[Onzman]

We have a 24kw leaf and its great for the majority of our trips. We live in a terrace so charge a few times a week locally and that does us fine.

However we have been caught out on a longer trip recently when Sandbach Services ecotricity was out of action.. We ran out and had to get a tow to Keele.

So for the next long trip we are renting an ICE ( astra for 70 quid over 2 days plus petrol) if there was a long range EV available we would hire that.. But there isnt yet.

This got me thinking.. >200 mile range cars are coming but most of the time people are doing shorter journeys and would get by with smaller capacity.

Is there not a market for EV car lease/hire club? So you pay a monthly fee/lease and the majority of the time drive a smaller battery car for commuting/ school run etc. Then for longer trips you could hire a >200 miler.. Or even swap cars along the route as part of your package.

Along with the larger capacity cars..

You could get points/money off for driving smaller capacity ones and even add smart car EVs, Twizzys, electric scooters and bikes to the mix.

What do you think?

 

[ElectricBrain]

Yes and no.
A small car like an aygo is £15 to rent per day. I would use that if doing a one off long journey.

 

[Waterfall16]

Interesting idea especially as it is not very eco friendly to drag around a big battery all the time because you need longer range on the odd occasion.

 

[sandyman44]

for me, yes. I tried to propose something similar to this in another thread. In my case I own the car that I would use for all long range activity (being an SUV big enough to haul a caravan, it would be exorbitant to hire) but others may well want to hire the car for those long range cases as well. It wouldn't have to be an EV, it could be whatever ICE is needed to fit their requirements (if a longer trip, likely need a bigger one...)

I'd be happy to lease a shorter range (leaf 24, zoe 22) 2nd hand EV - if available at a price significantly less than the PCP of a new one - to do the runabout work. The cost/mile trade off could come in positive pretty quickly for me.

I'd like one of the EV specialist companies to consider doing it as a business model. IMHO there is plenty of stock of relatively cheap last-gen cars they could use to kick it off.

 

[Onzman]

Interesting idea especially as it is not very eco friendly to drag around a big battery all the time because you need longer range on the odd occasion.

Exactly, so if you only need a longer range on certain occasions you could swap the car at that point. Also be good for 2 car families.. You only use what you need at that moment.

 

[Onzman]

for me, yes. I tried to propose something similar to this in another thread. In my case I own the car that I would use for all long range activity (being an SUV big enough to haul a caravan, it would be exorbitant to hire) but others may well want to hire the car for those long range cases as well. It wouldn't have to be an EV, it could be whatever ICE is needed to fit their requirements (if a longer trip, likely need a bigger one...)

I'd be happy to lease a shorter range (leaf 24, zoe 22) 2nd hand EV - if available at a price significantly less than the PCP of a new one - to do the runabout work. The cost/mile trade off could come in positive pretty quickly for me.

I'd like one of the EV specialist companies to consider doing it as a business model. IMHO there is plenty of stock of relatively cheap last-gen cars they could use to kick it off.

I reckon it would be a great business model exactly as you say.. And a good precursor to to driverless cars and not actually owning a car at all.

 

[Trevor Larkum]

You can get short range EVs from the eCar Club (I've used them a number of times) and Teslas from EVRent.

 

[Zomb]

You can get short range EVs from the eCar Club (I've used them a number of times) and Teslas from EVRent.

eCar Club says that Zoe, Leaf and i3 can all be charged to 100% in 30 min. Makes me suspicious about other things they might claim on the website.

EVision has P85D for less than half the price of P100D. That seems a bit weird. I may give them a go on a week long rental (85 or P85) on a traveling but no_too_busy week. At 45p per mile, it only takes 640 miles in the week for the P85 to cost me nothing

 

[Idchappy]

Interesting topic, have to be lots of paperwork and insurances and stuff but like an EV car club?

 

[Wobblydeb]

Is there not a market for EV car lease/hire club? So you pay a monthly fee/lease and the majority of the time drive a smaller battery car for commuting/ school run etc. Then for longer trips you could hire a >200 miler.. Or even swap cars along the route as part of your package.

There is a similar scheme in several cities - have a look at www.co-wheels.org.uk. It isn't suited to daily commuting, but works great as an occasional use car. There is a choice of Zoe or Toyota Aygo or Auris Estates within a mile of our house.

 

[Onzman]

Cheers for the comments so far. So just got back from the weekend away. They gave us an Audi Q3 diesal for the low price hire tier as they had ran out of astras.

Everyone was impressed with the car

But to be honest, after being used to driving the leaf for so long, it was noisy, annoying to have to change the gears and a bit sluggish in overtaking. Plus side it was roomy and obviously we didnt have to worry about the range. Shame there are not more electric versions of cars like this yet.

So if there was an electric alternative we couod have hired with 200 miles range an an easy option to charge for the journey back we would have gone for that.

I like the cowheels business model, but to be honest it all seems a bit complicated as you need to register your own car.. There needs to be a simple ev car hire process that keeps the cost down.

 

[Gibworth]

Interesting idea especially as it is not very eco friendly to drag around a big battery all the time because you need longer range on the odd occasion.

I guess it would depend on how big a difference in weight there is between different batteries. Renault claim a difference of only 15kg between their 41kwh and 22kwh batteries. I guess that would change if the manufacturers re-designed the 22kwh battery for low weight using the latest technology. I'm not sure how much incentive there is to do that though?

 

[Onzman]

You can get short range EVs from the eCar Club (I've used them a number of times) and Teslas from EVRent.

The Tesla one looks expensive, all prices say ex vat and insurance.. So thats out for most people, e car club look interesting but seem to be based in small areas of uk. Also as someone else pointed out they say charge 100 percent in 30 minutes for the leaf.

Maybe when more cars come to market there will be more schemes like this.

 

[Ernie EVision]

Hello everyone,

I'm Ernie from EVision. Thank you all for the mentions about EVision.

We're not just here to hire out EVs, we have a lot of knowledge & are happy to answer any questions you may have about EVs, how to charge an EV & where to charge etc.

Thanks!