Car ownership can be tricky at the best of times. Unless you’re a taxi driver or some kind of roving consultant, your car will most likely spend 90% of its time gathering bird excrement in your driveway. With fuel prices on the up, and remote working becoming more and more the norm, renting a car as and when you need it seems like an increasingly sensible option.

Luckily, the internet has come to the rescue and made car rental more awesome in the form of WhipCar, a peer-to-peer car rental service that hooks you up with actual people looking to rent out their own cars in your local area. Not only does this mean you get the warm and fuzzies, knowing your money is going to an actual person and not a faceless corporate behemoth, but it can be much cheaper than the traditional car rental route.

All the vehicles on the site are available by the hour, day or week, so you can even just rent a car for a few hours if you need to whiz somewhere and back again, and breakdown cover and insurance are both included automatically.

This past weekend I rented a WhipCar myself for a jaunt down to Devon for a friend’s wedding, and am pleased to report the experience was completely painless, and far easier than a traditional car rental.

For around £110 I rented a BMW 1 series from Friday evening to Sunday evening, a rental that would have cost around £130 from a major provider such as Avis or Enterprise. Unlike with a large provider, there is no paperwork to sign or confusing insurance surcharges to agree to – you just confirm the booking on the WhipCar website and show the owner your drivers license to prove you’re who you say you are.

Another advantage of the peer-to-peer model is that once the rental is confirmed you are put directly in touch with the car owner, meaning you can arrange specifics such as where you would like to meet, and exactly what time you’d like to return the car. Overall, a much nicer experience than the sterile blandness of traditional car rental.

However, renting is just one side to the WhipCar coin. If you have a car that sits idle many hours a day, provided it meets certain criteria you can list it on WhipCar and put it to work making you some extra pocket money. The owner of the car I rented was a freelance photographer and made his car available for rent whenever he wasn’t using it.

Overall a thoroughly enjoyable, cheap experience. Next time you need a short-term rental give it a try – you could be helping out a fellow freelancer.

Photo by Linda – CC