TMCnet News

Zipcar's Extensive Fleet & Broad Reach Outperforms Competitors for Variety of Use Cases, Finds Strategy Analytics
[May 17, 2018]

Zipcar's Extensive Fleet & Broad Reach Outperforms Competitors for Variety of Use Cases, Finds Strategy Analytics


A new expert evaluation from the In-vehicle UX (IVX) group at Strategy Analytics, "User Experience Evaluation: Zipcar" has found that Zipcar's extensive fleet and broad reach allows it to outperform its competitors for a wide variety of use cases. Unfortunately its sharing model has a number of challenges, some of which Zipcar has struggled to address. Though Zipcar's extensive experience in car-sharing shines through at many points in the UX, fundamental issues were still noted in the web portal and the mobile app.

Click here for report: https://www.strategyanalytics.com/access-services/automotive/in-vehicle-ux/reports/report-detail/user-experience-evaluation-zipcar

Key report findings include:

  • Zipcar is one of the largest, oldest, and most seasoned players in the car-sharing space, having been one of the originators of the short-term sharing concept in North America. Their reach and breadth of vehicle inventory is unmatched by competitors.
  • The incluson of numerous access methods rather than sole reliance on a mobile app ensures that the user is not locked out of a car for non-traditional reasons like being out of mobile phone range.
  • But Zipcar's station-based model carries an inherent disadvantage and automatically presents the user with a 'first-and-last-mile' issue. The free-floating availability and one-way rental capabilities offered by Car2Go and DriveNow/ReachNow for example, can mitigate this issue in comparison.



Derek Viita, Senior Analyst and report author commented, "Somewhat surprisingly given Zipcar's experience in the space, their app and web portal UIs still require a number of fundamental improvements. For example: the distance to a car is reported by estimated walking time in the mobile app, or raw distance on the web portal. No support is provided for drivers who need to use other transport to get to a station."

Added Chris Schreiner, Director, Syndicated Research UXIP, "But perhaps the most notable issue within the web portal and mobile app is the limited vehicle search functionality. Users should not have to perform multiple searches in order to find availability among a single vehicle class. Instead, users should be able to search for availability of multiple vehicle models, rather than forcing them to choose between an all-vehicle search and a one-specific-model search."


About Strategy Analytics (News - Alert)

Strategy Analytics, Inc. provides the competitive edge with advisory services, consulting and actionable market intelligence for emerging technology, mobile and wireless, digital consumer and automotive electronics companies. With offices in North America, Europe and Asia, Strategy Analytics delivers insights for enterprise success. www.StrategyAnalytics.com.

About In-vehicle UX

Our In-vehicle User Experience (IVX) service investigates UX innovation opportunities in the connected vehicle. By understanding the emerging behaviors, needs, motivations, use cases, pain-points and "must-have" experiences of lead adopters and future target consumers, IVX delivers a roadmap to help you design the optimal experience. IVX forms part of the User Experience Innovation Practice (UXIP) at Strategy Analytics. Through both syndicated and proprietary user-centric research capabilities, UXIP delivers strategic insights and analysis on how to optimize the user experience of new and emerging technologies. Click here for more information.


[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]