In the shared economy, you could pedal across town on a bike that’s not yours, summon a ride from a stranger or stay at someone’s house for a week’s vacation.

Sharing stuff means never owning something yourself. You purchase a service. Using a smartphone to complete a money transfer, you pay by the hour or the day.

Nowhere is this economic model more disruptive than in transportation, where ride-hailing is already shattering the taxi world. Now, car-sharing targets the rental car business by allowing you to rent someone’s personal automobile using a smartphone. When you find a nearby car, it unlocks through the phone and you can drive it down the person’s driveway in minutes, without a face-to-face meeting.

On Thursday, Getaround, one of the largest car-sharing companies in the world with 200,000 members, launched its inaugural service in downtown Los Angeles, Silverlake, Hollywood, West Hollywood and the Westside with about 50 cars.

The company plans to expand into the San Fernando and San Gabriel valleys as well as Orange County, said James Correa, general manager in Los Angeles.

Getaround will compete with other car-sharing companies such as Turo and Car2go, but with a technological difference.

How it works

From its smartphone app, users search and find the nearest car for rent, including the make, model, color and rates. The user goes to the car and unlocks it wirelessly from the phone; the keys are hidden inside the vehicle. The owner and user never meet.

It’s a lot like Airbnb only instead of your house, you’re renting your car. It’s a virtual rent-a-car service, minus the brick-and-mortar storefront.

Getaround’s $1 million umbrella insurance policy covers liability, collision, property damage and theft during the use, superseding a driver’s private insurance. Any parking tickets or moving violations incurred are the responsibility of the renter, Correa said.

Rental prices range from $5 to $8 an hour, he estimated. Getaround is a round-trip service, so the user must return the car to the original location.

“We connect people in the community to those who have cars and are not utilizing them completely and want to rent them out,” Correa said.

Filling a gap

The Getaround people say their service complements Uber and Lyft. Their users rent for longer hauls. They may want to take their family to the beach for the day or make that weekly grocery jaunt to Costco, Correa said.

Getaround is the middleman, working the software app, equipping the cars with special locking devices, screening drivers for save driving records and paying for the insurance.

As for the car owners, they can make extra cash, just like Uber or Lyft drivers but they don’t drive, only make their cars available. In San Francisco, the average car owner participating in Getaround makes $500 a month, Correa said. “It is not uncommon for an owner to make $1,000 a month,” he added.

Testimonials on the website feature several males who each own multiple cars for rent. It’s more like mini fleet owners finding a niche than sharing your personal set of wheels, said Denny Zane, founder of MoveLA, a nonprofit working on increasing mass transit options and relieving traffic in Los Angeles.

Zane says the word “sharing” can be disingenuous. “That’s how Uber and Lyft started out and basically as it turned out it was much more of a commercially brokered relationship rather than sharing.”

Fewer cars?

Correa claims using a car already on the road cuts down on air pollution and greenhouse gases. A study by UC Berkeley found that for every one car shared, 10 are taken off the road. If 1,000 cars are shared using the service, about 100 million pounds of carbon dioxide are offset. CO2 is the main greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming.

Correa said Getaround convinces people not to buy a car. “They are taking the plunge of going carless while living in L.A.,” he said.

While Zane agrees that in theory some people may not buy a car or a second car while using the service, he hasn’t seen any studies to back that up.

“Will it mean more cars on the road? It sounds like it probably would,” he said.

The Los Angeles Department of Transportation is launching a car-sharing service April 20. Called BlueLA, they are renting out 100 cars in downtown L.A., Koreatown, Pico-Union, Echo Park, Boyle Heights, Westlake and Chinatown. BlueLA cars are all electric. They are rented at fixed locations next to self-service charging stations but can be dropped off at any BlueLA location. The zero-emission cars do not pollute.

LADOT received a $1.7 million grant from the California Climate Investments, a state program funded by cap-and-trade dollars.