![]() But others have told me they experienced similar issues, even within the city limits of Oakland and San Francisco. “Get the hell out of there – now.”ĭriving a smart car into rural California seems, in retrospect, ill-advised. “Can I give you one more piece of advice?” the customer service representative said to us after the car finally turned back on. Six hours, two tow trucks, and 20 calls to customer service later apparently it was a software issue and the car needed to be rebooted before we could use it /LZBZQwRJk8- Kari Paul February 17, 2020įinally, five hours, two tow trucks, and more than 20 phone calls to Gig’s customer service line later, we got the car to start again. “It works great if you have a dependable cell connection,” the engineer, who asked to be quoted anonymously because he works at a company similar to Gig, said. However, the car cannot be re-synced easily if it is more than 50 miles outside of the “HomeZone”, out of cell range, or if the vehicle is moving.Ī software engineer with experience in the field told me this was common with such technology: the longer the car goes without an update, the more vulnerable it becomes to security issues. Without the ability to re-sync the car, customer service agents cannot remotely assist members, the company explained to me in a separate follow-up email. Today in sharing economy struggles: our app powered car rental lost cell service on the side of a mountain in rural California and now I live here I guess /XoqqMpEwdN- Kari Paul February 17, 2020Īccording to an email from Gig sent that afternoon – which I did not receive until much later – to offer customers the “best experience”, cars are re-synced automatically every 24 hours in other words, the car needs to update its connection to the cloud for security purposes. I later discovered this particular stretch of California State Route 1 no cell service for an approximately 40-mile radius. “Does this happen often?” I asked the representative, incredulously. A customer service representative told us by phone the car’s software could not be remotely reset as it was out of cellular service range. ![]() We had stopped the car for a quick hike down to the beach and when we returned found we could no longer use my phone to start the car. ![]() The services make it incredibly convenient to hit the road – no paperwork or trips to the rental company required – but come with their own costs, as I learned this weekend. Other peer-to-peer car sharing companies such as Getaround and Turo allow users to rent their own cars to one another. It is part of a growing field of car-sharing services – including Zipcar, the now-defunct Share Now, and recently Lyft – that allow users to rent standardized vehicles on the go. Gig is a company that rents a fleet of hybrid Toyota Priuses and electric Chevrolet Bolts in the Bay Area and Sacramento to 65,000 users, according to a spokesman for the company.
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