Need a car? Get Zipcar!

We don't own a car. We haven't had a car for the past five years because we haven't needed to have one: in Oxford we walked/cycled everywhere and in Toronto we lived/worked on the subway line. Sure, at times it would've been handy to have a car, but mostly we kind of loved not having to deal with the expenses (insurance, gas, maintenance) and hassle (parking, licensing, traffic) that come with owning a vehicle.

We were hoping that we'd get away with not having a car for a while yet but everybody drives in L.A. The city is so sprawled out that you just can't get anywhere without a car. The bus sucks--I've taken both the Big Blue Bus and Metro a number of times and I'm sure some routes are better than others but there has been several occasions where I have waited up to 40 minutes for a bus--and although we do see people cycling, the city is not really designed for cyclists and L.A. drivers also don't really watch where they're going. Besides, Mike often has to wear a suit to school for various networking/recruiting events and a 15-minute uphills bike ride just doesn't seem all that appealing.

We'll have to get a car eventually. In the meantime, Zipcar has saved the day for us. It's a car-sharing company that started out in Cambridge, MA. Basically they park Zipcars in key locations all over a city and people then rent them by the hour. The annual fee is $65 and there's a one-time application fee of $30 for them to run your driver's license. Then the rental cost is $7-9/hr which includes gas, insurance, mileage, and using Zipcars in any city that has them (major US cities, a couple of Canadian cities, a handful of cities in the UK, and Barcelona).

It's really quite awesome. Especially if, like us, you're new to a city and can't be bothered to figure out buying/leasing a car right away and licensing and insurance and all that crap. Zipcar lets you go house hunting, furniture shopping at IKEA (they even have "Zipvans" to move large items), do a big grocery run, pick up a friend from the airport, go to an interview, hit the beach for a few hours, and do all those things that are just so much easier with a car, except you don't have to own one. Oh and it's also kind of fun to try out all these different car models, sort of test-drive them before you buy -- we've driven everything from a Ford Hatchback to a Toyota Prius and even a Mini Cooper.

I've known about Zipcar for many years now but only signed up a couple of years ago when they offered a deal through Living Social where they have waived the annual fee and the application fee. I later signed my mom up through a similar deal on Groupon and finally signed my husband up via a referral link from my mom's account which gave him an $80 credit. So we basically haven't had to pay any membership fees thus far but will eventually have to.

I got a bit annoyed with all the daily deal sites and stopped following them (I'll tell you more about them when I get into them again) but it could be a long wait if you're waiting for a Zipcar deal to come back up. So the next best thing is to sign up when you see a promotion online (I see Zipcar banners all the time on different websites I go to), or failing that, sign up with my referral link which at the moment gives both you and me a $25 driving credit (sometimes it's up to $50 for each of us).

Right now they are also offering 50% off driving on Election Day (November 6, 2012) for all U.S. cities.

P.S. If you are Canadian and signing up in Canada, this referral link from my mom's account will give you a $50 driving credit if you sign up before March 2013: http://www.zipcar.ca/referral?promo_code=bscbxhdb

[2013/01/24 Update]

We no longer have a Zipcar membership as we've now purchased a car (more on this later). The best deal right now is the Gilt City promotion or if that's no longer running when you read this, then check out their student discounts.