You should be able to smell-test this fact by considering that your mobile weighs nothing and runs all day whereas a car battery weighs 20kg.

Perhaps they could create an RFID token in their app and let the RFID-capable phones bear that to the car since it's much easier to move a phone than a car, not to mention potentially get wifi service where there is no cell service.

Is there a particular reason these services can't just leave the keys in the car? Theft?

Sounds like it would have been easier to just rent another, closer car at that point, assuming you took your stuff with you since you couldn't lock it.

Many of the reported issues seem to involve renewing an expired reservation. Also, how's your cell coverage there?

Did he mean that there is a solved and known way to get uniform national cell phone coverage without blackspots? If so, do you know more about what his solution was.

There's not some magic thing that everyone should be doing that will give 100% cell coverage.

It's a two way radio. The transmitter needs to talk to the phone. But the phone also needs to talk back.

Also carriers have different frequency spectrums allocated to them.

A carrier using 900MHz has to have fewer base stations than one operating using 1800MHz because lower frequencies transmit further.

They also are able to go underground and through walls better.

Justifying the business case to cover the low value (i.e. few customers) areas is another story. However, even here, it might be possible to justify it if the rest of the customer base sufficiently values wide coverage to pay a premium. Particularly if the competitors don't have the same level of coverage.

Furthermore, mechanics are readily available in rural areas; and when horse transportation was common, farriers and vets were also common. These people drive out to your location and fix stuff, although you might need to walk to them without a phone. And any rural mechanic can hack a fix to the mechanical components of an internal combustion engine well enough to get it home.

So, if you accept Zipcar's terms of service ("don't remove our interlock / hack the ECU"), this is fundamentally different because it's a failure mode which only Zipcar can fix.

This is the sole reason why I do not buy IoT devices. I would love to have a resource which lists devices that do not try to contact the manufacturer over the internet

> I shudder to think about limping back to a trailhead with no more water in my backpack, only to find a car that would not start. Or getting locked out and marooned in Death Valley, perhaps with medicine trapped in the car.

Yep, "car died at the trailhead" is hardly a novel or Zipcar-specific problem. I've known plenty of people who camped for few days, packed up at dusk, and found themselves with a dead battery and no one around to jump it. Taking a Zipcar with essential medicine into Death Valley is a scary thought, but it's recklessness in a dangerous place rather than some esoteric flaw of Zipcar.

It's a shame, because there are real issues here. Lacking a physical carkey is a real drawback that means you can't wait in your dead car or open the hood to jump it. Having your car die in the woods because you exceeded your reservation time is bad for the user, the next user, and the company. But the article spins those narrow issues as life-or-death flaws, conflates "dead car" with "Zipcar broke", and puts "Zipcars normally work without service" down in paragraph seven after implying in paragraph two that this is a consistent problem.

How is that clickbait? Even the subheadline is a pretty fair description of events: "In an area without cellphone reception, I was unable to open the car."

I'm reminded of European hotels that want you to leave the room key at the front desk.

But, there is a mechanical backup with an ordinary car. In my 2012 Volvo, I can open the driver's door with the mechanical key. If the fob is ded, I can physically insert it and start the car. If the car is also dead, I have to sort that out to drive it, obviously.

I like to MTB and I used to climb, so I carry a backup battery that can start the engine if need be. But I appreciate that with a ZipCar, the whole point is that you don't need to go somewhere and pick up a mechanical key. So it's really the same risk profile as if I were to drive around with the key fob, but leave the mechanical key at home.

The other worrisome thing is if a car is designed that it needs the Internet to start. If you drive it somewhere remote, you have a problem. Or if there is a service outage, you have a problem.

If I buy another car, it will probably brag thatI can use my phone as my key. I will still want to carry the mechanical key, but my phone will then become a single point of failure. With my fob, and my 2012 car, I can start the car even if the fob battery dies. But if my phone dies, I will be SOL.

Luckily, said backup battery that I carry in my car has a USB port to recharge my phone. But even then, what if the network is down? Am I to trust Bluetooth to do its thing?

These failure modes require some thinking through before going anywhere remote. I'd want to work all this out before taking another driving holiday with my family.