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There's gotta be a catch.
The good news:
"Maven users have logged over a million miles in the car-sharing service's Chevrolet, Cadillac, and Buick vehicles, which they can rent out at an hourly rate of $6 to $8...Maven has no annual membership fee, and in some markets, the company's employees will actually deliver the car straight to those customers who request it." This sounds too good to be true.
The bad news:
"The car-sharing service will be available to Chicagoans who live in the Aqua luxury high-rise apartment in the city’s Lakeshore East neighborhood, as well as residents of the Hepburn, a 195-unit luxury apartment opening in June on the grounds of the Washington Hilton, located in DC’s Kalorama neighborhood. The service will also be available in Boston later this year." The article is pretty ambiguous, but that sounds suspiciously like Maven is more of a perk for luxury condo buildings than a Zipcar-like service open to everyone. Unless the "luxury apartment" deal is just one subset of the overall Maven program.
Looking forward to more info, though.
Let's wait and see...
Let's wait and see. Car sharing is expensive to start out on, you have to balance out the growth of cars you put into the service and the number of members. So it makes sense to try to put cars initially in places where they'll get a lot of usage.
Zipcar needs competition; they've rested on their laurels for quite some time.