Recent (troubles) disasters to my Mazda made me wonder if there is more of a hassle/worry free way of owning car. While I haven’t crunched the numbers to see if this is feasible at all, could you possibly have an all-you-can-drive car for $100/month?

I’m not referring to a regular car you rent at Enterprise (which I happen to have right now) but a car specifically designed and manufactured to be rented for $100/month.

How would this work?

- You pay a $100/month, no contracts (unlike leases).
- If the car breaks down, you bring it to the dealer, and they give you another identical car, so that you can keep driving.
- Insurance is included in that $100, so if you damage/total your car, you pay at most the $500 deductible (liability might have to be charged separately according to driving records).
- You exchange your car at the dealership every 10,000 mile or 6 months so that they can service it (you don’t really need to change the oil every 3000 mile).

What does this mean for you?

- You completely minimize your risk of owning a car: the maximum you would ever have to pay would be the $500 deductible for any damage you cause to the car (necessary so that people won’t drive too recklessly).
- $100/month is really cheap for owning a car (especially if insurance is included). In seven years, when most cars depreciate entirely, you’ll be spending $7400.
- In exchange for the low cost, you completely give up any ability to customize the car (with factory or after-market options). You’ll also be driving the same model car as many other people on the road. If you are the kind of person that like to distinguish yourself with the car you drive, this is not for you.

What does this mean for the car company?

- Since the car is going to be returned every 10,000 mile or so, you can design with regular maintenance in place. This means using less reliable but easily replaceable parts.
- Since only one car model is going to be offered, it eliminates the complexity in development.
- The radical uniqueness of this business is enough for everyone to find out about it through word-of-mouth (very little marketing required).
- Very steady income stream with a subscription model.

If this idea catches on, several different models could be offered at different price points to cover different market needs. However, caution should be taken against excessive market segmentation and offering too many options (defeating the competitive advantage of this system). Simplicity is the key to this operation.

What would the car include?

- Basic features with no frills (to keep cost down).
- Small “cute” design rather than a sporty look.
- Comes in basic colors. Nothing too disagreeable as the user may not have his/her choice when he/she switches the car.
- No visible odometer. This is important since it never feels good to step out of a 20k car and get onto an 80k one. All it needs is a trip meter that keeps track of when the next maintenance is (obviously a hidden odometer is necessary for maintenance reasons).
- Possibly a two-seater (if that’s what it takes to keep cost down).
- Customizable options dock. This actually may become a lucrative business model. Basically, in the car, your radio is a detachable option that you can either rent with the car, or purchase yourself (for expanded features such as Bluetooth and iPod connectivity). Once people buy their radio units, they would feel compelled to stay with the program since their radio is useless on other cars.

Of course all of this is hypothetical and of questionable feasibility at $100. There is some price point where the model works, but that may be too high to make it attractive at all. Furthermore, you can’t start this on a small scale, making it an extremely risky venture to start. Nevertheless, I think it’s an interesting alternative to the high marketing high cost method of selling over engineered cars of today.

Labels: car, service

Recent issues to my car have caused me to rummage through my glove box (who puts gloves there anyway?) and pull out all the repair work orders and invoices to see what has been done to the car. Struck with a strong sense of deja vu, I realized that every time I have issues with my car, I pull out the stash of mismatched papers to see when the last time xxx was tinkered with. At that point, I decided to make an excel sheet of all the repair and maintenance record I had on hand, so that in one clear location, I can witness what has been done to my car.

While I don’t intend to sell my car any time soon, an itemized list of all the repairs done on the car should scream responsible owner. This is a good way of distinguishing yourself from the thousands of craigslist posters who declare themselves to be responsible owners and their cars to be in perfect condition (which I would never declare about my car). Of course do keep your original record for proof.

Interesting things I noticed from my data aggregation:

• Contrary to my belief that my car is a lemon, I didn’t have any problems in 2006. While that counteracts the disastrous 2005, it makes me feel somewhat OKer about my current troubles.


• The previous owner (my good friend from college) had serious problems during the three months before he sold me the car. No wonder he seemed so glad.


• There are myriads of things that hasn’t been changed in a while that I should look into.

Labels: car

“The best ideas are always next to the crazy ones” but that doesn’t mean the crazy ideas are good or feasible.

This idea comes from someone (Julie? Tiffany?) I met at a seedy bar in Mountain View called the Cocktail Lounge:

Car and train companies should work together to tune their products so that traffic noise will instead be music. This way the sound of mass mobilization will not be the cacophonous white noise as we know it but something more soothing and entertaining.

Where I think this will break down: What's more annoying than traffic noise? Listening to the same song over and over again! I once played Rocky Raccoon on repeat for three days in order to drive people out of my dorm room. It worked. What song would you pick anyway? Is there a song in this world that we can all be happy about? Elevator music? Ride of the Valkyries?

I think I would rather have a quieter car and pick my own music, but this does bring up an interesting point about designing for artifacts. If your product creates a undesirable or unavoidable artifact, why not make it something positive?

Labels: artifact design, car, crazy

Ok, bad title, I apologize.

I’m sure everyone’s had one of those days/nights where you park your car in a gargantuan parking lot and end up spending twenty minutes finding your car. While the problem has been partially solved by remote key fobs that allow one to roam around the parking lot aimlessly trying to unlock the car, car companies have been limiting the range as a security issue (it’s a lot easier now for anyone who steals your keys to steal your car too). With many manufactures adopting some form of On-star-like services, here’s an idea:

If you really can’t find your car, call up On-star, give your password or some way to distinguish yourself, and ask them to momentarily turn on the car alarm. If you aren’t close enough to the car to hear the car alarm, maybe you shouldn’t be driving.

This would be the easiest idea to implement as it requires no extra hardware or software besides On-star’s ability to remotely activate the car alarm (not sure if they have this capability right now). The one issue would be if the car is parked underground and cannot receive the activation signal. Higher tech solutions could involve the car’s navigation system and a cell phone interface that displays your cars location on a map, but this becomes a problem in multilevel parking lots. Of course you could just be responsible and remember where you parked your car.

Labels: car, service

I’ve always thought it would be nice to have a “Thank you” signal on your car so that you could show appreciation to those that let you into lanes or get out of your way on highways. Sure there is the commonly accepted raising your hand but very rarely do people actually see this. On the contrary, there are numerous ways of expressing discontent from the one finger salute to honking violently.

I thought this was a good idea until I saw the Drivemocion (pictured above). Not only will this make you a card carrying member of geekdom, the potential road rage caused by sarcastic use is too dangerous. The last thing an angry dreary-eyed commuter needs to see when he/she gets cut off is an LED smiley face looking back at him/her.

So instead, I propose a new form of showing appreciation with what you already have in your car. If some one does something nice to you on the roadways, show your appreciation by cycling through your turn lights: quickly turning both signals in succession. No one should mistake that for your intent to turn, and it’s really easy to do. Unfortunately, I don’t think me writing in this small blog is going to get any traction, but hey, least I won’t go patent the idea like the jack ass who claims to have invented the U-turn signal. Too bad she’s going to lose it as soon as anyone runs a rudimentary google search and contests her.

Labels: car

This one courtesy of a negotiation professor at Stanford.

1. Pick a car you want, choose the features you want, write it all down, make copies, and get some envelopes.
2. Go to a dealership and tell the dealer that you want this exact car (hand over the sheet) and tell him/her to put their best offer in the envelop.
3. Inform him/her that you're going to collect envelopes from several dealers in town and take the lowest offer you get.
4. If they start saying bullshit like "but we have the best customer care center in town!" just ask them if they want to put in an offer or not.
5. Go to other dealerships, repeat 1-4.

After you collect several envelopes, you'll probably notice that most of the numbers inside the envelope are very close to each other. Pick the best deal (or if the numbers are negligibly close, the dealer you feel most comfortable with) and purchase the car (or don't, if it's still too expensive).

What did you do here? You prevented the dealers from playing the game the way they want to, and instituted your own (and fair) rules. Dealers love to talk you into believing that they offer the best deal in town or have the best service in the state. You've probably heard things like "We have the best/biggest/most..." or "We sell the most...".

I've actually never tried this (or ever looked into buying a new car) but the professor told me he's had several people use it to their success. If you try it, tell me how it goes.

Just don't do the same with drug dealers.

Labels: car, how to