We looked into renting a car this weekend for a possible quick ski trip. (Love my bike, but it only gets you so far.) Though when we learned the cost of renting one, we decided to do a bus trip instead.
However, in our research, we were surprised to learn that one car company has a fairly substantial green program, including hybrid rentals and a carbon offset program.
At Alamo, you can opt to pay $1.25 when you rent a car to contribute to q carbon offset program and they'll match it up to 1 million. Or you can reserve a hybrid car (they've recently added 5,000) by making an advance reservation.
Plus Alamo has pledged to plant 50 million trees by 2050.
Something to keep in mind for next time!
photo: via stockxchang
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We've been talking about a long car trip for a while. When gas prices were at their peak, we looked into the idea of renting a hybrid vs. driving our most fuel-efficient vehicle.
Just renting the hybrid cost so much that gas prices would have had to be at $10/gallon or higher to make it cost effective. Why? Because the MPG on a 1987 Honda Accord is that good. The car isn't comfortable for long trips, but we'd put up with that before shelling out hundreds of dollars for a hybrid rental.
If Alamo has come up with a way to make that more affordable, more power to them.
(Also, someone with a less fuel-efficient car would probably find that their break-even point for gas costs would be a lot lower.)
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We recently had a long car trip to visit family. Both of our cars are in the 25-28 mpg (fwy) range, but not what we wanted for the trip - too small (hers), manual trans (his).
Went about looking for a Hybrid Prius for the trip, but shocked at the prices and availability. Enterprise was the only agency locally (San Jose, CA) that had any in stock. They wanted ~$75/day after tacking the out-of-state unlimited-miles option.
Found a rental '09 Toyota Prius from my local Toyota dealer of all places. ~$40/day. Nicest rental I've ever had - not a strip down.
After factoring in the fuel savings (vs driving a standard rental or one of our cars) the true daily rental cost was closer to $30/day. We saw north of 42mpg for the total trip average. Considering the rain/snow/speed/mountains this was better than we expected.
We were quite pleased. We had more room than the Beetle, an auto trans so both of us could drive, and saved a ton of fuel.
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