Is a Modo Shareholder Membership Worth It?
Introduction
Is a Modo shareholder worth it? That’s what Yuki and I were wondering when we drove back from Whistler recently. Right now we’re a Modo Casual member and use it to go skiing in Whistler.
This year we’ve commitment to spending more on carsharing to go hiking, skiing, and camping. Last year, we only used it sparingly to ski Whistler and our wellness suffered. Not having a car puts significant limitations on our ability to enjoy weekends and evenings (not something anyone with a car would understand). Not having a car severely inhibits us from going out on evenings and weekends. As a casual member, we had to wonder, should we “upgrade” to a shareholder account?
Background
If you are unfamiliar with Modo, it’s a car-sharing company that’s like renting a car only with more flexibility. There are Modo cars distributed across town that you can book online anytime and begin using immediately. Gas is included and you just have to return it to the same parking spot when you’re done. The two types of account are casual member and co-op shareholder. These are the current rates:
As you can see, the casual member is a higher hourly rate but includes 200km whereas the shareholders are a lower hourly rate but all kilometres are charged. Both include insurance and gas.*
Our Situation
Intuitively, one would think that car sharing is designed for short trips around the city lasting just a few hours such as going grocery shopping or going to dinner at a friend’s. Maybe this is what a lot of Modo people do but it’s not what we do.
Yuki and I have different needs. We live across from Metrotown and picked our place specifically so that we could get to work by transit.** What we need Modo for is going places transit doesn’t such as outside of the city for hiking and skiing. True, there are some hikes that are possible through public transit but it takes us 1.5 hours to get there and just as much to get back. That means that when we hike Lynn Peak or the Grouse Grind, we could be spending more time on transit than on the trail. Other hikes along the sea to sky corridor or Pitt Meadows region aren’t even served by transit.
Analysis
Since we’ve committed to spending more on Modo this year to increase our wellness, we set out to make a comparison between the two memberships and see which would be ideal for our requirements. We took the data from previous trips we’d taken and generated some simulations of future trips.
Examples of simulated trips are:
- A few hours to go shopping,
- A few hours to cruise around town,
- Day trips to Whistler to go skiing,
- Day trips to go hiking, and,
- Weekend trips out of town.
These simulated trips are intended to capture the whole range of what someone might use Modo for from shopping to weekend getaways. We didn’t do anything longer than a weekend trip because we’ve already calculated that Modo isn’t economical for extended trips and week-long road trips. That aside, the simulation should encompass the majority of typical trips.
These are the tabulated results that show how much each trip costs as both casual and shareholder memberships:
Interestingly, on the trips we’ve already taken this year, we’ve come out ahead by $36. On the other hand it’s clear that some simulated trips would be better off as a shareholder. This shows that the shareholder type is good for short trips as well as long trips and wasn’t designed just for short trips in the city.
To understand the data better, we wanted to figure out the break even point. This is the point where the cost of a shareholder is equal to the cost of a casual member. Modo has a pretty simple pricing plan and tabulating the cost per hour against kilometers driven arrives at something like this:
What we’re doing in this table is calculating how far (km) one needs to drive for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc… hours of booked time to have an equal cost in both memberships.
Graphical Results
Graphing the data, we get this envelope:
The graph tracks time that the car is booked vs. distance driven and charts the total cost of the two. The blue line is the break even point and separates the region where it is better to be a shareholder (blue) than a casual member (white). So if you were to book 16 hours and drive 50km, you’d be better off as a shareholder. But if you drove 150km in the same 16 hours, you’d be better off as a casual member.
What is most interesting about this graph is that it shows that short trips in the city aren’t better as a shareholder. If we zoom into the first section of the graph, we see that the breaking point is linear.
Essentially, as a shareholder you get 10km for every hour booked between 0–4 hours and 20km for every hour booked between 4–9 hours . If you drove 10km more than this allowance, you’d only lose out on $2–4. That’s less than a Starbucks coffee.***
This means that unless you use Modo regularly with a regular driving pattern it doesn’t really matter if you’re a casual member or a shareholder. At most, you’re probably only loosing out on a few dollars per trip. (If you do use Modo regularly, you’ve probably already calculated which is cheaper right?). You could even argue that it’s better to be a casual member because then you don’t have to worry about how far you drive because you’d have the 200km allowance.
On the other hand, beyond 48 hours regardless of how far your drive, being a shareholder is cheaper. This is because even though you booked for 3 days, you still only get 200km included as a casual member.
Summary
- If your bookings are 0–4hrs and around 10km/hr +/- 10km, it doesn’t really matter which membership type you have, the difference is about the same as a coffee.
- If you plan on driving to the extremities of Vancouver or beyond, a casual member is best because of the 200km included.
- If you book longer than 2 days, 48hrs, a shareholder will always be cheaper by ~10%
- You can use these graphs to predict if your trip will be cheaper as a shareholder or as a casual member.
- This graph helps answer the question, “Which Modo membership should I get?”
Conclusion
So where does this leave us? Staying as a casual member! We’ll spend more on transportation going hiking, skiing, and (maybe) camping but our wellness and quality of life will also improve.****
What do you think? Do you use Modo, and if so, what kind of member are you?
footnotes:
* We don’t pay the monthly fee for our account as we also have a work account where it’s covered.
** Where we live works out well for transit but because we choose it not having a car to begin with. People with cars have much more freedom to live away from transit. People think that transit’s great in Vancouver but it sucks and they all have cars so they don’t have to use it. They also hear we don’t have a car and think, “oh, you’re close to transit so it’s okay”. To which we think, No it’s not. You have no idea what sacrifices we’ve had to make and what limitations we have. Your ignorance is your arrogance.
*** We generally disregard any savings of ~$5.00 (the value of a coffee), because while we don’t drink coffee on a regular basis, those that do would be better off cutting back on the caffeine to save money than fretting over our analysis.
**** People get free cars from their parents all the time, some get two. People use car-sharing because they can’t afford a car.
We estimate that the cost per km to own a car is 0.40–0.50 $/km including insurance, fuel, repairs, and the principal cost (excluding interest paid on any loans and parking fees), though we don’t have enough data to confirm this. With Modo, the break even point is 0.80$/km. We don’t have a lot of data points yet, but we’re spending between 0.30–0.60$/km. The cost per km is lower the longer the trip is.
