getaround.com: Disruptive Or Not?
UPDATE: the picture from autoblog.com shows that the folks from getaround.com are actually using the OBD connector to interface with the vehicle. And to be clear, there is no way to engage/disengage the immobilizer this way.
This years TechCrunch Disrupt saw getaround.com as the big winner. The getaround folks gave a very good presentation (3rd video from the top) on how they wanna solve the problem of car pollution. Playing in kind of a similar business I was of course interested in their concept and for a moment I thought that those guys actually made a big step forward.
P2P car sharing combined with an automated keyless system sounds like a dream come true in the car sharing field and getaround.com seemed to have solved this problem quite well by providing the so-called Carkit as the enabler. Not having disclosed the details on how their entire system actually works, the following can be concluded by looking at the available footage and statements from their website.
getarounds.com system works either with or without the Carkit. Without it, it’s just a normal P2P car sharing that matches requests with offer via the internet. Other than that, the actual transaction of picking up the vehicle involves two people making an appointment to actually exchange car keys and return them back after a successful rental. Not very innovative. Others have done that already.
What getaround.com add to the game is the fully automated process of letting renters find, reserve, locate and open reserved vehicles and finally bring them back to the owner. This is made possible with a device called Carkit and an iPhone app.
What does the Carkit include and how does it work? From all we know, the Carkit is a combined GPS & WLAN in a box connected to your vehicle. So those are the incredience, but how does it work?
As it looks right now, the Carkit is connected with the vehicles door lock in one way or the other. Either the Carkit is connected to the vehicles ODB connector or getaround.com interfaces with the actual door lock signal in a proprietary manner. In this case this modification will most likely jeopardizes the vehicles warranty. Third option here is that the Carkit works like an additional keyless remote like the guys said in there presentation.
In many cases you can install it yourself. It is actually just like a keyless remote so imagine you lost all your keyless remotes to your car and you had to register new ones and you had to pair them back you’d follow the same sequence to pair this.
If this is actually the case I am not sure how they wanna do this in general as those keyless remotes work with different technologies, codecs, etc.
Leaving all those “little” issues aside, in the end the Carkit can actually open your vehicle by an external signal other than your keyless remote.
Now equipped with this piece of information let’s figure out how the whole thing works. Part one is finding a vehicle via the iPhone app in your vicinity. As shown in the video, you reserve the vehicle for a specific date and time and get to the vehicle when the reservation is due. When you hopefully find the vehicle, get close enough for the Carkits WLAN to be picked up by the iPhone app and press the open button. In case this is your reserved car, the app sends a secure message to the Carkit at this point, which in turn opens the vehicle like magic. By now we know how that magic works. Finally find the car key (in the glovebox maybe), start the engine and here you go. That was easy.
So let’s image you drive the vehicle for an hour or two and finally bring it back to where you started. As you have to leave the keys inside the vehicle for the next renter, you obviously close the vehicle with the iPhone app. During this process, the iPhone not only closes the vehicle, it also gets the latest GPS position from the Carkit and transmits the position online via the app to the getaround.com server. By doing this the system knows the last vehicle position. The next renter can now easily find the car. As a car owner, it’s obvious that you have to follow similar steps in terms of opening and closing the vehicle in order to track the vehicles position all the time.
Sounds pretty fancy, right? Looks like that this model can pretty much render Zipcar and other automated car sharing offers superflous.
Can it, really? Well, it could if the system would be secure, which it isn’t. Let me show you how: the whole system has a major flaw, which is the car key.
Remember the part when we opened the vehicle with the iPhone app and you grab the vehicle key from let’s say the glovebox and start the vehicle? Who actually do you think prevents the bad guys from just doing the same with your car, now that they have even the exact position and details? As the Carkit is by no means able to securely interface with the vehicles immobilizer, everybody, I really mean everybody that get’s into the car without using the iPhone app, can grab the key, start the engine and is off in a second.
So maybe getaround.com really has that little magic to solve this problem? I don’t think so. Immobilizers are a different beast compared to door locks when it comes to interfacing with them. There is no legal way you can access them other than hacking the ECU or reprogramming everything. Car manufacturers are not disclosing the info that’s needed to disengage an immobilizer. To handle all different car makes and models is a challenge by itself and not feasible today.
Hey, you might say who cares, I have an insurance that covers this. I guess they will most likely tell you something like “sorry pal, you should not have left the car key in the vehicle”. But maybe the getaround.com insurance will cover this? From all what they say right now, only the rental itself is covered which excludes the time when the vehicle is in idle mode.
So, what does that all mean? As much as I was impressed by the system in the first place, getaround.com by all of what we know so far can not be disruptive as the business model is broken due to the built-in security issue it has. There is no easy way to fix that hole in the business model as those privately owned cars are at risk by their owners and I am not sure if car owners will stick to such a model in this case.
I would be more than happy to be proven wrong here. So it would be perfect to get some feedback from getaround.com car owners. In addition, are there any details available on the Carkit installation, which takes 1-2 hours to install as mentioned in their FAQ or 5 minutes as mentioned in their presentation?
