Flinkster

Yesterday evening I’ve been driving to my girl when an ugly sound coming from my CRX’s rear started getting louder and louder. It was kind of a metallic-sounding scratching, just like if some piece of metal would constantly grind on one of the rear brake-disks. After I arrived, I got out of the car, took a look at the rear right side (since I just have had problems with that side) and nothing seemed to be scratched or broken there. Then, I moved over to the rear left side and found out that my rear left rim got pretty hot.

I decided to bring it to the car-shop today, though I needed a car for driving to work and back again. First, I’ve called Andi and asked him, whether he could organize some vehicle from Sixt, on a holiday at around 8 PM in the evening. He told me, that it would be possible, but after I’ve heard the price for a Smart Fortwo, for one day, I already dropped the idea of renting a car there. Some minutes later, he just sent me a link to http://www.flinkster.de, together with the info, that I should register there to avoid the car-problem in future. I took a quick look at the site, completed the registration form and half an hour later, Andi, me and our girls were on the way to STR/Mainstation, so I can sign the contract and receive a customer-card. After that, he drove me to Echterdingen/Mainstation and I picked up my Alfa Romeo for today.

The first thing I have to say about the Flinkster stuff is, that it’s extremely cool, especially for spontaneous car-needs. The pricing is really attractive, since you only pay for the time you have the car and the Kilometers you drive with it. Per hour it’s €1.50 and each Kilometer costs €0.25 additionally. This price includes the gasoline, so if you need to refill the car, there’s a fuel card within the glove box you can use. However, the procedure is pretty simple:

You go to the point where you’ve chosen to pick up your car, mostly at main-stations, hold your customer-id over a scanner build right under the car’s windshield, on the lower left corner and the car unlocks. Then, you pick the keys from within a “scanner” built into the glove-box and can start your journey. When you bring back the car, you need to drive it to the exact point where you picked it up and park it on the very same parking space. Then, you just stick back the car’s key into the “scanner” and lock the car within your customer-id. Done. All data will be transmitted to the data-central and you’ll receive a bill within your customer-portal online (or even printed on paper, if you’d like to pay for that).

It’s a pretty cool and uncomplicated concept, especially if you’re lucky to get a car when you need one spontaneously. Pickup-stations are around Stuttgart and Cologne, but I think that as soon as the project gets more popular, the DeutscheBahn will provide more stations within Germany.

The pricing and everything is really cool and more flexible, compared to providers like Sixt or Europecar, though it’s only worth for short-distance drives that do not take too long. If you need a car for one whole weekend because you would like to drive several hundreds Kilometers, choosing a regular rented car would be the better idea.

The only fail within that service is the car itself. Flinkster yet only provides the new Alfa Romeo MiTo, which is a terrible car. It doesn’t accommodate good visibility, especially in parking-situations and it’s just to chubby for a city-runabout. A Mini or some other compact car would have been the better choice. And especially on the German Autobahn the car totally sucks. The speedo shows a Vmax of 260km/h, though at 180km/h in the sixth gear it already stops accelerating. And what’s even worse: It decelerates at a rise, so you need to change down to the fifth to keep your speed. Besides, the driving dynamics are similar to the ones of a eighteen-years old Dutch caravan. But eh, whatever, the car is not intended for driving drags or other races, only if it would be a bit smaller and provide better visibility through the mirrors/windows it would really kick ass.