Ferries make ReachNow cars think they're being stolen | Hacker News Reader

Ferries make ReachNow cars think they're being stolen

seattletimes.com

12 pointsmschuster918 comments

This should be labeled as 2017. Anyhow, what funny is: "Owned by BMW, ReachNow is a subscription car rental service that competes with Car2Go". This was 2017. Ever since DriveNow (ReachNow) was merged with Car2Go intro ShareNow, then sold off to Stellantis, now it's being rebranded as Free2move, as the branch of Stellantis that's managing the company. Plus, they're completely out of the US for years already. Lots of changes since the original article.

I used to work in the same office building as the Austin office. Car2Go's business model was dumb. You could apparently rent a Mercedes from them with just your phone. Except the rental spot was in downtown Austin, near all the hotels and stuff to do. If you've made it from the airport to downtown Austin, why would you need a rental car?

I always understood the model as being for carless locals who occasionally need a car for spring cleanup/large shopping trips.

That doesn't work in Austin. Everyone I've met in Austin who didn't have a car told me about how bad public transport was and how they were saving up for a car.

Are we talking about the same business? Here in Seattle, there were cars all over the city, and you'd just hop into whichever one was nearest when you wanted to go run an errand. It was a completely different service from conventional, long-term car rental, aimed more at locals than at people coming in from out of town.

I suppose it is technically true that the cars were built by Mercedes, but they were the cute little two-seater Smartcars, not the big luxury machines.

Yes, they had the little two seaters that are apparently a Smart car. I never saw any of that fleet move.

They also had nice 4 door Mercedes that I would see groups of people walk up to, fiddle with their phone then drive off in them.

Crappy game DRM implementations (looking at you SimCity) have now made it into real life

Also for normal cars you're supposed to turn off the alarm when parked on a ferry. Most alarm systems don't like the moving / tilting part.

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