More and more electric vehicles are being launched, but is the infrastructure in place to make it a viable car hire option – and is the demand even there? Liat Clark reports.
When the New Year came around 11 months ago, it appeared to spell a new age for the motor industry. Along with their turkey dinners, the British public was happily digesting news that the Department for Transport would spend £30 million on creating 8,500 electric charge points across the UK, London mayor Boris Johnson would put in place £17 million-worth of charge points in the capital by 2013, and the coalition would honour Labour’s pledge to invest £43 million in electric vehicle grants.
In the meantime, the big names in car manufacturing have been going electric. Nissan announced that 50,000 of its Leafs would be released worldwide during 2011, Mitsubishi started taking orders for its Mitsubishi I-MiEV, Tesla Roadsters were being snapped up, and the launch of the Ford Focus Electric was confirmed. Even Rolls-Royce has joined in, launching the 102EX electric version of the Phantom at the Geneva Motor Show in March. A new, greener future beckoned, it seemed.
However, the combination of continued economic problems and spending cuts means we are facing a rather different prospect. The Department for Transport announced in June that owing to new studies showing public charge points would be “under-utilised and uneconomic”, as commuters would choose to plug in at home or work, further investment in public points would be unlikely. This contrasted with research conducted by electric recharging station company Elektromotive in June, which found that two-thirds of consumers would be more likely to buy an electric car if there were more charging points on roads and in car parks.
The uncertainty has trickled down to car rental companies. Paul McLoughlin, managing director of Sixt UK, says: “Now the sale of these vehicles has not gone to plan, the government is saying: ‘Maybe we shouldn’t put in as many charging points because we want to see the cars first.’ The manufacturers are saying you need to put the infrastructure in first – it’s a stalemate.”
The result has been that the major players are entering the arena with caution, testing the water with pilot projects. In May, Enterprise Rent-a-Car introduced eight electric Peugeot Ions into its London fleet, though they are not for general use. For 12 months, select customers will be able to see what an electric car feels like when using the company’s pick-up service.
“You get to drive a customer around and talk about the car,” says Rob Ingram, Enterprise’s director of business rental. “We’re exposing lots of people to it without them having to rent it. We’re learning from them and asking, ‘If we did offer this, would you be happy to drive it?’ So far, the reaction has been positive – everybody gets in and says, ‘Oh, it’s just like a normal car.’”
All the same, in the first five months of the government’s £5,000 electric car subsidy (offered to all consumers buying a fully electric or hybrid car emitting less than 75g CO2/km), only about 500 people signed up. So what is quelling demand? Range anxiety is a key stumbling block, with fully charged electric vehicles averaging only 145km on a single charge. Having sufficient points on the road is crucial if drivers are to feel comfortable behind the wheel.
The rental companies agree that more needs to be done to build a network. “They are never going to be used in my lifetime for long distances – but you only need to have an infrastructure around the major cities for them to be useful,” says Neil Cunningham, UK general manager for Hertz.
Quick-charge points able to power up a car to 80 per cent in under half an hour are scarce, with only about 30 in the UK, mostly located at Nissan dealerships. Normal charge time takes up to eight hours and, according to nextgreencar.com, there are 1,426 public points at 717 locations across the UK. Car rental firms have contributed to the network with branch installations – Hertz has introduced 16 in branches including Heathrow and City airports as part of Source London, a government network that installed 150 public charge points across the capital this year – there are now approximately 400 of them in the city.
And despite government research saying we’ll be charging cars at home, this is not yet feasible. “Today, manufacturers say not to take the car home and plug it in in your garage,” Ingram says. This is because the local grid may not be able to cope, causing a power cut. To remedy this, EDF Energy, British Gas and Npower announced plans this year to provide installation of faster charging points at home, with British Gas hoping to bring in EV tariffs by next year. But while Npower’s service will cut full charge time from eight to four hours, it will cost a steep £1,000.
Cost is another key issue affecting consumer demand, despite the relatively cheap recharge fees (members of Source London pay £100 a year for unlimited usage). The cars are not cheap – the Nissan Leaf, for example, costs about £30,000.
“For the types of journeys our customers are doing and the reasons they rent, they’re looking for convenience and simplicity,” says McLoughlin. “When I was at [car-sharing company] Zipcar we had electric car schemes in place in Fulham, and they were not utilised. People say they’d like to drive electric but then they don’t like the price, which is more than a three-series BMW. They’d rather take the BMW.”
Still, this logic doesn’t always stand up. Aside from the government grant, electric cars are exempt from road tax and congestion charges, can cost as little as 2p per mile to run and, in some London boroughs, such as Westminster, can be parked at any meter for free.
It can also be cheaper to rent. Hertz on Demand – the company’s by the hour, free-to-join car rental service – provides a Mitsubishi I-MiEV for only £4 an hour, its lowest fee. According to Cunningham, it’s been popular for London-Heathrow pick-ups, since the round trip costs less than a taxi. As a result, Hertz is trialling one-way On Demand drop-offs between New York airports and Manhattan. The company also introduced Mitsubishi I-MiEVs into two Pricewaterhouse Coopers branches this year as part of the accountancy firm’s car sharing scheme.
Early this year, Hertz confirmed its intentions to add Renault’s new range of ZE electric vehicles – the Twizy, Zoe, Fluence and Kangoo – to its fleets across Europe. On Demand members will be able to hire the new range by early next year. In August, it announced plans to expand its electric programme to China.
Avis, meanwhile, pre-ordered 500 Renault electric vehicles last year and will introduce them in locations across Europe from the end of the year.
Aside from going electric, are there ways for companies to be greener? Simply renting smaller models will help – and, here, the economic downturn has in fact been a benefit. “The average size of vehicle our corporate clients are renting has dropped at least a size in the past two years,” Enterprise’s Ingram says. Hiring newer models is also greener: “If you rent new cars, you will improve your carbon footprint every time as you’re taking advantage of new technology,“ he explains.
Some hire companies also have “green” collections of lower-emission cars. Avis’s Eco Collection, for example, which makes up 10 per cent of its fleet, consists of diesel cars with C02 emissions of below 110g CO2/km. Hertz’s Green Collection offers cars with CO2 emission levels below 120g/km, although it is available only at participating locations.
Meanwhile, Sixt is trialling a car-sharing scheme in Munich and Berlin using low-emission BMWs. Drive Now leases vehicles under 120g CO2/km for 25p a minute.
According to UK advisory body the Committee on Climate Change, at least 1.7 million electric vehicles need to be on the road by 2020 if we are to cut UK CO2 emissions by a third by that time. That’s a long way off – according to the Department for Transport’s September statistics, only 1,250 ultra-low emission vehicles (under 75g CO2/km and including electric) were licensed in the first half of this year, compared with 28.6 million other cars.
If we are to get there, technology is certainly the answer – Toyota’s research and development team, for example, has joined with Japan Toyohashi University of Technology to test “up-convert” electric metal plates placed beneath roads, which charge cars via a steel belt fixed inside tyres.
In the meantime, consumers need to do what they can to go green. “The real issue is too many cars on the road,” McLoughlin says. “I believe the focus should be on sharing cars to reduce usage.”
