Remember the perks of borrowing your parents’ car? You never paid for parking or insurance, and only for gas if the tank was empty.

Zipcar offers a similar experience; it’s car rental with all the perks of owning your own vehicle and none of the hassles.

“Torontonians are ready to embrace car sharing,” said Zipcar CEO Scott Griffith. “Savvy urbanites and business owners realize they don’t have to be tied down by the burden of car ownership or high gas prices.”

Thanks to a new partnership between Zipcar and the University of Toronto, students and staff can now be part of that list of the savvy, at a special flat rate of only $30 per year. There are three Zipcar locations on and around the campus, and many more in the GTA.

It takes about five minutes to sign up online, and one to two days for your application to be fully approved. After that, you can start reserving cars right away, from a few minutes before you need them, or up to a year in advance. You can search by location, by car type, or by car you most frequently drive.

“People tend to reserve the same car over and over; they are comfortable with it as their own but still don’t have the hassles of owning,” said regional marketing manager Saul Colt.

Once you reserve a vehicle, a cellular signal is automatically sent to your car so that only you can unlock it by tapping your Zipcard on the sensor during the hours of your reservation.

The keys always stay in the car, along with a gas card that bills the cost of your fill-ups directly to Zipcar. Insurance is also included as part of your membership. Costs start at $9.50 per hour, or $60 for a 24 hour period.

Fourth-year undergraduate engineering student David Lee is a current member of Zipcar, and has been promised that the new fees for U of T students will apply retroactively to his existing membership, which he has had since July.

“Just last week I took my team on the engineering photo scavenger hunt in one of the cars,” he said. “It’s fun, and much better than the TTC for a quick trip.”

Autoshare, another car sharing competitor, has costs as low as $5 per hour and $25 per month on its cheapest plan, but charges a $100 one-time membership fee, and a $250 deposit. Autoshare’s minimum membership age, however, is currently 25. To compete with Zipcar’s rising student contingent, this age will be lowered to 23 as of Oct. 1.

In either case, the car sharing movement is proving important to the younger, environmentally conscious generation, who are often on a tight budget.

“It’s very important to us to offer the service to university students, because we know they are a large market and have a clear need for the service,” Colt said.