I was reading some article today claiming Nissan plans to rent Leaf cars. Would that be viable? Seems to me rental cars gets lots of miles on them. You hit the 70 ish mile mark and it's quitting time for a Leaf. Then there's the issue of renter managing the charge and range of the car. That's a tough one to picture.
How far is downtown from the airport? A lot of rental cars go from the airport to the motel (to the client and back to the motel) * 5 then back to the airport. If valet parking plugs in your Leaf at the motel, it is seamless! (Mind you the rental place is going to charge you for a full tank of electrons since you did not refill it before bring it back)
It will never work unless there's a way to quickly exchange the battery packs. It takes 8+ hours on level 2 to charge a depleted pack. That's 1/3 day already. Level 3 is not recommended for every day charge according to Nissan. Then there's also the limited range. People rent cars to either go out of town or when their cars' are in the shop.
There is a limited but real special interest market. I've rented lots of cars on business trips that got less that 80 miles in 2 or 3 days. They just need to be careful that they rent them to people who understand the severely limited range and long time to charge, with probably no reasonable opportunity to recharge at the typical motel/hotel.
Certain locations would be perfect, like the Island of Cozumel. Would be tough to drive more than 50 miles in a day. The air and noise pollution from thousands of rental cars and taxis is obscene. Lots of big cities would work for tourists getting from airport to hotel to seeing the sights.
There is a big market for the Major Airport driver. I worked at MSP at a major rental company for just over a year. and it was actually more often than not that the rentals would be returned with under 30-40 miles on them. At the airport, a majority of the cars are rented driven to the hotel, maybe the convention center, (and at MSP the Mall of America) and then back. There were also a tone of 2 day rentals with 14 miles or less on them at rentals end. I'm pretty sure i read that Hertz is renting the Leaf in New York City.
