Your car does almost everything you need it to. It gets you to work, it gets the kids where they’re going, and it handles the weekly shop without complaint. For the overwhelming majority of trips, it’s exactly the right vehicle.
Then Saturday arrives and you need to move a couch.
Every household knows this feeling. There’s a handful of jobs each month that the car in the driveway simply isn’t built for, the mattress that won’t fit, the tip run that needs a tray, the weekend away where seven people are coming and you have five seats. Historically the options were to borrow from a mate, pay for delivery, or take two trips and lose the afternoon.
There’s now a third option, and it’s parked on the street.
What car share actually is
Car share gives you access to a vehicle for the hours you need one, booked from your phone. With KINTO, you download the app, upload your licence once, and after approval you can see what’s available near you. You book by the hour or by the day, walk to the car, and unlock it with your phone. No counter, no paperwork, no key handover.
A Yaris Hybrid starts from $9.75 per hour plus 27 cents per kilometre (right now). Fuel, insurance, maintenance, servicing and 24/7 roadside assistance are included in the booking, and there are no membership or sign-up fees. You return the car to the same spot you collected it from.
The useful part isn’t the app. It’s the fleet.
The vehicle you need, for the afternoon you need it
Every car is a set of trade-offs. A hatchback is brilliant in a Parramatta car park and hopeless with a flat-pack wardrobe. A seven-seater is perfect for the school run in August and enormous for the rest of the year. Nobody buys a vehicle that is simultaneously ideal for the commute, the coast and the hardware store.
Booking by the hour means you don’t have to. KINTO’s range runs from the Yaris and Corolla through to the RAV4 and the seven-seat Kluger, plus a HiLux double cab and a HiAce Cargo van when the job involves load rather than passengers. A van for three hours on a Saturday costs a fraction of a removalist and saves you four trips in your own boot.
It works the other way too. Households run into scheduling collisions constantly one car, two people who need it at 9am, or a visiting family member who needs their own wheels for a fortnight. A car parked around the corner solves both without anything permanent changing.
What Melbourne has shown
Sydney readers should pay attention to Melbourne, because it’s the clearest demonstration of how far this model has moved beyond the CBD.
KINTO’s car share Melbourne network is parked on residential streets across Brunswick, Carlton, Coburg, Collingwood, Richmond, Port Melbourne, South Melbourne, St Kilda and Windsor, alongside the city sites. Most locations are accessible around the clock. The clustering is telling these are established suburbs with plenty of cars in plenty of driveways, and the vehicles are there because residents want a second option within walking distance, not because they’ve given anything up.
KINTO already operates on-street in Sydney’s city centre, and the Melbourne pattern is a reasonable guide to where the network heads as demand builds across Greater Western Sydney.
Flying somewhere? Same app
The other gap is the one that opens the moment you leave your car at the airport.
Booking a Perth car rental through the same app you use at home is a markedly better experience than the arrivals hall queue. You collect the vehicle from a city street or car park, unlock it with your phone, and go, no counter, no paperwork, no upsell conversation at the desk. Overseas visitors can hire on a valid unrestricted licence from their home country, with a certified translation if it isn’t in English. From Perth, Fremantle, the Rottnest ferry, the Swan Valley and Margaret River are all comfortably in range.
An extended test drive, by accident
There’s one more use that people stumble into rather than plan.
If you’re curious about a hybrid, or wondering whether an electric SUV genuinely suits your week, a twenty-minute loop from a dealership only tells you so much. Booking a RAV4 Hybrid for a weekend, or a bZ4X for a few days of ordinary running around, tells you considerably more, school run, shopping centre car park, the drive to your in-laws, all in your actual life rather than a demonstration route. A lot of people find out what they want to be driving next by driving it properly first.
Worth knowing about
Nobody needs to change how their household works. The car in the driveway keeps doing what it does well.
But it’s worth knowing that when the job doesn’t match the vehicle, the couch, the tip run, the trip where everyone’s coming, there’s probably something better parked a short walk away, and you can have it for the afternoon.
KINTO is a mobility program of Toyota Finance Australia Limited. Pricing shown is a starting rate and correct at time of writing; insurance excess fees apply and tolls and infringements are not included.
The above article is paid content, and any information presented should be independently verified before making any decisions as a result of the content. This article does not constitute advice of any kind, nor does it represent the opinions of the website publisher.