There’s an irritating one-question-per-page FAQ on Zipcar’s site to ease the transition. I and other Seattle members should get our cards in February. No word on how much we’ll have to pay for usage, but here are some of the highlights:

• All cities are available to all members. Big advantage to Zipcar here. With Flexcar you had to call and set up an account if you intended to visit another city. Each Flexcar city account had its own plan and its own billing statement — kind of annoying.
• Fewer perks: higher membership fee and no gas fill-up bonus. Flexcar waives its $35 membership fee if you drive two times per year. Zipcar will keep that going for just one year, then will start charging everyone its standard annual rate (currently $50 per year) after that. Both Flexcar and Zipcar expect you to refill the gas tank when the level drops below 1/4 tank. Flexcar credits you $2 for doing so. Zipcar does not. Both companies provide you with a gas card so you pay nothing out of pocket.
• Cooler cars. Until recently Flexcar ran an almost entirely Honda fleet in Seattle: Civics, Civic Hybrids, and Elements. They’ve recently added Mini Coopers, Subaru Impreza wagons, and a few Scions to the mix. Zipcar’s selection runs the gamut. In Boston alone, there’s a BMW 328, a Volvo S40, a few Honda Fits, a few Ford Escapes, and various other cars of many makes and sizes. Zipcar also names their cars with whimsical names like “Versa Valedictorian” and “Fit Foulke” (nothing like pandering to the hometown fans) whereas Flexcar uses numbers to identify locations — and you’re not guaranteed any specific make and model of car when you book, only a specific class.
• No more releasing unused balances. Flexcar lets you reserve a car for a long time, then release the unused balance if you return the car early. If another member takes some of your previously-reserved time, you don’t pay for that portion of the reservation. I’ve tried this numerous times with Flexcar, and nobody’s ever picked up the slack time, but it’s been a good feature to have in my opinion. Flexcar also lets you cancel a reservation within 1 hour of making it or no sooner than 8 hours before the start time. Zipcar is much stingier: no option to release the unused balance of a reservation, and longer reservations must be cancelled a full day in advance. (Zipcar lets you cancel a reservation of under 8 hours with only 3 hours’ notice, though.)
• Better service? This one’s up in the air. Flexcar often feels like a much smaller company than I’d expect. The company caters to hip, tech-savvy users, but talking to their customer service often entails very long hold times and requests to speak with specific individuals. For example, when I wanted to set up an account to book a car in Pittsburgh, they said I’d have to talk to Deborah about that. I appreciate the human touch of dealing with individual people directly, but simple actions often required more callbacks and personal e-mail exchanges than I ever would have expected. Flexcar didn’t even offer on-line statements until very recently. I’m hoping that Zipcar will be more customer service tech-savvy and that the lower overhead will reduce their costs.

The competition for the merged Zipcar will be much more broad than I had expected. U-Haul has already started a pilot car-sharing program, and Hertz and Enterprise are exploring hourly rentals. Traditional car rental places charge less for a daily rental, but Zipcar still wins on convenience: book on-line, walk up to car, swipe in, drive, swipe out. As cities keep growing upward and as people pretend to fret about high gas prices, I’m curious to see how car-sharing will change.

Back in December I decided to take the City of Seattle’s One Less Car Challenge. In exchange for $100 worth of Flexcar credit, I agreed to stop driving my car entirely and to instead rely on Flexcar, ride-sharing, car services and mass transit for all my trips. Those two months are over and I’m considering moving up to “Level 2,” selling my car and using alternative means of transit all the time.

With the plan I have, Flexcar charges between $6.50 and $9.25 an hour for most cars and SUVs up to a maximum of about $70 in any 24-hour period. My plan has a minimum charge of $75 a month; committing to a higher minimum reduces the rates by a few more percentage points. In my first three months on Flexcar, I used 20.5 hours in December (mostly around Christmas), 17 hours in January, and 13.5 hours in February. My break-even point, where Flexcar expenses would match my projected car expenses, is about 32 hours a month. This leaves plenty of room for longer trips in the summer when I might actually want to go on the road for a day trip.

Flexcar can make things more convenient in that I don’t have to worry about maintenance, parking, or repairs. All that is built into the hourly rate, which also covers gasoline, insurance, and roadside assistance. On the flip side, with Flexcar I am never guaranteed a car at any given time, nor can I expect that the car will be in the same shape as I last left it in. The per-hour rate also puts an unusual burden on trips, particularly short trips. If a book is $5 cheaper at Fred Meyer in Ballard than it is on-line, it’s not worth it to pay $9.25 for a car to drive myself up there. For long-term parking obligations like driving to the airport, I have to take mass transit or a car service.

The point of car-sharing is to keep fewer cars on the road, and with my light driving habits I think I can make it work. There’s still the more philosophical question: is it a good long-term idea to go car-less?

• Instead of a flat rate per hour, cars now have “peak” and “off-peak” rates based on their usage to date.
• Rentals used to have unlimited mileage, but they will now include 150 miles. Extra miles are 40 cents each.
• Plans are no longer segmented into “X number of hours for $Y per month, plus ($Y/X) per hour for each extra hour.”  They are now “X percent off our regular rates with a minimum usage of $Y per month.”
• Plans cannot be changed retroactive to the beginning of the month anymore.

When I first read the note I was a bit miffed.  Last year Flexcar raised their Seattle base rate from $9.00 to $10.00 an hour.  My plan of “$90 for 10 hours plus $9 for each additional hour” will become “7.5% off our regular rate with a minimum usage of $75 per month.”  To go back up to my expected 10% discount, I’d have to step up to a $150-per-month plan.  Flexcar claims their average rates will stay the same, but in effect this means that many of their more popular or more spacious vehicles will cost more than $10 per hour (before discounts) after the upgrade.

When considering this upgrade, it dawned on me that driving a car, in many cases, actually costs less as the car and driver both age.  Assuming a bathtub curve of reliability for cars, as has been my experience, maintenance expenses are low for the middle of a car’s useful life.  As I grow older I get small checks from my insurance provider thanking me for becoming less of a financial risk.  Even depreciation tends to tail off assuming the car stays in good condition.  (Flexcar’s on-line savings calculator assumes depreciation for a new vehicle, which is as high as it ever will be.)  In practice the only expenses likely to go up are fuel, parking, and administrative fees.  Weighing these against the rising cost of Flexcar is hard to do, especially since Flexcar hasn’t even bothered to publish new rates for my area yet.  There’s also that assumption that my personal car will stay “in good condition.”  If a Flexcar ever seizes up or is involved in an accident, the repair costs and process won’t affect me at all.

Nevertheless, the goals of Flexcar aren’t just about keeping individual drivers’ costs down.  There’s also the positive environmental effects of keeping fewer cars on the road and of subtly discouraging unnecessary driving by adding thin layers of bureaucracy and expense to the process.  At the halfway point of the One Less Car Challenge, I haven’t driven my own car for four weeks and Flexcar has filled in all the gaps.