What it’s like to rent your car on Getaround

When I moved to San Francisco in 2012, I quickly realized owning a car in the city would be a lot more work than it was in the suburbs of Florida. Rather than risk getting towed and ticketed to death, my wife and I decided to sell our car and see if we could get by with a combination of Uber, public transportation, and car sharing. For the most part it worked, but in the end it cost us more and was less convenient. We did a three month trial and at the end of the three months, we averaged $600–800 / month. It was not only more expensive than buying a car… it was a lot more hassle. We decided to try to find the least expensive, most practical city car. Turns out, it’s a Honda Fit. The Fit gets between 25–35mpg, can fit into tigher spots than a Civic or a Prius, and has massive cargo room. We started looking for a Fit and found we could get a brand model for less than a used one. We ended up buying a new 2013 Honda Fit Sport, and over the last two years, it’s been great.

Soon after we bought the Fit, we looked into renting on Getaround to try to bring our transportation expenses down even further. The problem was I used the car almost daily to go surfing and commute to work, so it was difficult to regularly make the car available for other people to use. Recently though, we started thinking about buying a second car… something that was more fun to drive and a little nicer. It’d be great, I thought, if I could somehow use the Fit to get a nicer car without spending any more money. Getaround seemed like the perfect solution. So I reached out to Getaround again to see what we could do. Thankfully, they’ve improved the CarKit — now called Instant — and they even subsidize parking spots in San Francisco. So we decided to list our car full time and buy a new one.

Deciding to do this wasn’t easy though. There’s very little information on the internet about detailed earnings and how exactly the process works. Getaround is also a little vague about potential earnings which makes it difficult to determine whether or not it’s worth doing for you. So I figured I’d share our earnings and experience over the next few weeks. Here are the results from onboarding through week one. Hopefully it’s helpful.

On-boarding

Listing your car on Getaround is relatively straightforward. Because I’d already been in contact with someone when we first bought the Fit, I just replied to the email chain and was able to get in touch with a representative who helped get things rolling. You can also do this through the website. One of the things I wanted to know was what parking spots were available, where the best spots where, and how much I could expect to earn. Getaround didn’t want to tell me where all the cars were parked, just what parking spots were currently available. I was able to get a spot at the 5th and Mission garage for a subsidized price of $160. Installation of the Instant kit was a $100 one-time fee + $20 / month. That brings my total expenses to $100 one-time + $180 / month. If you add in my car payment and insurance, that brings the total to $550 / month.

When I asked the Getaround rep what I could expect to earn renting my car I was told I could estimate around $500 / month net if my car was available 50% of the time and upwards of $1000 / month net if it was available full-time. Some owners reportedly have earned as much as $1200 / month (apparently another Fit owner with a dedicated parking spot).

I told the rep that sounded great and I’d like to get Instant installed. She scheduled a pickup and a few days later someone showed up to pick up my car, install the Instant kit, put a few Getaround stickers on the car, clean it, and take pictures. This took about a day and a half and then my car was parked in its new spot at the 5th and Mission garage. It took another week for Getaround to process and upload the photos, and then my car was avaiable to rent. This is where I ran into my first hiccup. Once the car was available to rent, I checked out my listing and realized the car hadn’t been cleaned. Instead, they’d only installed Instant and taken pictures of the car dirty… not a great start. I reached out to a support rep who apologized and agreed to send someone to clean my car and retake the photos. It’s been almost a week and my car still hasn’t been cleaned. During that time I’ve had 4 rentals and potentially lost repeat customers due to the car not being kept clean before their rental. Hopefully this gets resolved soon.

Maintenance

This brings me to another little hangup that wasn’t addressed during on-boarding: keeping the car clean and checking up on it is really hard if you don’t live close to where your car is parked.

Because my car is parked downtown, and I live in Bayview, it’s not easy for me to keep tabs on it and make sure it’s being taken care of. After my second rental, I decided to drop by the garage and check on the car. One of my first two renters had stolen the lightning cable I left in the car for renters to use, and one of them left sand and grass all over the floor mats. Because I’m not able to check on the car after every rental, I have no clue who was responsible.

So how the heck am I going to keep the car clean if it’s already this dirty after only two renters? I jumped on Yelp and started looking for mobile auto detailers hoping to find someone who could come by the garage and clean the car weekly. After talking to a few people I realized this wasn’t going to work. There’s generally not enough room in garages to wash cars and the property manager of my particular garage has been hostile to mobile detailers who’ve tried to wash cars there before. So if I want to keep the car clean, I’m goign to have to take the car to a car wash myself… not exactly the hands off experience I was hoping for.

The upside is I’ve already had 5 rentals. The majority of which have been all-day trips. The other rentals have been short trips averaging about 5 hours. Weekends are by far the most popular and profitable times.

The Numbers

Here’s where I stand at the end of week one:

Total Earnings after Getaround fees and parking: $285.45
Expenses (including insurance and car payment): $550
Net Profit: -$264.55

Overall, it’s been bumpy. Not bad… just not smooth. One of the biggest hassles is finding a way to check up on the car and keep it clean. If I can come up with a good solution for maintenance, and rentals keep coming in, Getaround could turn out to be great for me. We’ll see.