Next year’s summer road trip rental: Hertz adds EVs to offerings
August 3rd, 2010
Photo via Flickr: Dierk Schaefer
This time next year, you could be saving gobs on gas money — not to mention cutting your carbon footprint — on your summer road trip: Rental car company Hertz will be adding the new, all-electric Nissan Leaf to its offerings in early 2011, along with plug-in hybrids like the Chevy Volt and Prius PHV.
While the electric vehicles won’t be available everywhere — major cities like New York, San Francisco, and Washington, DC, will get first dibs — my guess is that Hertz and other rental car companies will be quickly expanding their EV offerings to other markets. Provided that the rental rates aren’t significantly higher than for a standard car, who wouldn’t want to fuel up for practically free?
When my husband and I rented a car for a one-way road trip up the coast from Los Angeles to Seattle last fall, we were upgraded to a Prius, and it was almost magical: We spent about $75 on gas for the entire trip, and we only had to refuel twice. Sure, it may have felt more festive to cruise the coast in a Ford Mustang convertible, but it would have also cost us $100 more in gas (according to the AAA Fuel Cost Calculator) — not to mention 600 extra pounds of CO2.
–Jennifer Grayson
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August 10th, 2010 at 1:02 pm
Hi Jennifer, My name is Gulsah and I work for Hertz. Great post! Love to see your road trip photos. Did you rent a Hertz car with your husband during your one-way road trip up the cost? Brian’s Pacific coast, Olympic National Park, Washington photos are just so nice to look at. I’ve never been there myself. I’ve been in San Diego and Idaho but that’s about it. More I look at your photos, more I want to grab a Hertz car drive up to west cost.
Thank you for mentioning our company name in your blog. We appreciate your comments very much. We are excited about our EV vehicles as well. We think that it’ll make a difference for renters and for their wallets. Electric Vehicles will be fun to drive too. Please tune in to our Facebook page for updates on this subject.
We’d love you to post your road trip photos on our Facebook Page too.
http://www.facebook.com/hertz
Thanks- Gulsah @ Hertz
August 11th, 2010 at 7:01 am
Hi Gulash! Thanks so much for writing. Yes, we did rent from Hertz. Let me see if I can find any photos of the trip that actually show us with the Prius…