For Christmas I want to get a car that I don’t have to deal with for insurance, pink slips, maintenance, gas, or repairs, and comes with a guaranteed parking space. Oh yeah, and one that I can reserve for an hour or two online, walk over to it, wave my ID card over the windshield, and voila! The door opens, I can grab a key attached to the dashboard and drive it away!

If I went to Stanford, UCLA, Cal State Long Beach, or Pomona College, my wish would already be answered because they’ve partnered with a car sharing service called ‘Zipcar’ that does everything on my list and more. All students above 18 years of age can reserve cars online and rent them for $8 per hour. 

Here’s how it works:

If you are 18 or older you register for the service and get a card at the beginning of the semester. From then on, you can just go online and search for a car by time or location; you can search for one week in advance or see what cars are available right away. You then walk over to the car at a dedicated spot on campus, unlock it by waving your card over a sensor on the windshield, grab the key attached to the dashboard, and you’re off! When you return it, you wave your card again, the car locks, and the company bills the credit card they have on file. If you have an iPhone, it can also unlock the car for you…and make it honk at you if you lose it in a parking lot. 

When you get down to a quarter tank, you just pull into the nearest gas station and pay with a card that you find in the driver’s side visor. When you come back to campus, you don’t have to worry about finding a parking spot because the cars have dedicated parking spaces and must be brought back to the same place each time. 

At Cal State Long Beach, students who want to take advantage of this service pay $35 per year for membership and then have access to a Honda Insight Hybrid or a Scion xB — both of which go for $8 per hour during the week and $9 per hour on weekends. That price includes comprehensive insurance, gas and 180 miles for free. If you crash the car and it’s your fault, you pay for repairs up to $500 — the insurance takes care of everything beyond that.

For me, access to a service like Zipcar is the difference between having and not having a car. It’s economical, efficient and innovative. I don’t have to deal with hours of research, paperwork and negotiating with sales people, or budgeting for gas or maintenance or repairs. Zipcar’s Web site claims each of their cars takes the place of over 20 personally owned cars and that 40 percent of its customers either sold their car or decided not to buy a car because of Zipcar’s services. So if enough people used it, it could even make a dent on Biola’s parking problems.

I would love to see Biola either start their own car sharing service, or partner with a company like Zipcar. So my Christmas wish for Biola is, “Get me a shiny new Zipcar by the time I get back from Christmas break!” I’d even volunteer to help get the service started on campus during interterm.