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I have a hard time believing that anyone on HN legitimately things that companies like Hertz and Avis will be able to become efficient in the ridesharing market
by malandrew 7y ago
I have a hard time believing that anyone on HN legitimately things that companies like Hertz and Avis will be able to become efficient in the ridesharing market before one of the two TNCs become efficient in the fleet management market (which is a subset of the rental car market that overlaps with TNCs once they choose to have their own fleet.
One set of businesses here has modern engineering practices and the other set are dinosaurs. Furthermore, rental companies have more employees dedicated to sales than to fleet management and their entire current customer base is rental car consumers. They literally need to redirect money to R&D long term where that R&D serves no benefit to their current customer base. Wall Street will punish the stock of rental car companies short term for spending R&D on becoming ridesharing businesses that serve a customer they don't yet even have mindshare with. With the TNCs however, wall street won't see any problem with them building out their own fleet. The only condition where wall street looks down on the idea of own fleet management is if they believe a franchise model with third party fleet managers make sense. Either way the TNCs own the relationship with the customer and therefore has all the power.
- vladimir_prus 7y agoI would not be so sure. Avis, in particular, is actively pushing for a flow where you book online, use "secret" promo code to get full insurance for basically zero, pick up car directly on parking lot with keys inside, and drive away. It takes literally 5 minutes and a single employee to check your driving license and contract. Hertz is trying to do same, though less effectively. Their websites and apps are still horrible, and it's perplexing why, but the cost of building decent apps will be immaterial compared to the cost of the vehicles, and from that, building actual on-demand short-term rental network does not seem so unlikely.