Share My Ride

New York Times, March 8, 2009 — MY NEIGHBOR JOE EMBRACED THE ZEITGEIST, or was embraced by it, shortly before Thanksgiving a couple of years ago when he decided to bid adieu to his S.U.V., a two-and-a-half ton specimen that was a pain to park, got only slightly better mileage than a cement mixer and bore a brand name that meant to evoke, through misspelling, a famously resilient tribe of Berber-speaking desert nomads. Joe replaced the car, more or less, with nothing, or rather, with an Idea, which he carried around in his wallet on a plastic card, lawn-green, embedded with a computer chip and prominently imprinted with a playfully mellow looking “Z,” for Zipcar — an upstart company bent on altering the primal bond between Americans and their vehicles.