Green Car Rental Round Up: Who’s Going Green and Who’s Missing the Boat

Want to rent a car, but wishing you had more green choices?  As it stands, you’re in luck. Car rental companies are cautiously entering the world of green vehicles as consumers look for higher fuel efficiency ratings that will save them money on gas. Demand for hybrids across the country has skyrocketed lately as fuel prices have risen ever higher.

Some experts are telling the companies to slow down their green fleet efforts, since they’re convinced that the extra money consumers pay to rent a hybrid outstrips high fuel costs. Rates for hybrids at all of the major rental car companies average $5-$15 more per day than similar sized non-hybrid vehicles. That’s not stopping most of the major rental car companies from beefing up their fleets of green vehicles, though; nearly all of them plan to slowly increase the number of hybrids and fuel-efficient compact vehicles available to rent as demand grows.

So, who’s going green and who’s missing the boat?

Since 2006, Hertz Rent a Car has been offering consumers a ‘Green Collection’, which includes the Toyota Prius hybrid and three non-hybrid but small and fuel-efficient vehicles: the Toyota Camry, the Ford Fusion and the Toyota Corolla. The Green Collection fleet is comprised of 35,000 vehicles. All of them are reservable by specific make and model, have a fuel efficiency rating of 28 mpg or more and are available at 50 major airport locations across the U.S. For every reserved and paid Green Collection rental, Hertz contributes $1 to the National Park Foundation. They’ve pledged a minimum contribution of $1 million.

Hertz is pushing hybrids in Manhattan especially, where they’ve got 100 of them. Company officials say the stop-and-go traffic of the city provides the ideal driving environment for hybrids, since they’d primarily operate off of the electric motors.

Hertz also announced earlier this year that by the end of the summer, they’ll have spend $68 million adding another 3,500 hybrids to their fleet. They also won points with customers recently when they announced that they’re doing away with ridiculously high refueling fees starting July 1st 2008. The fees are currently as high as $8 per gallon when you don’t bring back your rental car with a full tank. Under the new rules, customers will pay fair market value for gas along with a $6.99 fee for the refueling service.

Last year, Avis Budget Group expanded its fleet to include the Toyota Prius and the Nissan Altima hybrid along with the Ford Escape hybrid. Avis’ hybrid fleet numbers 2,500 out of their total 375,000 vehicles. Avis’ foray into the green rental car world has been slow and cautious as the company tests certain markets to make sure that the demand for these vehicles is really there.

Thrifty Car Rental and Dollar Rent a Car, both owned by the Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group, have made the least progress toward a greener fleet of any major car rental company. Their spokespeople have said that they have ‘a few’ hybrids and biofuel vehicles, but have had trouble purchasing more due to high retail demand. They also blame what they call their core customer group: people wanting to rent large vehicles at lower prices for family vacations and other short-term uses.

In terms of environmental initiatives, Enterprise Rent-a-Car (and its sister brands, Alamo and National) is probably the winner of the green rental car race. The company offers the largest fleet of hybrids and fuel efficient vehicles of any rental car agency in America: their fleet numbers 440,000, and that includes 5,000 hybrids and 73,000 ‘flex fuel’ cars that can run on E85, a blend of 85% ethanol and 15% gas.

In April of this year, Enterprise also opened four ‘green’ branches in Atlanta, where they have a fleet of 4,000 hybrids and other fuel-efficient vehicles available. In Portland, the company has five biodiesel vehicles available to rent.

They have also pledged to plant 50 million trees in national forests all over the country to offset their rental fleet’s carbon emissions. Enterprise is responsible for planting 1/7th of all trees planted in national forests in 2007. They also offer customers the opportunity to offset carbon emissions by paying $1.25 per rental, which the company will match dollar-for-dollar up to $1 million annually.

That’s not a big surprise for anyone who knows anything about the Taylor family, who own Enterprise: they’ve got a long history of environmental advocacy. They donated $30 million to the Missouri Botanical Garden in 2002, and gave $25 million to create the Enterprise Rent-a-Car Institute for Renewable Fuels, which researches biofuels.

Unfortunately, Enterprise’s efforts are undermined by a few factors. First, there’s the fact that E85 fueling stations aren’t widely available – not to mention the fact that ethanol isn’t really a sustainable alternative fuel. Another issue that all rental car companies are facing is that there aren’t enough hybrids being produced at the moment for the companies to buy, which means customers aren’t guaranteed a hybrid when they want to reserve one. Part of the blame lies on customers, too: only 1 in 10 are paying the extra $1.25 per rental to offset their carbon emissions.

Residents in some metro areas of the U.S. have more eco-options than just the major car rental companies. EV Rental Cars offers environmentally friendly vehicles in six California cities – LA, San Diego, Santa Ana, San Francisco, San Jose and Oakland – along with Phoenix, Arizona. EV is currently the only full-on eco-friendly rental car company – they don’t offer conventional vehicles. Fox Rent a Car, a discount rental car service, works with EV Rental Cars to provide green rentals to customers at all of their U.S. locations.  And, if you’ll be taking a vacation to Maui anytime soon, you have the option of selecting a biodiesel vehicle at Bio-Beetles, the nation’s only all-biodiesel rental car service.

As gas prices continue to rise, it seems safe to assume that consumer demand for hybrids will increase as well, and hopefully rental car agencies will continue to meet these needs with increasing numbers of hybrids and other cleaner, greener vehicles.

Photo credit: Flickr user Beige Alert

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