245 - The Short-Term Car Rental Episode




Gary: Hi, I'm Gary, and this is EV Musings, the podcast about renewables, electric vehicles, and things that are interesting to electric vehicle owners. And on the show today, we'll be looking at getting rid of your car and using something like a short term car rental company. 


Our main topic of discussion today is Evie Rentals. If you've listened to this show long enough, you'll know that at the end of each season, I do a round table episode. In that episode, I invite key people to come on and chat about certain topics in Round Table for Season 11. One of the guests was Michelle Liddle. At the Everything Electric Show in Harrogate. 


She took a test drive in an MG four. She liked it so much that on the Monday she took her husband - an ex-policeman and confirmed petrol-head - for a test drive. He liked it so much that by that Friday they had a new MG4 on their driveway.. We've said it many times on the podcast. The best way to get someone in an EV is to physically get them into an ev, sit them in the driving seat and let them drive one. And for many people, that's the point at which they finally understand how easy, smooth, quiet, and powerful they are. 


It obviously worked with Michelle and her husband, and I know it worked for me. I borrowed a key soul from the sadly defunct electric vehicle experience Century Milton Keynes, and used it for a long weekend. Once I'd learned how nice and easy they are to drive, taking it for a long run, charged at a public charger and seeing that it can do my daily work run, I was sold. 


Nowadays the experience center is no longer, so how can someone who wants to see what it's like to drive an EV actually get into one and drive one? Well, the issue with a lot of EVs nowadays is that they're actually quite popular and many dealers don't have demo models that they can lend out. You might get a 20 minute test drive with someone from the dealership sitting next to you, but that's not the best way to experience them. 


Having said that, if you attend any of the fully charged live shows around the globe, they tend to have test drives available for you to book. Yes, they're only 20 or 25 minutes, but it's no pressure to buy no sales team. You can try several in a given day. I did an episode last season on test drives episode two 17. 


What you should aim to do with your 20 minute test drive and what you should do with a two or three day one if you can get it link in the show notes. But getting an EV for a short time has an additional usage. If there's a regular reliable way of gaining access to an ev, it removes the need to actually purchase one. 


And this is useful both financially and from the point of view of minimizing personal greenhouse gas emissions. If you recall, carbon literacy trainer s Nelson told us in episode 2 0 1 last season. She got rid of a car and saved a fortune doing so. So how else could you get into an ev? Well, the short answer is rental. 


Today we're gonna look at a couple of models for getting hold of an EV for a short period of time, and we'll start with very short term car rentals. The concept behind this is really, really simple. If you live in an area where there's limited parking or you don't wanna actually own a car, a company provides a number of cars you can rent or hire For our American listeners on a very short term basis. 


How does that work? Well, at the simplest, you book the car for anything from an hour upwards and it gets delivered to you, and at the end someone comes to pick it up from you. If you are using your car every day for many miles, it's not an issue. But if you are only wanting a car for a small number of hours a week, the economics don't always make sense. 


And this is where a company like Zimbl comes in.


Richard: I'm Richard Devitt. I'm the co-founder of Zimbl.We are an. Hourly rental service based in Oxfordshire. 


Gary: Now, as you say, we're talking about short-term EV rental here, so I'll go into a bit of detail later, but talk me through at a very high level what the Zimbl model is for vehicle rental, please. 


Richard: Sure thing. The idea comes from one significant statistic beyond all others, and that 80% of UK cars spend 95% of their 24 hour day. Sat at home on driveways, sat in work, car parks, doing nothing. So for that very small amount of driving time, we pay money every day to maintain a depreciating asset that is often very polluting, very expensive, and is just underutilized. 


So that was the problem we identified and the solution was shared. Electric vehicles charged sustainably delivered to customers for just the hours they need it. So that's what sparked the whole idea, and that was the system we have created. So Zimbl operates on an hourly rental basis and we deliver the vehicles. 


That's enormously significant because the vast majority of UK drivers will not walk very large distances to collect a vehicle outside of major densely populated cities. And an awful lot of the time, it's simply not practical. If you have large amounts of baggage, if you have multiple children, if you have shopping, walking. 


More than tens of yards to a vehicle is not something most of us want to do when the vast majority of us have access to a vehicle that's four wheels and a steering wheel and perfectly functional. So that was what we had to replicate and create a new product for


Gary: I'm gonna go into a little bit more detail about that in a second, but talk to me about the typical Use case for Zimbl, and I'm thinking, I know you and I have talked about this and you keep talking about the school run. So just talk us through that sort of use case, please. 


Richard: A typical user case is a tricky one because we have so many, A typical day in the life of Zimbl fleet is a bit more informative. So we have a variety of users who use us multiple times a day, every day. 


So we have a school teacher who uses us twice a day every day. We have a full-time working mom who again uses us two, if not three times a day for work, commute, and then child activities. We have a household of multiple adults who have no primary vehicles, and they use us for all of their ad hoc requirements, whether it's trips out, it's weekly errands, and just the ad hoc requirements, things of that nature. 


And we have other users who are using us again as their primary vehicle, but they need vehicles for two hours here, four hours here, half a day, a full day here. So on and so forth. So our user profile is very varied. It's a really wide variety of users these days. A healthy chunk of our user base are people who need us because they needed a van, a car for a single specific requirement. 


However, a very high proportion of that number to the tune of 60, 65% translate from one-time users to multiple time users. So that's the big win for us. 


Gary: From a business perspective, I know one of the sort of big selling points when you and I have had conversations in the past is that your service can effectively replace a second car. 


Is that right? 


Richard: The logic behind car ownership? Is completely and utterly crazy when you break it down logically. So if you just think of the everyday driver of this country, so we're not talking about outliers, we're talking about you and me. The vast majority of the population we will put down. A relatively large amount of capital for a vehicle. 


We will agree to a multi-year interest bearing loan to acquire this vehicle, and at the end of that process, the vehicle as an asset is worth far less than it was originally valued. When you pay for it, it costs to never escalating more amount to keep that asset on the road. At the end of the day, it is going to be functionally worthless. 


It's just a question of time, whether that is two years, five years, 10 years, 15 years. Mm-hmm. And eventually, especially in the case of internal combustion engines. They are all going to fail. It is merely a question of time and maintenance. So when you look at it objectively, the idea is completely crazy. 


It is the only asset class that we will accept this. We don't accept it from stocks. We don't accept it from bonds. We don't accept it from property. We don't accept it from collectibles. It's the only thing we will accept this for. Now, the argument against second cars is even worse because while you will generally pay less for them either upfront. 


Or on a monthly basis. 'cause they are generally a lower value asset. They are almost always older. They are almost always more heavily used and are more prone to braking and have higher expenses for repairs. So the second car is the easiest one for us to target. So they are also very much underutilized. 


So you are only talking single digit number of hours a week, and yet people. To the tune of, I think it is 2,700,000 2nd car households in this country, that these cars will sit there. They may not be driven for days or weeks at a time, but consumers will continue to pay for them. That is a market we very heavily target to give people a real world practical alternative, which serves them. 


Gary: So what sort of savings are we talking about for ditching your second car and going a hundred percent to the Zimbl offering? 


Richard: So the caveat with this calculation is it does depend heavily on how many hours a week you use your vehicle. However, assuming for the sake of, of this analysis that you, that you are looking at a two to three hour a week usage of a, of a symbol. 


So let's say three hours for the point of this conversation over. A 12 month basis that will take cost you approximately 1,250 pounds paying the Zimbl, whereas the average for the UK for spending on a second car per annum is about three and half thousand. So that includes finance, insurance, tax, repairs, and of course fueling it 'cause resemble your battery usage is included within the price. 


So for every hour you book with us, there is a five kilowatt hour gift of battery power per booking. And for bookings of an hour, it's relatively rare for people to use more than that because in an average EV that will equate to 10 to 20 miles of driving distance. 


Gary: So talk to me about the delivery aspect. 


We've also spoken on this episode to Europcar who are obviously a, a, a different sort of sales prospect or a different business model to you, but they will also deliver to their customers. But how, how does that differ from what you are doing? How, how does your delivery model work? 


Richard: There's a couple of really important differences. 


So the biggest one is from a sustainability angle. We use folding electric bikes to deliver vehicles. So we do not use a second car. We don't use a chaser car, which doesn't. Therefore we don't have an additional staff member. So when I deliver a vehicle to you, you'll see me get my folding e-bike out, the boot out the back of the van, put it together, and off I go. 


From a sustainability standpoint, it's much more effective. And from a business operating standpoint, it is also much more effective. Also, we will do the delivery for even our shortest bookings of an hour, whereas the vast majority of traditional rental operations will look at a minimum booking length for at least a day, if not longer, before they'll deliver a car. 


So that's the big one for us. 


Gary: Now, when you and I first talked you. A handful of MG five estates. Uh, I believe, and again, look at your website, that's now increased substantially. So talk to me a bit, a little bit about your fleet as it stands at the moment, please. 


Richard: So we started with five mg five estates because they were a middle of the road vehicle, which would deal with the vast majority of needs for British drivers at the time. 


So. Plenty range for the vast majority of uses. They were comfortable, they were easy to drive, and for people transitioning into an EV for the first time, they, because the MG five was based on an internal combustion engine design, the internal layout of the vehicle felt very familiar to anyone you know, who's driven a normal car before. 


So it's not like jumping into the more advanced EVs like Teslas and others where it is. A whole different driving experience. So we now have 12 vehicles on our fleet. So we have expanded, we have other MG offerings, so we have various models of the MG four, but we also have a variety of commercial vehicles as well. 


So we have small vans, larger vans, and a nine seater as well for your party runs, your airport, runs, outings, so on and so forth. And we also have our specialist three wheel vehicle, the carver. Excellent. 


Gary: Well done for that. That's, um, that's made me smile. Now one of the big issues that a lot of people who are new to electric vehicles have obviously is the charging aspect. 


So if somebody's renting a vehicle from you for an hour, then the chances of them needing a charge are in its very, very small, shall we say. So two questions. One is, how do you as a company deal with the charging? And secondly. Somebody, 'cause I know you can rent or, or customer could come to you and rent a vehicle for a full 24 hour period if they want. 


How would they deal with the charging? 


Richard: So it's a couple of passes this question. So, um, as I mentioned earlier, we have our own charging infrastructure because it became apparent that to run an hourly service we had to have charging and fast charging. On command when we need it. So at our yard here in Bury, we have a collection of fast chargers, which we operate. 


So we power them from a hydrogenated vegetable oil power generator. So it's used chip fat, fast food grease as the raw ingredient. So that's the fuel source we use. So it's incredibly. Environmentally sustainable, uh, especially compared to any foreign petroleum product. So when we recover vehicles from users, they come back to our yard, we charge 'em on the rapid chargers before we redeploy them out. 


So I always tell our user base, if you don't need to recharge a vehicle for the use you are having for it, you do not need to. We will handle that when we pick it up. Charging can be a stressful activity for people who've never done it before. Or if they end up at a charger that isn't cooperating or isn't quite as straightforward as its engineers seem to think it is, but for people who've never used 'em before, it can, it can be hard work, especially when they don't want to cooperate. 


And I am quite an experienced user of the UK's fast charging network and as a rule, I've had very few problems, but even I have occasions where for all my so-called expertise, I can't get the things to work. And I'm honestly bemused as to how and why some days. It's not the same as going to a petrol pump and using them, they are a more complicated piece of technology. 


So for a simple user, as part of the in-person briefing, I give to every new user on every new vehicle type. When they rent it from me, I always ask, are you going to be needing to recharge? And if they need help, they can always call me and I'll always walk them through for whatever piece of hardware they're using to the best of my abilities. 


So. I try within the practical confines to eliminate this as a source of stress for the users. So if they need to use them, they will. If they don't have to, they do not have to recharge the vehicle before I collect it from them. That is part of the service they are paying for is symbol. 


Gary: So if they go, for example, to, not that they would, but if they go to the hub at Banbury, are you expecting them to pay for that, charge themselves using a contactless card, or do you have something that will allow that? 


Richard: In much the same way as if you hired an internal combustion engine vehicle from any traditional renter and you had to fuel up while you were out there on your journey, you are paying for that fuel as needed. 


It's the same for Zimbls users on electric vehicles. The primary difference being that you don't have to bring it back recharged, um, whereas yours always have to bring it back fuel to a certain level, to a rental operation. So people will recharge the vehicles as they need to, depending on their particular circumstance. 


It's one of those experiences that once you have successfully done it once or twice, the fear and the mystery of it largely fall away. 'cause you know, okay, this is how it's supposed to work. I also try to give a certain amount of practical advice to people. So I will instruct people, you know, in this particular make and model, you will need to do X, Y, and Z following the instructions on your charter. 


And I try and. Take some of the fear away by telling people. Just remember, an EV is basically a giant iPhone with wheels. You plug it in, power will flow, it will recharge. It just takes a moment. So you just have to, you know, treat it accordingly in. In fact, this is something which I feel is really important for EVs in general. 


Gary: A hundred percent. Talk to me a little bit about the logistics of actually running this because you've got the situation, from what I understand, you've got a limited number of vehicles. You said 15 and, and some of those are the MG fives. Some of those are the vans, et cetera, and you've got a customer base that's coming in and asking for specific vehicles at specific times. 


So what's the mechanism that you use to ensure that if you've got a pick a figure, six mg fives that are available at nine o'clock on a give morning, that you don't have seven people coming in wanting the MG five? Well, how is that all managed? 


Richard: And I encourage anyone who wants to see this, download our app and have a go. 


But, um, what the way it works with Zimbl is I took a restaurant level model for it. So if you're booking a table at a restaurant on an online basis these days, you'll often see a little restaurant maps. You see which table you are booking for the timeframe. So with Zimbl, you are booking a specific vehicle and you'll see it's red numbers there as well for the timeframe you, you have requested. 


So if you wanted a book for. Nine o'clock Monday morning, you go into the app, you go to, you select your time and your date, and it will only show you vehicles that are actually available in that timeframe. So you can't, you can't double book a ca, although occasionally the system will try technological gremlins face us all. 


I will always know in advance who has booked what vehicles, from what locations for time. And these days we very much do have the scenario that in most days on rush hour, pretty much every vehicle is deployed for at least the first hour of the day. So a lot of the times I will deploy the vehicles the previous evening. 


So they are there when the customer gets up in the morning, particularly for the early starters, some of them I will deploy immediately in the morning of and on busy days. It'll be a case that you may finish your nine o'clock booking, you will finish it at 10 and it's next booked from, it connects customer at 11. 


So I will rock up within moments of you finishing your booking, scoop the car up, take it to its next location, and so on and so forth. Occasionally the timings mean that. You know, the only way to get it done for the customer's request is to do it in a less than absolutely efficient fashion. But that's something you have to do sometimes to keep your customer base happy, 'cause that's what they've asked for. 


Otherwise, we always try to do it in the most efficient manner. Now, sometimes that will mean we have to move people's bookings from one vehicle to another, but we always keep them within the same vehicle. So the plus I know having a fleet of MG fives is, you know, it doesn't matter which MG five you have, as long as it's on time charged and ready to go for your booking. 


Gary: Kind of talked around this topic for quite a while now, and we haven't actually mentioned. What to me is gonna be the key thing for anybody listening to this thinking, I wanted to take advantage of this. And that's what's your pricing model. 


Richard: Pricing is very simple, and again, this comes down from my own experience of there are a few things I dislike more than seeing a top line internet-based price. 


And then you get into the thing of whatever it is you're buying and suddenly discover there are 14 add-ons. And that that aggravates me beyond words. I come from fine wine retail was my career before I started Zimbl.So when we put a price on the shelf, that's the price. If you buy more things, then there is a discount, and those prices were also there. 


So we wanted people to see that this is the price we're charging and these are the price you could get if you buy more with us. So operate symbol on exactly the same fashion. So for a standard symbol, so at MG five, uh, Nissan Leaf or our Max 83 small van, it's eight pound an hour, and that includes comprehensive insurance delivery collection within our collection areas. 


Five kilowatt hours of battery per booking, and that is absolutely it. You know, we do not have add-ons. The only other item we charge for in a booking is any battery you use beyond the five kilowatts we give you for free, and that we charge a 30 pence per kilowatt hour for whatever you use. And that's it. 


Those are the only two things we charge for. So it is absolutely. What it says, every time and every booking you receive an email invoice at the conclusion your booking. It will show you how much time you've been billed for, how many kilowatt hours you've been billed for. That's it. Going on from there, we have various levels of other vehicles which we charge more for. 


So we have the first of our premium vehicles, so a better quality vehicle, longer range at 10 pound an hour, and we charge between 15 and 25 pounds an hour for our larger commercial vehicles, depending on which one you're selecting. If you need to extend. So if you want an hour and a quarter, we are gonna bill you for an hour and a quarter, not two hours, because again, if you are delayed in traffic. 


Which should not be on your control, you need an extra 15 minutes. Charging them for an extra hour is simply unfair. So we don't do it. And what if people want to do a day, for example, we have discounts that kick in the longer you book a vehicle for. So if you wanna book a car for a day, we will cap our daily fees at 10 paid hours a day. 


So. Our 11th through hour 24 are free of charge. So if you book a standard symbol, it's 80 pounds for 24 hours. We do not charge mileage either, so you can drive it as far as you like. You just have to start and finish within our collection zone so we can recover the vehicle. Uh, if you book for longer, we have additional discounts. 


So if you book for a standard symbol for three days, instead of it being 240 pounds, we discount to 199. And if you book for five days, we discount from what would be 400 pounds. To 299, so 60 pounds a day for a full EV per 24 hours, which, which unless someone has offered a large discount since the last time I looked, you will have a hard time beating in the UK for an EV for 24 hours. 


Mm, a hundred percent. In the space of full transparency, you can get an internal combustion engine rental for cheaper. You have four wheels, an engine and a steering wheel you can get for cheaper, but that's not what Zimbl does. We rent electric vehicles. 


Gary: At the moment you are, is it just Bambury based or are you sort of expanding? 


Richard: We, we are expanding as fast as we can acquire the customer base. So we operate in our hourly service within Bambbury. That's where I live, that's where my partners live, and this is where we started the business. So if you want to car for an hour, two hours, it's Bambury area plus five miles. So the surrounding villages are all included within that zone. 


If you want a car for a day or longer, we will deliver it anywhere within the Oxfordshire area or the surrounding counties from Bambury. So I'm in Oxford, I'm in uh, Buckingham. I'm in Brackley every week to drop vehicles for people who want them for a day. And indeed people also exercise the option to come and collect them from us if that's more convenient for their particular needs. 


We offer all those options. We are looking to expand to the surrounding towns. So Oxford, Chipping Norton are where we want to go next. We're currently building the customer base so that we can put vehicles in those locations and they can be sustained and be profitable from the customer base. So we're doing that right now. 


That's, you know, a huge part of our marketing efforts right now. 


Gary: If, if a listener here is going, oh, I'm, I live in that area. I want to try this, what's the process they need to go through to sign up for Zimbl? 


Richard: You need to go to the app store and download the Zimbl app. Now it's free of charge and there are no membership fees. 


There are no subscription fees, and this is really important to us. So everyone who joins Zimbl, it costs you nothing until you book a vehicle. So we do, we want people to access mobility and you only pay for the mobility. So once you download the app, you go through a registration process, you upload your driver's license, that will be verified by myself or one of my colleagues. 


Once that's all done, you then can book a vehicle through the app. You go into the app, you select your time and your place and you'll see a list of available vehicles for the time you selected with the pricing for the rental as well. So it's all there. You then put in the address you want to pick up and collect from. 


You accept your terms and conditions and that's it. Your booking comes onto our system. I get notified and it becomes part of our forward logistics plan.

Gary: And from an insurance point of view, what are the limitations?

Richard: So the current restrictions. Place on us by our insurer are 25 or older, at least two years driving experience six points or less. 


Gary: So as Richard says there, the basic premise of symbol is that you can have a second car without the cost of actually running a second car. If that. Richard told me that he sold both his family cars now and exclusively uses symbol for his transport needs. But we also have another way of getting that short term car, and that's to use one of the. 


For the most part, they've started to use electric vehicles. Yes, Hertz in the US bought a load of EVs and sent them back, and that was a financial decision linked to residual values, not a commercial decision related to EVs. They sent some of their EVs back, not all. The key problem with this is that if you're not familiar with an EV and want to use it to go a long distance, you can often come a cropper when it comes to charging. 


And as we've said many times on the show, the difference is whether you're actually educated on the basics. So let's talk to Car Rental Company, Europcar about this. 


Tom: I'm Tom Middleditch. I'm the head of Electric Mobility for Europcar in the uk. 


Gary: Fantastic. Now, today we're chatting about getting people into electric vehicles without them actually needing to buy them. 


You know, they'll say in the best way to get someone into an ev, basically get them in, into an EV and let them drive it. So, uh, it's the best way to, to break the fear of the unknown. Now that's something that Europcar do quite well. I understand. Talk to me about the. Offering. 


Tom: Yes. So I mean, look, I completely agree with what you said and you are right. 


The best way is, is to get people in these bums on seats, right? You know, Europcar been a rental company for a long time, 75 years across cars and vans. We have been transitioning our ice fleet to electric vehicles over the last few years. Continue to do so obviously over the years to come and we're working to provide the choice of full electric and bat and plugin hybrid vehicles across the range of our rental fleets or across the different sizes of cars and across the different sizes, a van, so that when people want to make a choice to to move into an electric, they can do so in a rental environment. 


Gary: Obviously I, I've known you for a short while and I know that's your main focus, that's what you do. But who was the actual driver within Europcar to make this move? Because I'd love to believe that everybody woke up one day and went, oh, let's do this. But I don't think that's what happened. Is it, 


Tom: so this is an effort globally, I suppose. 


It's probably the first thing to say. So I specifically worked for Europcar in the uk, but this is a, a global effort done by Europcar, um, across the world. There were a number of catalysts for it. I mean, the biggest one is, is the shift in, in what the, um, manufacturers are producing. Ultimately, no one wants an old rental vehicle, so we don't, uh, we tend not to hold onto vehicles for very long in the ice world. 


Same with, uh, same with battery electric vehicles too, so. As the production of the vehicle shifts from the OEMs, so do so do the vehicles that we therefore acquire. It's a movement that's happened across a few years. It happens at different paces in different countries depending on the availability of electric vehicles. 


Uh, our colleagues in Scandinavia I know are obviously, uh, more progressed than we are. And then in the UK we're making strides, I think probably put us ahead of most of our other European colleagues and as we see the ZEV mandate and things like that take effect. So yes, it's, it's a company wide, globally. 


In the uk very much pushed and supported by our board. 


Gary: Is it fair to say that given that the ZEV mandate is, is saying that this year we need, whatever, it's 22%, or did I say last year they needed 22% of all new vehicles to be low emission? Zero emission. Is it fair to say that 22% of your, at least UK fleet is now zero emission? 


Tom: No, so rental isn't quite at the level of the ZEV mandate yet, and that's because the leasing sector, I suppose, is ahead of, um, of that. So at the end of last year, we're, we're just shy of 15% of our fleet is either Bev or fev That will grow considerably this year, 25. Um, obviously in line with the growth in the ZEV mandate, but yes. 


Trajectory, I guess the ZEV mandates happening on sort of if you take leasing and rental is that leasing has gone very big very quickly. Uh, predominantly helped by, uh, the benefit in kind tax rates that are on cars that encourage a lot of company car drivers go soon, so they've sort of gone quicker and are above these zev mandate percentage and that's enabled rental to be a little bit further behind. 


s we get closer and closer to: 2030

Gary: Other vehicles, uh, it's sort of evenly distributed across the country. So for example, if I'm in Aberdeen and I want to pick a, a Europcar rental up there, is there as as good a chance of me picking up a a zero emission vehicle there as there is in say, London. 


Tom: We certainly try to make them available everywhere. We do concentrate, um, the vehicles where we see most demand. That's not an electric vehicle thing, that's just a rental thing. You've gotta put the vehicles where you've got more customers coming in. So for instance, our airports will carry a much larger proportion of electric vehicles in their fleet 'cause that's where there's increased mark. 


But no, we did make the choice last year to make electric vehicles available across. Location so that people would have the opportunity to do it. But yes, the, the bigger the location, the, the bigger the fleet that that location will have, and therefore the penetration of the electric vehicles will be greater. 


Gary: Now, I wanna talk about charging in a little bit. We'll come back to that. But let me just talk a little bit about, uh, pricing. Now, the, the generally held view or opinion is that electric vehicles are a lot more expensive than the internal combustion engine sort of equivalent. Now you and I know that that's getting a little bit better, especially with people like Fox Oil, rum for price parity, et cetera. 


But in terms of, uh, renting an electric vehicle, would I expect to pay more for a similar sort of electric vehicle than I would for an internal combustion engine vehicle? 


Tom: You are right. It's, it's an improving picture. Gary's, you know, we're seeing, um, that, uh, price parity become closer from the manufacturers that enables us to, to move closer. 


But where we've been over the last year and where we are now is that we will do everything we can to price. The electric equivalent vehicle as close as we can to the ice automatic version. Most of the time that's possible and we've been able to do it some of the times. It depends on quite what the, um, the terms were we had from the OEM when we, when we acquired those vehicles, but wherever possible, we're trying to do that. 


We're trying to have policies in place, which. Enable, enable the customer to make the choice to switch to electric and not have price as a barrier and remove other barriers where we can, so for instance, other things that kind of support that. So price where we can will get it as close, if not better than We also don't require a customer to recharge. 


An electric vehicle before they bring it back to us. So again, another hurdle that's out there and we know in the market is, is perhaps the norm to recharge and certainly is the norm. If you're in a nice vehicle, we would expect you to refuel it before you bring it back. But in this sort of transitional period where we're trying to help people to make this choice, we're trying wherever we can to have customer policies that support it. 


So we'll always rent out Bev with at least 80% battery. We only require it back with at least 20%. So there are some scenarios where people may not be doing a, a particularly huge mileage, actually, they won't need to charge their electric vehicle at all during their rental. So we, you know, there's some real opportunities for people to try this and take away some of those blockers. 


Gary: Well come on and talk a little bit about paying for charging and how, how you deal with all that. Now, I think when people traditionally think of someone like Europcar and some of your competitors, it's, you know, I'm going to somewhere, I'm, I might be flying into somewhere. I want a car for a couple days and we'll do that. 


But you also do long-term rentals, don't you? 


Tom: Yes. And, and that's a, that's a very important part of, um, of Europcar's business in the uk. So for a consumer, you can rent up to three months. You can of course then continue to rent for three months ongoing in the sort of business to business side of, of what we do. 


Um, that long-term rental is a very big part and there is no sort of, uh, duration cap as it were. So, you know, we would rent, uh, very openly to customers months, years, uh, vehicles, particularly in the, um, in the van space, we see that longer duration of electric vehicle highs a very, um, uh, dominant sort of space that people are looking to move. 


So yes, it's. You know, from days to weeks, months, and ultimately in that, um, in that corporate space, uh, years that people can rent a vehicle. 


Gary: We've kind of mentioned this already when you talked about somebody who might come in and pick up a pole style, for example, fairly reasonable range, hire for a couple of days, don't need to charge, and, and that's. 


Almost the ideal situation, but there are gonna be people who maybe have, have rented a, a vehicle with a shorter range and they will need to charge. So there's two aspects of this. The first aspect is how do you educate people who are renting electric vehicle for the first time? There's a lot to learn about these. 


Yeah. I mean, you and I have been driving 'em for ages. We, it's second nature to us, but for somebody who's coming in and it's fairly new, it might be their first time or their second time, there's the whole thing of, well, there's AC and then there's, there's DC charging, and there's this CCS one and there's, there's chato and, and destination charging on that. 


What, what sort of education do you provide to help people feel a lot more confident in, in renting an electric vehicle? 


Tom: It's, it's, it's a really big part of that because so often these customers, we are their first experience in an electric vehicle. So those questions are all there. So we developed, uh, an electric vehicle guide, a website that exists that, that does a couple of jobs. 


It has a showroom of the electric vehicles, which we have. So it has information on, you know, what is their real range, what type of charging do they take, what's the max speed charging that that vehicle's gonna do. Sat at a three 50 charger wondering why you're only getting 50. You know, you can start to understand that sort of thing. 


So we, we make that available to customers throughout the sort of experience. So before they've made a booking, when they've made a booking, we then have trained our rental agents in our locations across the uk and we have a program internally, which we call EV experts. And those guys basically have, um, gone through a training program that we've put in place. 


They have also spent time actually driving and charging an ev so they have firsthand experience. So they know station managers are pretty much all moved into electric vehicles as their company cars, so that they have the hands-on experience too. And we sort of, uh, prolong or extend the handover period, which we would normally have with a vehicle. 


That's always available to any customer, ice or electric, that we will come with them to the vehicle and we can talk 'em through things. 'cause often actually they'll be driving a modern ice vehicle, which if you've got an older ice vehicle, will often sometimes feel quite alien in its technology that it's got. 


But it's certainly more extreme if you're moving from an older ice into an ev as to what's gonna happen and as you say, charging and how those things work. So, so we do that through the education at the time Vehicle guide, which I mentioned contains a number of, uh, tools enable. The nearest chargers understand the availability and the, and those sort of things. 


We also make that available through our application, which is given to customers during their rental for their sort of in life support. So a rental assistance tool, which has all the information you would need through rental. So if there's an accident that happens, if there's a breakdown and chip in a windscreen, all of those sorts of things. 


But also within there, we embed links out to that electric vehicle guide so that you can find charging whilst you're on the move. And of course in a number of the vehicles, the, the inbuilt tech in the infotainment system will help you to do that too. Um, so yes, that's, that's predominantly how we do it through that guide, but also those rental agents at the time, spending time with the customers, taking them to the vehicle and talking them through what's, uh, what's involved. 


Gary: My litmus test for education is. At what point does somebody say to the, the individual on the electric vehicle who's hiring electric vehicle for the first time, here's the little rubber bung that you've got to remove, or the flap that you've got to put down so that when you use CCS it exposes the high voltage pins. 


How are you dealing with that kind of education? 


Tom: Yes, so they, they will show them, they will show them that, they'll show them where the charging is and how the charging works. Um, and. I'm sure there's always more that could be done in this space. And as we go through this year, we'll continue our efforts on education as to how we can assist customers more and more. 


And I think there's a, there's a wider education that I think, you know, OEMs are starting to do more of. I think we're seeing other bodies, uh, kind of appear and other organizations appear where their focus is on that kind of communication and that information. There's so much, right. I. If I wanna, you know, it's only a couple of years ago I had my first EV proper to actually live with. 


And there are all these things that you suddenly think, well how do I do this? And, you know, the first time I cha I plugged in on my home charger overnight when I'd set my tariff to kick in at midnight. It's like, well, should I wait up and make sure it starts? And, you know, after a while these things, you become very safe and you trust, you just plug it in and walk away. 


So it is a big part of, um, of what's happening in that education broadly. And there's so many, there's so many topics to that. I think, you know, just the educational way charging is, I mean, I think, you know, you'll, you'll hear it more than me, Gary, but you know, this, you know, there aren't enough charges. You know, is is something we hear, um, we hear frequently and that's why we use the Zap map tools to kind of go, well, yes, here they are. 


Here's the type of charges you need for your vehicle. Our entire fleet is. CS So it's, it's kind of easier, we don't have any Chad Mo in there to, to sort of perhaps slightly complicate the life of our rental agents so they can be at least, uh, consistent in what they're, in, what they're saying. But I, I think as an industry, that education piece is still so essential. 


I, I believe will be for, for a number of years, um, that we get that right and we we're doing, uh, we're doing what we can and we'll continue to do that. We'll continue to expand that EV guide, which for anyone listening who wants to find it is a electric Europcar co uk and they're welcome to, to go and check out the information that's on there. 


Gary: I'll put that link in the, uh, show notes as well so that people can, they cut it and go straight out. So, I mean, you and I know that the thing that trips up most people when it comes to electric vehicles is getting is, is the charging aspect of it. And we've talked about the education, that's fine. But when somebody. 


Picks up your vehicles uses Zap Map goes to a charger that they're at a, an Osprey charger or a an I Vault charger. Are you providing any means of helping them start and stop the Chargers? Are you providing, uh, RFID cards or are you expecting them to be paying for that with contactless, for example? 


Tom: Not yet, I suppose is probably the answer to you there, Gary. 


It's something we've been looking at for a while as to whether that is the right, um, support to give to a customer and whether that's something that they want from us. So at the moment we are providing them with the information to find the charging and not a solution necessarily to pay for it. It's something we are exploring. 


It's something that's important for rental, particularly for rental, where you have a, a reasonable base of international. Customers who are coming in, because particularly if you find a charger where perhaps you need an app or something of that nature to, to start that charge, that can become troublesome if your app store is, you know, the US and, and you need to download something that's only on the UK app store. 


So we're working through the best ways to, to find solutions for that. We focused for the moment on Zap Map because it gives. The information on all of the charging, but we are looking to see what would be the right, um, experience in the future for our customers. We have done some, uh, trials of this in Europe, so there are some relationships in in Europe, which we have, where there are charge folks given. 


To customers to use. And, uh, I think in Europe the, the roaming landscape for sort of charging is, is a little, uh, more friendly than perhaps it is in the uk. And I think all the CPOs perhaps play a little nicer and you'll, you'll be more informed on that topic than me. But I think they play a little nicer together so it makes roaming a bit easier. 


So what we're trying to balance is. Customers, the vast information which is available and how much charging there is and how many places they could go. And providing them with a tool to perhaps facilitate paying for that charging, that may limit the number of those charges, which they can use. And we're working to, to, to establish what's the right balance there and how that works. 


So I would hope that during, uh, this year and hopefully the early part of this year, there'll be some, uh, there'll be some development on that. We'll, which will, uh, will. 


Gary: Well, of course as Zap Map sponsor this podcast, I'd have to put my hand up and go, well, you know they've got Zap-Pay in there. Is that something you're considering? 


Tom: We're speaking to a number of paths. I've gone to corporate now, haven't I, Gary, because that's, uh, that's one of those questions. Yes, we're talking to a number of people about what that solution could be. And uh, yeah, as I say, I think we'll, we'll have something. Integration of systems is always the thing that in the corporate world makes these things stumble and trip a little bit, and that's probably the stage we are at where we're just working out how we make these two things work together. 


But there are case examples of this in, in. Take, um, you know, a lot of the time in Europe where there are. Toll roads where you sort of pay you, you know, you can't sort of stop and pay with cash and it's gotta be something that's paid via the car. So we have solutions that exist in the world where we can take that charge that you've incurred during your rental and pass it onto at the end. 


So there are, there are options to explore something similar, um, for charging if we think that's the right experience for customer to have hiring. That's, it's another barrier. 


We're not creating more question marks around it, but, uh, we, we believe there's a way through that, or I do anyway. And, uh, we'll, uh, we'll develop something soon, 


Gary: I'm sure. Let's talk statistics. We've got some data for me. How many EVs are in your fleet? Currently? 


Tom: A little over 5,000 bev and FEV vehicles on the fleet. 


ow, it's, it's in the sort of: 2000

So from the smaller uh, vehicles up to the more premium. 


Gary: Well, the other question then would be, how many people who've hired an electric vehicle from you come back and hire another one? Do you have that sort of information? 


Tom: Yeah, so what we monitor there, sometimes it's difficult because of the way we, uh, operate, um, about 50%, a little more actually of our businesses is in the corporate sector. 


So it's not always the tracking of the individual driver, but the company which we see. But the, the one piece of information I can share there is that we see the, the NPS, so the server, the customer service. Scoring that we do after a rental, and we see that consistently higher for a customer who has booked and rented an electric vehicle, we see that score of their experience of their whole rental as higher than we see in their ice equivalent. 


So what we do know is that those customers who are choosing EV are enjoying that experience at a greater level than customers who are choosing ice. Been. 


Gary: Of the decision by one of your major competitors, Hertz, to cut back on their fleet of electric vehicles, specifically in the us. They've ended up selling on a lot of their Teslas, although they haven't got rid of all of them. 


What is it that Europcar are doing differently to Hertz? That means they're that you are not having to sell, sell off your electric vehicle. 


Tom: This is a transition and in the of Hertz and every other rental company because. Almost a world that we're kind of in it together a little bit, that this is a transition, which we're all going through, and some of it, some of it we're choosing to do and some of it is being mandated and forced upon us through ZEV mandate. 


And the other things, I think what Europcar is doing is we are matching our growth of battery electric vehicles to the levels. 


So. 


Predict what they're going to want in the future, you know? So we we're seeing quite a lot of, um, activity at the moment in the insurance accident replacement space. So we can start to take some benchmarks from, from the, the wider space in terms of, okay, well this is the growth of the number of electric vehicles in the UK car park. 


Therefore that's the sort of trajectory we'll on. And this mandate does a think we've taken an approach because of that, not making one leap. With one OEM. So we've been careful to bring in a mix of different things and that aligns with what we do with our, with our ice fleet too. So we haven't gone, uh, full on with one manufacturer over the other, and I won't go into too much detail on this, but different rental companies acquire and deal with the end of their fleet in different ways. 


Some rental companies will acquire and. And then sort of ride the wave on what the residual value is at the end. Sometimes that can work out and reward you very handsomely, and other times things can change. And, uh, Tesla's a, a very big example of that, where the residual value got quite difficult and, and that was what it impacted, um, impacted the guys that, uh, Hertz, I think we have been a little more working with the OEMs on, uh, deals where we. 


What the end of the life of that vehicle's gonna be. We've also worked in ways to, um, to not necessarily hold onto those vehicles for too long a period of time because the technology and everything is moving so quickly that if you hold onto these vehicles for a prolonged period of time, you are more likely to run the risk of. 


And the, and the difficulties which come with that. So I think it's all to do with how, how we acquire. And I think, you know, at the moment there is no right and wrong. And I think, you know, the example in the US was, was pretty extreme and therefore made the news and we all saw it. And I think it became that way because of the, the volume of vehicles that were involved for. 


Gary: For a company that has no PR department, they sure do, do get a lot of publicity, don't they? 


Tom: Oh yeah. Even more at the moment. Right. 


Gary: Well, yeah. Moving on. In terms of the length of time that you will keep specifically in an electric vehicle, is that mandated by the number of miles that it does or do you keep them for a specific time regardless of what mileage they've done? 


Tom: Again, it comes back to, depending on quite what that agreement we've done with the, the manufacturers, but we tend to keep them for less than 12 months. Which is a little shorter period of time than we would keep an ice vehicle. But even then, that's not much longer. And that really works. That principle of, you know, customers want a newer vehicle when they're renting. 


That's the experience that people want. And that's, you know, Europcar is a, a fairly premium brand in the rental space. So that's the experience which we want our customers to. Or a number of miles, whichever comes first. 


Gary: Uh, I wanna start wrapping up now, and, and the big question I wanna ask you is, is there anything that you want listeners to know about your car and the ev rental offering that we haven't yet discussed? 


Tom: Yeah, so I think, you know, my, my big stance on all of this is that we are here to help individuals or businesses to make this choice. Personally, I feel that we've, you know, along the way of all this, talking about ev sometimes we forget some of the reasons why we're doing this, and we're often looking for, oh, what's the government incentive and what are these other things, rather than necessarily what the reason is for doing it. 


So it's, it's an opportunity for people to just make a start. Rental is a flexible way. To do this in a way that leasing or buying a vehicle can't be, you know, if you're purchasing a vehicle, you are very exposed to those risks. If you're leasing a vehicle you are in for three, four years, rental gives you that ability to, um, to, to come in and to try this. 


If you're an individual and you've never driven an electric vehicle before, if you are lucky a test drive from a manufacturer. I mean, they're probably in the hours, but if you're lucky, you might get a weekend. We've seen those around before. You know if you're lucky you're gonna do that. Does that really help you understand what living with an electric vehicle is like? 


to: 2035

But it can enable you to start to transition into this technology. Get your drivers behind the wheel of electric vehicle so that you can learn, does this work? You can test it in different parts of the country, in different areas, on different types of jobs, on different routes. Does this work? Does this work? 


And as the charging infrastructure continues to improve, you can really learn and understand that. But all the while you've got the sort of safety rip call that you can pull that says, actually, this really isn't working in. Scenario X, but it's working really well in scenario Y. So can I move that electric vehicle over there and actually, can I get at least a modern ice vehicle over here? 


No one's saying, you know, if you're a business, no one's saying a hundred percent of your fleet must be electric Now. I would make a start. You know, you're looking at the next five years, it's gonna be a very different picture to what the fleet landscape looks like, and there's an opportunity now to just make a start, move a couple, move five, move 10, move 50, depending on the size of your fleet. 


And if you're an individual, you know, if you're traveling somewhere, you're going on holiday, traveling domestically in the uk it's a way of getting into another vehicle and giving it a try without of the baggage. As you say, Gary, we all have this experience. We've all heard it from people. Once people have done this and once they're in and they've experienced how much a nicer place being in an electric vehicle is, we know then that they'll be on the right path. 


And that's something I'm proud at Europcar to be sitting there thinking. We may be helping people experience these electric vehicles. They may then go home and they may lease or they may buy one, but we played a very big part in that wider transition that's happening of us all moving to this, uh, cleaner future of, um, zero tailpipe emissions from these vehicles. 


wo together, it means that by: 2030

He also made an excellent comment about residual values. Europcar is striking, deals with OEMs to determine how long they'll keep the vehicles in a fleet, and they're using that as a way of managing residuals, which was the issue that Hertz had. They bought a huge number of Teslas and ended up losing money after Tesla reduced the price of the new cars. 


This is how Europcar are managing the issue of residuals. Get 'em new from the manufacturer. Keep them from a relatively short length of time, 12 months of fewer, put them back into the used car market without getting the huge residual hit. I'll also link in the show notes the electric vehicle training resource that Tom mentioned in his discussion. 


As he said, it's all freely available to. Have any of you had experiences with either short or medium term EV rentals? How did that go for you? Let me know info@evmusings.com. It's time for a cool Leave your renewable thing to share with your listeners. Nottingham City Transporters receive new electric buses with 24 more set to be introduced in the coming months. 


These buses will operate on Greenline routes, 5, 7, 8, and nine in West Bridgeford, helping to improve public transport. Nottingham City Transport states a range of two 50 to two 70 miles for the buses, which is enough to cover. A full day of service and the buses are then charged overnight at the Trent Bridge Garage. 


The project costs 32.2 million, partly funded by the government. Zero emission bus. Regional areas fund zero emission public transport for the win. 


I hope you enjoyed listening to today's show. It was put together this week with the help of Richard Devitt from Zimbl and Tom Middleditch from Europcar. Many thanks to them for their time. If you have any thoughts, comments, criticisms, or other general messages to pass on to me, I can be reached at info@emusings.com. 


I'm on the socials on Blue Sky at EV musings B Sky Social. I'm also on Instagram at EV musings, where I post short videos and podcast extracts regularly. Follow me there. Thanks to everyone who supports me through Pat on monthly. 


Now, if you enjoyed this episode, why don't buy me a coffee? Go to coffee.com/ev musings, and you can do just that. Ko fi.com/ev. Musings takes Apple Pay too. Regular listeners will know about my two eBooks, so you've got electric, and so you've got renewable, the 99 P each or equivalent, and you can get them on Amazon. 


Check out the links in the show notes for more information as well as a link to my regular EVs newsletter. And associated articles. Now, I know you're probably driving or walking or jogging now as you listen to this, if you could remember and you enjoyed this episode. Proper review in iTunes please, really helps me out. 


IIf you’ve reached this part of the podcast and are still listening - thank you. Why not let me know you’ve got to this point by messaging me @musingsev.bsky.social with the words [Is it rental or hire? #ifyouknowyouknow] Nothing else.

Thanks as always to my co founder Simone. You know I asked him if he's thinking of getting sponsorship for his channel, perhaps an electric unicycle manufacturere, or someone in the protective gear field, you know elbow pads, helmets etc.

Tom: I've got 'em corporate now, haven't I, Gary? 'cause that's, uh, that's one of those questions. 


Gary: Thanks for listening.Bye.