Is GoCar a goer? It will get you from A to B... but at a cost
I gave GoCar a go this week. To avoid confusion GoCars are not the ramshackle vehicles made from pram wheels stuck to plywood sheets that we used to hurtle down hills on as kids. Those are go-karts.
GoCars are a handy drive-as-you-go car-sharing concept now available in our cities and many towns.
It costs from €8 an hour with 50 free kilometres per trip. Anything above that costs €0.50 per km.
Drivers pick up cars when they need to and then leave them back where they found them.
You are spared the cost and hassle of insurance, road tax, NCT and maintenance – and pricey valets. So how did it work out? You book a car via an app that will show where the nearest one has been parked. In the town and city centres where GoCar is rapidly spreading to, there are probably lots of cars nearby.
I don’t live too far from Dublin city – Clontarf – but it’s just outside the hotzone in the centre.
So there were only three cars within 1km – the nearest was 700 metres away. There were no electric cars available. And there seem to be few in the fleet.
This is disappointing, and not just for tree-huggers like me who want to reduce emissions. With electric cars, the fuel is free. With petrol or diesel versions you have to make sure the tank is over a quarter full when you return it, which can mean an annoying trip to the station.
Anyway I booked my Ford Fiesta from 8pm until 10pm, thinking that would be enough time. The price flashed up – €16. That seemed reasonable, I thought.
Then I was asked in a Godfather-like way do I want to buy a Damage Excess Waiver – or face forking out up to €1,500 in the event of a claim.
This is an offer-you-can’t-refuse. Another €4 went on the bill – total €20.
Normally I don’t mind a walk but if, like me, if you leave it a bit late to leave the house, it can be a hassle to get to a car parked over half a kilometre away.
I ended up driving my real car to the GoCar as I didn’t want to be late for a quiz night in the local boat club.
When I got there I used the phone app to open it and got the key from the glove compartment.
A big plus is car cleanliness that doesn’t involve any cleaning on your part!
GoCar ‘maintain and clean the car on a weekly basis’. But members are responsible for taking all rubbish and personal belongings out of the car.
If someone else has caused the mess, you’d better contact GoCar to avoid getting the blame – and a hefty €100 valet
fine. I drove off to Howth and enjoyed the quiz. Alas, my twohour estimate was hopelessly unrealistic.
At 9.45 I extended my trip by an hour. Another €8 went on the bill – plus more for insurance.
That wasn’t enough and I ended up extending again and again until the bill reached €42.20.
That wasn’t all. On the way home I noticed the tank was smidgen under a quarter full. I had to stop to trickle about €2.50 worth of ‘juice’ into the car. Ka-ching. The bill rose to €44.70.
If I had been a bit more organised I might have saved half of that.
Even then, it probably cost less than a taxi.
The following week, I tried GoCar again for a trip to the local doctor’s surgery about 2km away,
Again, short on time, I ended up driving to the GoCar with my real car.
But this time I got the GoCar back on time, without having to top up the tank. The bill came to €21.60, which is probably similar to a taxi.
If you only used a car twice a week, as I did, the total bill would come to €3,432 a year, which is a little over a third of the total cost of running a small car.
Use it four times a week and you’d still save €2,000. But at six times a week, a car would be cheaper.
However, if you lived in the city centre, or travel there, you would also save a packet on parking and wouldn’t have far to walk to and from the car.
GoCar would also make more sense if the cost per hour were less or if you could leave your car at the end of the first leg of your journey.
The killer cost is hiring it for what is often a hard-to-predict duration of time while you are at a social event.
For me, a GoCar isn’t a goer as a replacement for my car.
But it’s a handy concept that’s cheaper than taxis.
At a cost of a tenner to join up, it could be worth investing in a card for occasional use.