Avis is buying Zipcar for $500 million. That's a hefty premium over Zipcar's current stock price, but a hefty discount on the 2011 IPO price for Zipcar. Way back in 2003, when I first heard about Zipcar, I wrote: "this does not look like it has the potential to be a big business, and it will not survive as a small business." It took 10 years to play out, but I was right.
Now the question turns to this: is car-sharing a viable business for the large car rental companies? While car sharing has a constituency -- "we live in a Zipcar world right now" -- it's still small. The hoped-for synergy in this alliance is that Zipcar and Avis have different usage cycles:
Zipcar utilization is low during weekdays but spikes during weekends, resulting in excess fleet vehicles during the week that often aren't used. Avis, meanwhile, has utilization that peaks during the midweek commercial-travel period and has excess capacity on the weekends.
That makes sense, and Avis investors are applauding.
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