Hiring an electric car is currently a niche option. Even if you wanted to, you’d need to find a rental company with EVs in stock, hope they had one in the category you wanted and fingers crossed it wasn’t too expensive.
Avis in the UK for example has a single model - the Jaguar I-Pace on fleet - and it’s only available in its upmarket Prestige fleet. Sixt’s only EV is a Volvo XC40 Recharge, among 42 other cars.
But Hertz is looking to change that with a $19 million (£14 million) investment into European electric hire car start-up UFO Drive. “The deal signals Hertz’s commitment to electric vehicles,” the company said in a statement.
Hertz has had a rollercoaster couple of years. It declared bankruptcy early in 2020 after business evaporated in the pandemic. It then managed to reverse that bankruptcy last year after its almost worthless shares were seized on by individual investors in the stock craziness, then further excited the US stock market in October by announcing it had placed an order for 100,000 Teslas, the largest single order for the electric brand.
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"Electric vehicles are now mainstream, and we've only just begun to see rising global demand and interest," Mark Fields, the interim CEO of Hertz and former CEO of Ford, said at the time.
The investment is an important moment in the career of Irishman Aidan McClean, CEO of UFO Drive. The Luxembourg-based company is one of very few that has managed to crack the conundrum of how to successfully offer electric car hire.
In the process, the company impressed Hertz so much the US company made the investment and is expected to use UFO’s back-end digital platform for its own electric rental scheme.
McClean, a former banker, started the company in 2017 and UFO Drive now operates in nine countries, including the UK. His motivation was frustration. “I was pissed off at car rental. I travelled all over the world and couldn’t stand the process,” he said.
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Even with fleet discounts, I imagine that insurance rates for hire or fractional ownership EVs are significantlly higher than for ICE equivalents. This might partially offset some of the gains made wiht lower servicing costs for EVs.
Acquiring a used hire ICE car can be a minefield. However, down the line, I imagine that buying used EVs that started out as hire cars will also be a minefield. The obvious issue will be how an EV's battery was recharged. Somebdy who does not own an EV might be less careful about when and how a battery pack is recharged. This is going to become a bigger and bigger issue for used EVs generally becasue of the implications for battery life both in and out of warranty.
But WHY is hiring an EV a niche option? When I need to hire a van, I want an electric one, not some rattling antique diesel that spews fumes and forces me to go to a fossil fuel filling station. Diesel vans are so 20th Century.