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Consumers Want to Rent Hybrid Cars
To help celebrate Earth Day, priceline.com conducted a new survey of its rental car customers. In advance of this weekend’s Earth Day (Sunday, April 22), priceline.com (Nasdaq: PCLN) conducted a new survey of its rental car customers. The company found that an overwhelming majority (72%) of travelers want rental car companies to offer economical, environmentally friendly hybrid vehicles powered by both gasoline and electricity. A similar majority (71%) of the 764 priceline.com customers who answered the survey said they would rent a hybrid and almost half (48%) said they would be willing to pay a premium for their “green†rental.
While hybrid vehicles are generally not available through most rental car companies or through priceline.com, most of the priceline.com customers surveyed (39%) said they would be willing to pay up to $1 to $3 more a day to rent a hybrid. That would represent an increase of up to 11% over the average weekend published-price for a mid-size car on priceline.com ($26 a day) and up to 17% over the average successful offer price for a Name Your Own Price mid-size car on priceline.com ($17 a day).*
Eight percent of the priceline.com customers said they would be willing to pay up to $4 to $6 more a day for a hybrid. That would represent an increase of up to 23% over the average weekend published-price for a mid-size car on priceline.com and up to 35% over the average successful offer price for a Name Your Own Price® mid-size car on priceline.com.*
One percent of customers said they would be willing to pay up to $7 to $10 a day more. No one was willing to pay more than $10 a day extra, while 53% of customers said they were not willing to pay any premium to rent a hybrid.
The already high and rising price of gasoline was another theme that turned up frequently in the new priceline.com survey:
* If gasoline reaches $3 a gallon, almost half (47%) of the priceline.com customers said they would change their rental car preferences and opt for smaller, more fuel-efficient car types.
* 55% of customers prefer to rent more fuel-efficient cars such as mid-size (example: Pontiac Grand Am), compact (example: Ford Focus) or economy (example: Chevrolet Metro).
* 96% of customers say they fill up their rental cars themselves before turning them in, rather than pay refill fees. 52% said they spend time looking for the cheapest gas in an area before filling up prior to return.
* 48% would be willing to pay more for a green rental car
Currently very few companies offer hybrid cars for rent. Of the handful of companies, EV Rentals and Fox Rental Cars have taken the lead in renting the environmentally responsible hybrids. Though Fox Rental Car, EV Rentals is able to offer its fleet of Toyota Prius’, Honda Civic Hybrids and Toyota Highlander Hybrids for rent to consumers in three states and nine cities. With greater inventories of hybrids avalable for sale as well as gas prices soaring and environmental consciousness going mainstream, it is likely major car rental firms such as Hertz, Dollar and Alamo will begin to offer hybrid cars to consumers.
Topics: priceline car rental, Rent Hybrid Car |