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Would you loan your car to complete stranger? I wouldn’t loan my car to my own cousin, much less a random person off the street. However, if you’re the trusting sort driving a General Motors OnStar equipped vehicle, OnStar and RealyRides have teamed up to make it easy for you to rent your vehicle. RelayRides is a peer-to-peer car sharing market.
Drivers list their vehicle along with an hourly rate. The idea is that when the car owner doesn’t need the vehicle, they can rent it out to other people by the hour and make extra money. The interesting part of this tie up between OnStar and RelayRides is that the driver doesn’t have to meet the person renting the car to hand off keys, as OnStar can remotely lock and unlock the car.
Presumably, the renter would also be able to get OnStar to start the vehicle and turn it off remotely as well. The thing that bothers me about this is that I think it would be hard to get a renter to pay for any damage caused your vehicle or to prevent them from taking things out of your vehicle.
Remember that partnership between OnStar and RelayRides we wrote about last March? Well it's finally coming to fruition today, with the peer-to-peer car sharing service launching support for remote door unlocking via OnStar's proprietary API. As a result, RelayRides members with OnStar-enabled vehicles no longer have to exchange keys in person if they so choose. Another benefit is that participants can list their automobile on RelayRides directly from their OnStar account -- renters then benefit from the added safety and security that comes with OnStar.
We had the chance to test an early version of the functionality on a Chevy Volt at SXSW a few months ago and it worked pretty much as advertised. There was a bit of a delay between the time we sent the unlock command from RelayRides' website on the demo iPad and the moment the doors actually unlocked on the car, but we're told this has been significantly improved since our hands-on. Of course, RelayRides also supports remote unlocking via text message. Take a look at the galleries below then hit the break for our hands-on video, RelayRides' video and OnStar's PR.
Filed under: Cellphones, Tablet PCs, Transportation, Software
OnStar seals partnership with RelayRides, makes renting out your car even easier (hands-on video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 17 Jul 2012 07:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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While visiting the Innovation Showcase at CTIA 2012, we ran into Nick Pudar -- OnStar's VP of Business Development -- who was kind enough to give us a few minutes of his time. We sat in the LTE Skype-enabled Chevy Volt on display and discussed such topics as OnStar FMV, RelayRides and smart grids -- wherein power utilities can (with the customer's consent) send a signal to a vehicle to control when it charges. The idea is to allows utilities to maximize grid efficiency and minimize power spikes while giving customers options for when to charge the vehicle -- like when the rates are the lowest or when the power generated is coming from renewable energy, for example. Pretty neat stuff, eh? Watch our video interview for all the (pardon the pun) juicy details.
The Engadget interview: OnStar's Nick Pudar talks smart grids at CTIA 2012 (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 12 May 2012 10:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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