1) Is there really a demand to lease out cars during the off hours? With personally rented cars, who is in charge of cleaning it up, or determining if the vehicle is sufficiently clean, or figuring out who did any damage?
Or that the car is sufficiently maintained, the spare tire has air, etc.?
2) Will I be able to rent the car with baby seats (three seats please, for the triplets), ski racks, bike racks, etc. and how much extra will that cost? Will I have to load/unload the diapers, gym equipment, toolbox, sand for extra traction, first aid kit, etc. after each trip?
And yes, I have kept sand in the back of my car, and used it during icy conditions to get out of a friend's driveway.
Maintenance becomes easier, not harder, with a car sharing service. You would have winter tires instead of worrying about having some sand in your trunk. Also likely would have 4WD, with electric it works quite well. Of course you would have a first aid kit, toolkbox, spare tire, etc. Diapers and baby seats are a hassle for about 5 years per adult, so I am sure there would be a solution available.
Or you're in the "techie: try it". Since this technology doesn't really exist yet and nearly everything about it is pure prediction.
Your "of course" isn't really true, is it? I mean, rental cars don't come with a toolbox or first aid kit. To be fair, the toolbox was because I had a crappy car and needed to be able to fix it. A car rental service would include maintenance, but that extra work, and cycling out the cars more often, would probably be more expensive than having my own car, no?
(BTW, the "spare tire" was in the #1 category, under "people will lease their cars to other while they don't need them", not the #2 category of "people will lease cars".)
I feel like you handwaved the 'there would be a solution available' by considering and dismissing only one point, and not seeing it as an example of a larger set of problems.
Where is the ski rack? The gun rack? The bike rack? The dog crate? The trailer hitch? The tinted windows? Choice of color? After-market satellite radio - or CB? Car underlighting? The special sound system? Fog lamps? "Baby on Board" decals? Wheelchair lifts, lowered floor, or scooter hoist for those with handicaps? Phone or laptop charger?
Skiing friends of mine would leave their gear (boots, skis, packs, masks, gloves, poles, etc. plus duct tape and tools to fix minor problems) in the back of their SUV so they could take off for the mountains during snow season. It's a hassle to lug all that equipment in and out for each trip, and you might easily forget something. My mother leaves a sewing machine (one of five) and other sewing gear in her trunk to make it easier to go to quilting events.
> You would have winter tires
Perhaps. It's hard to say. I lived in Santa Fe, and in the city didn't need snow tires. My friends lived in the country, at higher elevation, on the end of a long dirt driveway. New Mexico has a lot of dirt roads, so it's best to be prepared. Even if the cars in Santa Fe had their tires swapped out, what about the cars of day-trippers from Albuquerque? Or those in Sacramento who decide to go to Tahoe?
As I only needed the sand once, it seems like an expense to swap out the tires each year for something that isn't essential. How much will that add to the cost?
You don't need sand for traction in any decent modern vehicle. They invented this thing called "front-wheel drive" decades ago. Even better, now they have traction control in all cars, and some cars have all-wheel drive.
Only RWD pickup trucks benefit from that strategy, and there's never any reason you should be renting one of those unless you have 1000 lbs of stuff to haul.
I had a front-wheel drive. Do you consider a '95 Integra to be sufficiently decent and modern? It's of course now 20 years old.
The front end of the car slide off the driveway into a ditch full of snow. There wasn't enough traction to back up and out. I don't see how a 2015 car would do any better.
Just last December I was in an ice storm. The day afterwards there was a quarter inch of ice on the road which made everything slippery. A car slipped off the crown of the road in front of the house, and over the curb. (No, not everyone can take the extra time off and stay home until the local streets are all clear.) Sand adds that extra little traction that would help a car, even an AWD car, get up the driveway slope.
In some snowy areas, the municipality or county even put containers of sand on the side of particularly steep slopes to motorists with slick roads, like http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/4358579 . I don't think that it's only RWD cars which need that extra help.
No, a '95 is not modern at all. It doesn't even have traction control, which probably would have gotten you out of that ditch. It gives you the same effect as a limited-slip differential, to an extent, by applying the brake on the spinning wheel so power is redirected to the other wheel. It makes a huge difference when starting from a standstill on slippery surfaces.
> With personally rented cars, who is in charge of cleaning it up, or determining if the vehicle is sufficiently clean, or figuring out who did any damage?
With Zipcar, they clean it about once a week, the user is responsible for reporting any damage, dirt, low fuel, etc when they pick up the car (not dissimilar from renting a car).
Zipcar owns the car, and decides the base level for the car. They keep the cars in good shape and had relatively strict rules on what you can do. Most cars on the road are in worse shape than most rental cars.
If I have a beat up clunker, with windshield damage, can I rent it out?
If so, does each person who rents it need to itemize all of the damage when they pick up the car?
I fixed the windshield, but the next person to rent it followed another car too closely on a gravel road and knocked a chip out of the windshield again. Do I take the person to court to resolve the issue, or do I work through the rental agency?
ZipCar prohibits smoking, and pets must be in carriers. But I smoke, and let my dogs on the back seat. (Okay, no I don't - this is hypothetical.) Can I still rent out the car? If so, do I need to indicate "may stink of smoke" and "not for those with dog allergies"?
Oh, and my father-in-law borrowed the car and smoked while in it. Do I need to change the setting for a few weeks to "it smells like cigarette smoke, but that doesn't mean you can smoke"?
It's much more complicated when there's no central authority who can require a core set of rules.
Or that the car is sufficiently maintained, the spare tire has air, etc.?
2) Will I be able to rent the car with baby seats (three seats please, for the triplets), ski racks, bike racks, etc. and how much extra will that cost? Will I have to load/unload the diapers, gym equipment, toolbox, sand for extra traction, first aid kit, etc. after each trip?
And yes, I have kept sand in the back of my car, and used it during icy conditions to get out of a friend's driveway.