On our latest podcast, AutoblogGreen had the opportunity to speak with Tobia Ciottone of Zipcar Chicago. As always, we make our podcast interviews available as a transcript so if you haven't listened or want to link to a particular quote, here's your chance. To listen to all our podcasts, click here.

ABG: All right. I'm speaking today with Tobia Ciottone. He is the regional marketing manager for Zipcar Chicago. Our regular readers'll be fairly familiar with Zipcar and car sharing, but Toby, I'd like to welcome you to the Autoblog Green Podcast and what can you tell us about Zipcar?

TC: Well, thanks for having me, Sebastian. I really appreciate you having me on the show. Again, my name's Tobia Ciottone and I'm with Zipcar here in Chicago and if you haven't heard about car sharing, car sharing is basically an alternative to car ownership in a city. We operate in cities that have public transportation available. We operate in cities that generally are densely populated. So Zipcar is really for someone who needs a car sometimes. Someone who can get around, probably get to work, get to most places that they need to go without a car, but sometimes if you need to go shopping, you need to go out to the suburbs, you need to go on a quick business trip, sometimes you need a car and car sharing and Zipcar is a great way to have that convenience without having the cost of owning a car. So, basically the way it works, I'll give you Chicago as an example, we've got over 200 cars parked all over the City of Chicago. Any one of our members, and it is a member-based service, can go online and reserve any one of those cars for a period of one hour up to a period of three days, and that member pays for the car only for the time that they're using it. They don't have to go to an agency to pick up the car, they don't have to even speak to a human being most of the time. It's a 24-hour automated service. Gas is included. Insurance is included in the hourly cost and the daily cost, and it's extremely convenient, 24-hour access, and we have over 20 different makes and models for our members to choose from. So it's a great – great way to have that convenience without having the burden of monthly payments, you know, licensing fees, having to pay for gas. That's, in essence, is what car sharing's all about.

The Q&A continues after the jump.

Have a seat and get the latest green car news in easy-to-carry audio format. For the eighth AutoblogGreen podcast, we speak with Tobia Ciottone of ZipCar Chicago. If you've ever wanted to know how to bring car-sharing to your town, we've got the answer.

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