Out of South Africa comes Great Guide: a GPS-triggered audio tour that hooks up to car radios. The system was designed for visitors to South Africa, and provides informative and entertaining sightseeing commentary for ZAR 99 per day. Customers order the service on the company's website, picking it up along with their hire car at the airport. Driving past points of interest, the system automatically broadcasts interesting stories and facts, ranging from historic and geographic info to current affairs and pop culture trivia.

Information turns to recommendations thanks to the Great Advice feature, which offers shopping and dining tips, while the My Itinerary option lets tourists input their travel plans online before they take off. Between points of commentary users can choose from a selection of music. Great Guide can be accessed mainly in the Western Cape and Mpumalanga regions, with conventional GPS functionality on offer in the rest of the country. The service is currently available in English only, with French following soon and everything from Arabic to Zulu is said to be on the cards.

Similar services are popping up in other parts of the world, too. With its potential to infiltrate every niche, and the opportunities it presents savvy marketers and content providers, it’s a concept we’re following with interest. More on maps becoming the new interface? Check out trendwatching.com’s notes about mapmania. (Related: Ad-supported navigation — Sightseeing guided by GPS.)

Website: www.greatguide.co.za
Contact: info@greatguide.co.za

Spotted by: Bridget McNulty

In tough economic times consumers appreciate more than ever the ability to try before they buy, as we've noted on many occasions before. Similar to the initiative from Renault that we covered not long ago, rental giant Hertz is now giving consumers the ability to do an extended test drive before they buy a car.

Hertz bills its Rent2Buy program as a "virtual showroom" featuring a variety of high-quality rental cars—most still under original factory warranty, with between 25,000 and 40,000 miles. Consumers can search the company's inventory by year, make, model, ZIP code or state. If they find one they're interested in, they can rent it for three days to try it out; they sign up online, and are notified where to pick it up. After putting the car through its paces during that 3-day trial, consumers can return it to Hertz if they don't want to keep it, simply paying the applicable rental charges. If they do want to buy it, however, there's no need to bring it back—they simply log onto My Hertz and click "Purchase Car." From there, they email or fax the completed Bill of Sale document back to Hertz, which will then contact them to finalize the transaction, including payment and title transfer.

By offering extended try-before-you-buy along with an all-online, haggling-free sales process, Hertz eliminates in one fell swoop two of the points that typically cause consumers pain when buying a car. Which, of course, increases the odds that they will. Need further convincing? Check out the tryvertising section of trendwatching.com’s Generation G briefing for more.

Website: rent2buy.hertzcarsales.com

Spotted by: Raymond Kollau

After noticing that many customers dropping off cars for service chose to use their own bicycle rather than their courtesy loaner car, Clive Brook, a Volvo dealership in Yorkshire, came up with the idea of offering bicycles instead of cars. The scheme started in April 2009 with two mountain bikes, complete with safety gear.

The initiative has advantages for both parties. Bicycles are cheaper for the dealership to buy, service and insure, and customers get that little nudge that might convince them to travel by bicycle more often. And within its community, there are green points to be gained by the dealership.

Is it new for automotive businesses to promote alternative transportation? Not on a global scale: loaner bikes are fairly common in bicycle-savvy countries like the Netherlands and Denmark. But now that bicycles are gaining popularity for day-to-day transportation in other parts of the world, opportunities abound for companies that add two-wheeled options to their offerings. In this particular example, it seems like an easy and relatively cheap win for Volvo to offer its dealerships a few eye-catching, Volvo-branded bicycles that communicate and enhance brand identity. (Related: Tuned-in garage for hybrid vehicles.)

Website: www.clivebrook.co.uk
Contact: cbrook@clivebrook.co.uk

Spotted by: Susanna Haynie

Carsharing and carpooling are gaining ground across the world, mainly through the efforts of non-profit organisations and for-profit startups like Zipcar and Zimride. An unexpected new member of the movement is Galp Energia, Portugal’s largest oil and gas company.

In March 2009, Galp Energia launched Galpshare, a carpooling platform where commuters can create a profile, specify their daily route and find others heading the same way. Users can also list their musical preferences and interests (politics, sport, business, etc.), helping them find people they’d enjoy sharing a ride with.

Galpshare was created by Galp Energia as a way to promote energy efficiency, helping consumers to save money and decrease their carbon footprint. Which isn’t as counterproductive for a gas company as it may seem; most petrochemical behemoths are actively branching out into renewable energy sources and sustainable energy consumption. Galpshare’s launch was widely promoted to commuters through an ad campaign, and the service is available throughout Portugal. Big brands looking to reap the rewards of eco-bounty: have you already figured out how to help your customers be green(er)? (Related: Rewarding consumers who drive less.)

Website: www.energiapositiva.pt

There are few things more exciting to us here at Springwise than seeing good ideas come together, and that's exactly what we had occasion to spot earlier this month. Zipcar—the car-sharing innovator we've covered on numerous occasions already—just announced a partnership with Zimride—also no stranger to our pages—to bring an integrated ride-sharing system to college and university campuses.

Debuting a few weeks ago at Stanford University, the integrated service combines Zipcar's car-sharing program with Zimride's Facebook-based carpool matching system to make it easier for college students, faculty and staff to seek, offer and share rides. Zipcar already operates car-sharing programs at more than 120 US colleges and universities. To share a ride, members reserving a car can now automatically post the date, time and destination of their trip to the Zimride campus community online. Zimride's route-matching algorithm takes over from there, finding and notifying users looking for such a ride. Zimride members, meanwhile, can now find a local Zipcar to share through a customized campus Zimride website or Facebook application, making it possible for them to carpool even if they don't own a car. Zipcar CEO Scott Griffith explains: "We chose to partner with Zimride because their innovative and scalable platform is a great foundation for building a national network of rides. Zipcar fills the car ownership gap for the Zimride model, since people most likely to ride-share are those that are least likely to own a car." The two companies aim to roll out the integrated service to many more campuses in the coming months.

Every Zipcar takes 15 to 20 privately owned vehicles off the road, while Zimride has enabled 20 percent carpool adoption and savings of more than 500,000 lbs of CO2 and USD 200,000 in vehicle operating costs, the companies say. Add to that the fact that there are some 13 million faculty, staff and students on more than 2,500 parking-strapped campuses nationwide, according to the US Department of Education, and the potential impact becomes clear. How long before something like this comes to large companies, urban areas and the rest of the congested world...?

Websites: www.zipcar.com — www.zimride.com
Contacts: universities@zipcar.com — info@zimride.com