for residents and the folks managing the community.
The one-way dropoff feature is what would be the main incentive for me to try out this service over something like getaround. Too bad it's only in Seattle and not in SF =).
$24/hour to drive and $18/hour to park, and that's promotional pricing. Though it does cap at $110/day, so if you use it for five hours you might as well have fun with it until the next day.
Is there any way to register as a non-american? I'm moving to Seattle in a couple weeks for an Internship and it would be great to be able to get this all setup before I head out.
This is interesting to me because it may be a solution to "almost there" autonomous vehicle services in the next few years. Rather than getting picked up and dropped off at exactly your desired locations, users could pick up a car at a designated parking lot, drive the car the last mile to their destination and then the car would drive itself back to the nearest lot.
The fleet management aspect of it is less interesting since I've seen quite a few companies operating in this space already.
This is actually BMW's second foray into ride sharing stateside. They ran their Drive Now service in San Francisco for a couple of years. It never took off, because there were too few places to pick up and drop off cars, and their all-electric fleet never solved the fleet management aspect, eg charging, etc. Their mobile app also was clunky at best. Coincidentally Drive Now works fantastically well, eg in Berlin, where you can find a car on pretty much every city block. You drive it where you want to go and can drop it off at any public meter. You only pay the distance traveled, in the neighborhood of 0.40€/km. Typical inner city rides work out to a few bucks. It's cheaper and faster than cabs or Uber. It didn't take off in San Francisco, I would speculate comma because they never cut a deal with the city to let them use any parking meter as drop off point.
That looks very similar to DriveNow[1] that is used here in Berlin Germany quite a lot. I am surprised, that BMW is making its own now as DriveNow is a Cooperation of BMW and Sixt (A rental company).
Their service works really, really well I have to say. Almost every time there is a car parked close by, you rent them by the minute and park them anywhere. It is also much cheaper than Uber a cab or god forbid your own car.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 128 ms ] threadAlso, volcanoes.
> FEMA projects that nearly thirteen thousand people will die in the Cascadia earthquake and tsunami. Another twenty-seven thousand will be injured, and the agency expects that it will need to provide shelter for a million displaced people, and food and water for another two and a half million.
> we now know that the odds of the big Cascadia earthquake happening in the next fifty years are roughly one in three. The odds of the very big one are roughly one in ten.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big-...
I've been here for almost two years but I'm still not used to the lack of sunshine for most of the year.
(i.e. don't be like SpaceX, Google, Facebook, ... who have all opened offices up there)
https://us.drive-now.com/ redirects to http://www.bmwcarsharing.com
BMW partnered with us (RideCell) to relaunch in North America.
> The company says the decision was influenced by the lack of parking permit regulations necessary for one-way car sharing. “Until the current regulations are amended, we must suspend service in the San Francisco Bay Area,” DriveNow reads in a statement. “We fully expect to return once the city reforms its parking policies to allow for one-way car sharing. We will continue to work with the city of San Francisco toward achieving that goal.”
I do miss DriveNow, at least weekly. Having an ActiveE or later, an i3 to run errands or take friends around town was really really great, and the pricing was insane ($60 for 24 hours, all inclusive! It started at $30 when they first launched. I was renting cars for a month at a time because it was cheaper than owning/leasing when you consider that parking at my office building was $700/month).
Since they are paying for the parking I don't really see what the issue is. If the cars are out somewhere being charged they won't be in a parking spot. Using parking spots for shared cars is more efficient and should actually increase the turnover of spots while still providing consistent revenue to the city (without having to worry about enforcement or actually collecting the revenue).
Having driven and really enjoyed the i3, I realized -- why does a premium car make less sense in the electric segment as in the gas segment? Either way, they're unnecessary, but it doesn't matter there aren't tangible advantages over their econobox counterparts.
I understand wanting to use your cars for marketing, but at least do what zipcar did: don't place any stickers on the driver side so the driver feels like they're getting into a premium car.
BMW wouldn't want to cannibalize their primary source of revenue (selling luxury cars). One way to maintain the value of owning a BMW is to lower the status of their rental cars. Keeps owners happy and likely doesn't bother renters.
1) chrystal clear advertising 2) differentiation in value vs. an unbranded car 3) easy recognition for users that are trying to find their car2go
DriveNov/ReachNow are nicer cars, but also more expensive and that places their buisness plan under different constraints. Just to prove 3): driveNow's placement of branding on their cars feels more premium than car2go's. But this low-profile labeling comes with a cost. Drive now had to implement a feature in their mobile app for making the car honk or flashing its lights because otherwise you've had a hard time finding your booked car between all the other black or white BMW1s.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDr4L6BzpP8
tl;dr A guy who sells $500k reports of cars for competing manufacturers says the i3 is revolutionary (in materials and construction).
As far as I can tell, they were asking for permission to park anywhere. Maybe there's a general-case problem there to solve for, but I'm not sure why "by-the-minute car rental for rich people" is a pressing problem for the city government to solve given the long list of other possible priorities.
The city has certainly been very supportive of car sharing in general; I've been a user in SF for more than a decade and the city has done a lot to push it forward.
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Car-sharing-firms-gett...
Having met the SF leadership I know they are working on this, and it's a difficult political issue, but I hope San Francisco can allocate more on-street parking to free floating carsharing.
Any plans to add premium models like the M series?
The 3 series cars are in the fleet right now. Can't comment on a specific model but there'll be more coming :)
As an engineer myself, consider that you may be underestimating the complexity of working with hardware in the car, something most apps don't have to worry about.
Shameless promotion:
Android app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.reachnow.c...
iPhone app: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/reach-now/id972572486?mt=8
Also, we are hiring: aj+hn@ridecell.com or http://www.RideCell.com/careers.html
This concept might be a good opportunity for US sunbelt retirement communities where traditional ownership doesn't make sense due to the car sitting empty in 100F+ all summer long. In some of those communities there are plenty of shaded parking spots under the solar panels.
The fleet management aspect of it is less interesting since I've seen quite a few companies operating in this space already.
Their service works really, really well I have to say. Almost every time there is a car parked close by, you rent them by the minute and park them anywhere. It is also much cheaper than Uber a cab or god forbid your own car.
[1]: http://drive-now.com