rent electric car
Posted: Fri Oct 03, 2008 3:49 pm
by mikedain
Some moron hit my gwiz and it has to go in for repair. His insurance company is finding it really difficult to find me an electric car replacement while mine is being repaired, as their contracted hire company Enterprise dont do electric vehicles at all
Does anyone have any ideas please?
Posted: Sun Oct 12, 2008 7:29 am
by MB
There have been a few abortive attempts to rent electric cars, but unfortunately none of them have been successful. Indeed, GoinGreen's original business plan back in 2003 was to rent the G-Wiz on an hour-by-hour pay as you use basis, but this fell by the wayside fairly quickly.
In the more recent past, the most high profile company was electriccarhire.com who were offering medium term rental plans based around the Sakura Maranello 4. What happened to the company I don't know, but they stopped answering their phones about eight months ago and I see their web domain is now up for sale.
There are a few rental companies looking to do short term electric car rental in the future, but right now it isn't commercially viable.
The problem is recharging the batteries: customers return the cars with flat batteries and then they aren't ready in time for the next customer to take them out. It makes them impossible to rent successfully.
So unfortunately, it looks like you'll be renting a normal petrol car for now. Good luck with getting the G-Wiz back on the road soon.