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Friday, July 31, 2009

Where to Rent a Hybrid

hybrid-rental-cars

With the growing number of hybrid vehicles on the road, one might assume that all car rental agencies are now offering hybrids, but while many of the biggest ones are, they’re not always available at all locations. Another unfortunate reality is that renting a hybrid will often cost you more per day, most likely because car rental agencies aren’t getting the same deals on buying hybrids as they are on their other vehicles. If you can’t afford the increase, don’t worry. You can almost always find a vehicle to rent (at any agency) with good fuel efficiency and that’ll help reduce your impact, although when it comes to emissions a hybrid will always be a better choice. Or, better yet, plan a trip where you can use public transportation, which will save you money and be the most eco-friendly option of all.

If you want to go green on your next vacation by renting a hybrid vehicle, you’ll need to research beforehand to see whether the agency you renting with has them and which location you’ll need to visit to get one. Here’s our list of hybrid-offering car rentals to get you started.

Enterprise

Enterprise offers hybrid car rentals at 30 locations and they’re mainly major cities, so if you’re headed somewhere rural or rugged, you may be out of luck. Also, as is usually the case, the price increase to rent a hybrid with Enterprise will be significant; at the Austin, Texas airport branch one search showed economy cars renting for $32.41 per day and hybrids for $69.99 per day. Renting a Toyota Yaris, which gets about 40 miles-per-gallon on the highway, is a good alternative at the base rate. Whatever vehicle you choose at Enterprise, however, opt to participate in their carbon offset program for $1.25 with your rental. During its first year, the program offset 42,000 metric tons of carbon.

Budget

You can choose from Nissan Altima hybrids, Ford Escape hybrids and the Toyota Prius at Budget…depending on your location. If they aren’t offering any of their hybrids at your destination, they do make it easier to choose a more fuel-efficient vehicle by marking the more eco-friendly cars with the EPA-certified Smart Way logo and detailing the mileage of each vehicle for you.

Hertz

They only offer two hybrids (the Nissan Altima and the Toyota Prius), but Hertz does offer them at 50 airport locations in the U.S. They also have a Green Collection, with all vehicles included getting at least 28 miles-per-gallon and most vehicles having SmartWay certification.

Bio-Beetle

If you headed to the land of aloha—Hawaii—and specifically to the island of Maui, you can rent from Bio-Beetle, a company that rents only biodiesel cars and do so at comparable rates to other rental agencies. The name comes for the biodiesel VW Beetles they offer (although they offer other biodiesel vehicles like Jeeps, too). The biggest drawback is that you’ll have only one gas station for refueling your biodiesel rental and it’s closed on weekends (so you’ll want to fill up on Friday). The company was offering biodiesel rentals in Los Angeles previously, but has currently closed down that location, with plans to reopen it in the future.

Electric Cars

Even harder to find than hybrids rentals are electric car rentals. In fact, you can rule out the major chains (at least for now) and the smaller chains too. In some areas, though, there are sightseeing-oriented golf-cart reminiscent electric cars available for rent. They’re emissions free, but they also won’t do for highway driving or serious touring, so choose this option only if you’re just needing a car for a quick tour of the nearby area. Try Go Green Telluride in Telluride, Colorado or Conch Electric Cars of Key West (we told you they were only in a few areas).

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