I hadn't tracked which cities they'd pulled out of, and have used them in a few places.
But my point was more that there's no structural reason for the rental friction, other than to upsell people. The risk profile, and things that need to be handled are basically identical for car sharing and car rental, and car sharing makes the process seamless, while car rental makes it intentionally annoying.
Absolutely - that is indeed a valid point. It would seem though that these sharing operations seem to be going after a different - perhaps newer and bigger, market slice than the traditional agencies.
It would indeed be great if they could bring this new way of operation to those too.
Yes, but not insanely so. A compact car for a week with Share Now is €42/day, and with Sixt it's €32/day. In a lot of cases, I'd happily pay that for the 1-2 hours of saved time in not dealing with the rental company, or booking things in advance.
I know specifically a lot of my friends who basically fall into that category: don't own a car, and decide same-day that they want to do a weekend trip, and would rather pay €20 more to not deal with contract, aggressive up-selling, pick up and drop off, refueling, inspection, etc.
But my point was more that there's no structural reason for the rental friction, other than to upsell people. The risk profile, and things that need to be handled are basically identical for car sharing and car rental, and car sharing makes the process seamless, while car rental makes it intentionally annoying.