A Zipcar a day gets stolen in SF – here's how they stole mine

&gt;Given that Zipcar has had 16 years of experience having cars stolen, they must have decided that it would cost more to install cutoff devices in the fleet than to buy some extra cars every year.<p>I&#x27;m sure that GPS tracking makes it pretty easy to recover these cars. They probably get them back pretty quickly.

This was surprising to me! I always figured my Zipcar wasn&#x27;t much of a target for thieves because: It has a big Zipcar logo emblazoned on it (slows down turnaround of the car if you&#x27;re trying to sell it), it has the custom Zipcard locking mechanism, which is tied into the car&#x27;s alarm system, and each car has GPS in it, which you&#x27;d think would lead the cops right to them.<p>Wondering what use these cars are to thieves? Is it just a quick way to grab a ride somewhere (maybe out of town)? Are they actually selling these cars intact to people to be repainted&#x2F;refitted and sold? Or are they sold for scrap&#x2F;parts?<p>(edit: formatting)

I&#x27;m a former Zipcar employee. There are some interesting things about Zipcars, one being that if the car can&#x27;t get a phone signal, it will allow any Zipcard to unlock it (since the car can&#x27;t know for sure if that card has a reservation).<p>Also, in the UK, there were instances of the more expensive cars being taken to garages and having some parts swapped out for cheaper parts and sold on the black market.

&gt; Zipcar can track the cars using GPS but they told me they can’t turn off the engine remotely.<p>A less extreme (and litigious) option could be to just turn on the car&#x27;s alarm remotely. It would make the prospect of stealing one far less attractive to thieves if it was known that the alarm would start blaring at some random point after they&#x27;ve driven off with it.

You cant have a remote cutoff option due to lawsuits. What if a zipcar got turned off on the highway and caused an accident, they would be sued

Why won&#x27;t the thieves disconnect the GPS&#x2F;reader from the zipcar after they have broken in? Is that actually tamper-proof?

Fascinating. As member I&#x27;ve always thought it would be a lot of temptation to leave these cars around with the keys in plain sight, and assumed there was a cut-off capability. It seems like it would be pretty inconvenient for members if it happened that often while in use.

I always assumed that the ecu was cut off until the card was read and checked. Except it would cache in case of parking outside of 2g range.

Could it just be double-booking?