Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Link Bait: the new face of Car sharing is well see for yourself

Business Insider in their legendary ability to chum the waters of the internet with link bait have a glowing profile of Jessica Scorpio the 24 year old CEO of GetAround the self described AirBnB of the car world.



It's interesting how there is this archetype of what a cool thing being an entrepreneur is, and the glamorization is reminiscent of the dot com (Note, she rents her own car on the site and you can check it out here, and hint it's not a Prius). Regardless, Getaround isn't so interesting in what it does, but in how it does it. They have created a "Car Kit" that members can install that creates a telemetry and metering solution so renters and owners can find where cars are, and whether they want to rent.

If getting cars off the road can be made sexy, then maybe that's the road we need to take.

Sunday, February 19, 2012

Cars Transform Cities, they kill them.

Or more directly "Cars Kills Cities" is well argued on the intriguing blog looking to improve transit solutions. To see how cars have taken over our cities, take a look at the following image of midtown Atlanta and the amount of space dedicated to temporary car storage. This is very similar to the concept of "dead space" I wrote about a long time ago, but nowhere as clearly illustrated.



As we acquire more, we necessarily use less since we only have 24 hours in a day, and cars are probably our most costly underutilized resource. (we are usually at home at least 8 hours, I think few spend 8 hours in their cars).