Tired of costs, hassles, some city dwellers try car-sharing

SAN FRANCISCO
None of that included the $50,000 they would have spent if they had opted to buy a parking space with the condominium they purchased last spring in the city’s Chinatown neighborhood. “We just said, ‘We don’t want to do it anymore,’ ” Walton says.

They sold their cars and switched to hourly car-rental service Zipcar. It is one of two “car-sharing” start-ups, newly pumped up with investor dollars, that are expanding in big cities across the USA. The companies and about a dozen non-profit ventures in San Francisco and elsewhere are challenging U.S. auto sales and the traditional car-rental industry.

USA Today