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Rent A Hybrid Car
The real move towards having a wide variety of hybrid cars in the fleet came in 2006, when gasoline topped $3 per gallon mark at the pumps. With higher gas prices, the customers are wanting less and less SUVs and similar gas-guzzling cars. Similarly, the environmental concerns are starting to come into the forefront of people renting cars from the major car rental companies. In effect, the car rental companies have no choice but to start offering hybrids at most of their locations, and becoming proactive to meet the customer demands. It is also true that people are buying more hybrid cars, which has lead to shortfalls in production to meet the increased demand. This increased demand has lead to bottlenecks to the car rental companies. For example, in 2007, less than 5 percent of Toyota’s hybrid sales went to fleets — and those sales were divided between government, corporate, and car rental companies. Thus, as there is increasing demand to offer hybrid cars to rental customers, there are occasional hick-ups in getting these cars from the manufacturers. There is also demand for the rental industry to change business practices in many cases to allow customers to reserve specific vehicles, rather than a vehicle class. One of the early adopters, Fox Car Rental, has been allowing such rentals for some time. However, at the same time, fuel-conscious customers are also downsizing to smaller vehicles to save on gas, rather than rent a hybrid, partly because the hybrids are often rented for more than their gas using counterparts.
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