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Bad Ideas
Here’s What Happens if You Try to Hijack a ZipCar to Mexico
Car-sharing companies like Zipcar and Car2go promise freedom and flexibility. But freedom has its limits.
Welcome to Bad Ideas, a column in which we examine the practical limits of technology by considering the things you could do, and then investigating exactly why you shouldn’t. Because you can still learn from mistakes you’ll never make.
Let’s get one thing straight: It’s “easy” to steal a car-sharing vehicle in the same way it’s “easy” to walk into a bank and demand money. Last year, 21 people were charged in connection to the theft of 100 car2go vehicles in Chicago. How did they do it? They made accounts with fraudulent credit cards, and then just never returned the cars. A week after charges were filed, Chicago police recovered all of the vehicles, in part because they could run plates, but also in part because car2go vehicles are equipped with a GPS tracking system.
Renting a car traditionally comes with a host of explicit and implicit restrictions. You show up at the rental car place. You speak to a person who asks you to sign some paperwork in which you assume some responsibility for the car, then that person physically hands you a set of keys.
“There’s never a limit on how far you drive your Zipcar,” the car-sharing service states on its website.
Car-sharing services like Zipcar and car2go hide those explicit restrictions and remove the implicit ones by design. When you can walk up to a car parked on the street and unlock it with your phone, it’s easy to convince yourself that this is your car, and you can do anything with it. Both car2go and Zipcar even let you drive to Canada if you want, but what if you decided to keep driving, taking your car-share vehicle further than it was ever intended to go, perhaps into Mexico and even further south? Who could stop you? It’s not so much of a question of “could you?” But rather, “what happens if you do?” Like writer Joe Veix taking an electric scooter further than it should have ever been ridden, what are the consequences of doing such a thing with a whole-ass car?
