The lease of my 2006 Jeep Liberty finally came to a happy ending. I figure since the Canadian Revenue Agency still won't agree to let me deduct unexpensed business mileage then they can support the Canadian auto industry. (In actual fact, Stephen Harper, the "Conservative" Prime Minister has agreed to hand over CAD4B to the US auto companies (1)--I still can't figure that out.) Anyway, since I work from home and there's a 24x7 grocery store in the building I had only managed to put about 45K km (about 27K mi) on the thing in 3 years--it was pretty much an expensive paper weight in my building garage. When I say expensive, let me break it down on a monthly basis:
Chrysler Lease..........CAD 740.76 USD 592.61
Parking..................CAD 120.00 USD 96.00
Insurance................CAD 150.39 USD 120.31
Gasoline.................CAD 100.00 USD 80.00
Sirius Radio.............CAD 16.94 USD 13.59
TOTAL...................CAD1128.09 USD 902.47
With AutoShare I pay CAD30.00 per month plus CAD5.50/hr and CAD20¢/km to use a shared car. For example, I rented a Toyota Yaris Sedan today for two hours for CAD16.95 (or USD13.56). Normally we do all of our errands on Sunday's including: brunch, the Korean grocery store, beer and wine returns and replenishment and a movie. So we stand to save at least CAD1000/month. I like that. I figure even if I bought a cheap car I couldn't do better. Plus all of my work travel is expensible.
Actually, I applied to Zip Car first but they turned me down due to 2 (no points) speeding tickets in the last 18 months. I haven't even had any accidents in over a decade. Whatever--Zip Car is more expensive than AutoShare anyway.
Not having used a car sharing service before I didn't really know what to expect. There are dozens of AutoShare locations around Toronto. The closest to me is in a public parking deck about 100m from my building--that's important in the Canadian winter. They sent me a key that opens a lock box that contains the car keys. The reservations and payments are all conducted online. Everything went smoothly but I do plan to take a specially prepared Fred's AutoShare Backpack along next time. I took a picture of the current contents:
Above: The current contents of My AutoShare Backpack
Of course I have a GPS with a plug-in USB lighter charger. I can also use the USB lighter charger with my Crackberry. And just in case my 2-year old GPS maps are out-of-date (I refuse to pay $100 to update them) I have a couple of Ontario pocket maps to boot. I have gas dongles and toll transponders for both the Ontario 407 as well as an E-ZPass for most of New York state. I have tissues, lotion, Tylenol, a hair comb and anti-bacterial hand cleanser (You really never know who was in the car before you.) I have extra pens to fill out the trip logs as well as loyalty cards for the local car wash--you are required to wash the car if it gets dirty. Just in case I threw in my Fallsview Casino Players Card.
This being San Francisco, I decided to take in 
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