Bringing Car Sharing to Asheville

It sounds like Hertz is positioning itself to enter the car-sharing market in a pretty serious way with Hertz-On-Demand. The program offers hourly rentals with no annual membership, no late fees, and one-way rentals, which are all significant advantages over Zipcar. The service was launched in March and already has over 90,000 members in the US—Zipcar has ~700,000—with minimal marketing and only a fraction of the number of vehicles available compered to Zipcar. Given that ZipCar is just now starting to make a profit and Hertz has a huge existing customer base, locations, and convertible fleet, it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.

Suggest A Location

Hertz is expecting to roll the program out over the next 12-18 months as more of their fleet is outfitted with the hourly rental technology. At this point, the only location in NC that I can find is Charlotte. Wouldn't it be nice to bring the service to Asheville? The website offers a Request Service/Suggestion Location form. Perhaps we could start a campaign to build support. It might be a long shot, but let me know if anyone is interested in discussing the opportunity further.   

Hertz-On-Demand Electric Vehicles

Interestingly enough, the new program is also featuring a heavy emphasis on Electric Vehicles, although there are no indications as of right now what percentage of the fleet will be EVs. Currently, the only EV they offer is the Smart EV. This could be a potential opportunity to build awareness in the region.

Patrick