Go Cars, anyone use them?

dceire

I've come to realise recently that there's a Go Car base just outside my house and, with insurance going up and up and up, it has me thinking. I don't use my car all that much and am intrigued by the Go Car system.

I figure I shell out €1500-1800 each year to keep my car on the road, this is very much a conservative 'best case' figure which includes insurance, tax, nct, servicing, & petrol. The car is over 10 years old but has been pretty much trouble free in the two years I've owned it.

My question is, what are the actual costs of using Go Cars, on the basis of someone who does less than 5k annually and would do substantially less than that if I were to sign up to something like this. I cycle to work and generally as my primary mode of transport, I also have a motorbike, and have no problem using public transport when needed. It'd be great to hear from anyone signed up with them for a while to get their feedback. Pros and cons and the real world costs involve on a monthly/yearly basis.

Notch000

1500-1800 sounds a very conservative estimate

Nuw

I've actually considered this myself a couple of years back.

The thing is, it's gonna cost you a lot more if you use a car to go for a long journey, their offer has been designed to suit occasional usage for a trip to shopping center or town. Anything longer than that would be more expensive than keeping your own car. At least it was for me.

It's really dependant on the type of journey you make in a car rather than the actual mileage you do.

savagethegoat

sounds like a no brainer to me OP.

Clean road legal car on your doorstep with no other bills to be paid and no parking costs(reserved space even!)

Some day all cars will be GoCars.

Squeeonline

I had a car for about a year while my mother was out of the country.

I figured out that I was better off getting a taxi for the one day a week I might have needed it, and could man up and walk the rest. I'd spend so long looking for parking around Galway that I was better off walking anyway.

FFS, I used to drive to the gym!

When you have a car, you feel you have to use it, but if your car was on "pay as you go" you'd use it a lot less as you'd physically feel the money going.

That being said, short term rentals are awesome when you need to do a big shop or move things around, and might work out cheaper than taxis.

H3llR4iser

I was a member of GoCar for a couple of years, living in Cork centre with no parking space and literally 200m from work.

When I joined, there was an initial entry fee of about 100€; a year later, they took another 200€ of "security deposit", which I was refunded when I left the plan after moving to a different job and needing a personal car. Not sure how it works now.

Anyway, the concept is very simple: it's a good solution if you need the car for short periods of time - like going to the shopping centre, picking up somebody at the airport, transporting something heavy / bulky and so on. If you want to go on a longer journey, it becomes very expensive very fast and a "normal" rental is cheaper.

The only real issues I ever had were from people sometimes not being very "respectful" of the fact the cars were shared - finding crumbs on the seats, candy wrappers or a near empty fuel tank (you're supposed to refuel, using a GoCar fuel card, if the tank is below 25% at the end of your journey).

Only once I found a flat battery, in a van which clearly is used much less than the cars; called the help centre and they had an AA guy with me in less than an hour. In all fairness they did offer an alternative car, but I needed the van in that specific occasion (moving places).

If you're not interested in cars and just use it as a transportation means, GoCar is a very good choice.

savagethegoat

How did you find parking them back at the end of the journey. Nearly every time I pass one of the Cork bays, there's an ordinary car parking illegally.

H3llR4iser

To be honest, I never encountered the issue myself because, back then (we're talking 2009-2011), there were some kind of electric barriers that rose in the spots - there was a little remote in the car, once you left the bay you pressed the button and essentially two "bars" about 30 cm tall lifted off the ground, preventing anyone from parking there.

I don't know if they're there anymore - but one thing for sure, people forget to lift the barriers; A couple of times I did find the car I reserved parked elsewhere, because the spot had been taken due to the barriers not being lifted.

dceire

dceire wrote: »

.......

My question is, what are the actual costs of using Go Cars, on the basis of someone who does less than 5k annually and would do substantially less than that if I were to sign up to something like this. I cycle to work and generally as my primary mode of transport, I also have a motorbike, and have no problem using public transport when needed. It'd be great to hear from anyone signed up with them for a while to get their feedback. Pros and cons and the real world costs involve on a monthly/yearly basis.

When joining GoCar there is a once off fee of €50 and then a monthly fee of only €5. After that you simply pay for the trips you make. We have three different classes of vehicles, one to fit whatever need you have.

Perfect for city driving, Ford Fiesta or similar

€ 4.99 / hour
00.00 - 08.00
€ 2.49/hour *
24 hours
€ 40 *
* plus €0.45 per km

If you needed a car for an hour during the day, a 10k trip would cost the €4.99 + €4.50.

I can see the advantages but if you have a motorbike, cycle & use public transport I don't see it being of huge appeal to you.

dceire

Augeo wrote: »

When joining GoCar there is a once off fee of €50 and then a monthly fee of only €5. After that you simply pay for the trips you make. We have three different classes of vehicles, one to fit whatever need you have.

Perfect for city driving, Ford Fiesta or similar

€ 4.99 / hour
00.00 - 08.00
€ 2.49/hour *
24 hours
€ 40 *
* plus €0.45 per km

If you needed a car for an hour during the day, a 10k trip would cost the €4.99 + €4.50.

I can see the advantages but if you have a motorbike, cycle & use public transport I don't see it being of huge appeal to you.

My main need/want for a car is when occasionally transporting bulky goods or people (not that the people are bulky ) I'll probably be selling the motorbike this summer too.

H3llR4iser

dceire wrote: »

My main need/want for a car is when occasionally transporting bulky goods or people (not that the people are bulky ) I'll probably be selling the motorbike this summer too.

People are actually fairly bulky objects!

If you had ever tried to put a body in the boot, you'd know If you ever tried to help up somebody drunk/injured, you'd realize that!