Have you ever wondered why car rental companies do not offer hybrid or electric vehicles for rent?

Mostly, the reason is the availability of the charging infrastructure, but it is also about pricing.

Generally, rental companies require vehicles to be returned with a full tank of fuel and many have petrol pumps available on site or there is a petrol station nearby.

That would not be a practical proposition for electric vehicles.  For example, in Colchester, there are just two charging points in the city near our location. Also, the time it takes to fully charge is considerably longer than filling up a fuel tank.

Setting up charging facilities on our sites would mean a significant investment and there would still be the issue of the time it takes to fully charge a vehicle while a customer waits.

Equally, charging points are not always available near to our customers’ homes or businesses and in a typical town terraced street, how could enough charging points be made available to enable vehicles to be charged overnight?

The investment a rental company would have to make in electric vehicles would be considerable as they are generally considerably more expensive than petrol or diesel-powered cars.

Then there would be the issue of determining a viable level of pricing that would be realistic for the rental company and affordable for the customer.

While in an ideal world it would be nice to offer the option of a more environmentally friendly electric vehicle, sadly, it is not a practical proposition yet.