A couple weeks ago, I was flying out to Washington, and I had a rental car lined up at the airport for when I arrived - I had a full day's work ahead of me. As luck would have it, the flight arrived three hours late, and the Avis desk had long since given my car up to a walk-in customer. They told me that the first available cars would come in four hours later. I just had no other choice but to wait. But they felt sorry for me, and offered to upgrade me to a premium car. I was surprised to see what they had in mind for me - it was a Prius. In the world of car rentals, a hybrid always stands a cut above the rest. All other things being equal, comfort, space and model year, hybrid rental cars are always more expensive. Now why should this be so?
It's the same story across every rental agency - Alamo, Budget, Hertz - the whole lot of them. TheToyota Prius at any East Coast airport will usually go out for about 50% more than any comparable car. If a normal Pontiac will set you back $75 a day, a Prius will cost $125. A quick search told me that Enterprise took $20 more on its hybrid car rentals, and National Car Rental took about $30 more. Companies like Hertz will even try to put a halo around their hybrid rental cars calling them their Green Collection.
There is a reason for this course. To begin with, hybrids are more expensive to buy than regular cars. But that alone can't explain such a fantastic rental difference. According to the Kelly Blue Book, the difference in price between a Prius and a comparable model by Pontiac couldn't be more than 5% apart. But that is more than made up for by the kind of resale value the Prius commands. So why again are hybrid rental cars more expensive? Considering how badly the car rental majors want to be seen as going green, it's kind of surprising that they would want to charge such a huge premium for their hybrid rental cars, as if they were some kind of luxury. You go to any of these car rental companies' websites, and you'll never hear the end of how much they're planning on going green. Wouldn't they be perceived as much greener if it didn't scalp you for their hybrids?
The companies say that there is quite a bit of market-force determination at work here. Hybrids are kind of new, and no one has enough of them; all the while, they are really in demand. They claim that hybrid rental cars are more expensive to maintain too - Prius spares can be expensive. The base price that they charge on a Prius they say, is only $10 more than a comparable regular car. If it gets any higher than that, it's usually just because hybrid rental cars are more in demand, and in short supply. But they don't say nothing about how they save quite a bit on fuel costs when their customers take out hybrid rental cars. But either way, your bill could always stand to work out to an affordable sum - there are always government discount programs that help bring hybrid rental prices in line.
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