Hertz has jumped on the enviro-bandwagon. Their new Green Collection consists of cars with "EPA Highway Fuel Efficiency rating of 28 Miles or more per gallon." There are currently six cars in the Green Collection, each reservable by name: Toyota Prius and Camry, Ford Fusion, Buick LaCrosse, Subaru Outback and Hyundai Sonata. Interestingly, other cars in Hertz' fleet that meet their arbitrary mileage criteria (e.g. the Toyota Corolla and Hyundai Accent) aren't invited to the party. The TV ad bragging about their environmental friendliness only mentions the Prius– to the point where you've got to wonder if Toyota co-sponsored the come-on. Of course, the green-washing fails to mention that the rental car company's fleet also includes gas guzzlers that go by the name of Hummer H2 and H3, Cadillac Escalade, Lincoln Navigator and Town Car, Ford Shelby GTH, GMC Yukon and Chevrolet Corvette. Now that would be an inconvenient ad.
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I’d love to get a breakdown by numbers of how many times the Prius was requested versus all of the other cars in this ‘green’ fleet.
It seems to me that there are wide regional differences in car availability with the big rental agencies.
On a recent trip to oakland, i was shocked when Avis gave me a Prius — one of their ‘regular’ compact cars apparently at this location. There were at least 10 of them in the lot at the time.
Nice car, held all my crap and returned 48 mpg.
Contrast this with my trip to New Mexico, where Avis tried to stick me with the biggest Ford pickup i’d ever seen. One of 5 on the lot. I demurred, and got a Cobalt for my troubles :(
Pure unadulterated propaganda.
But no doubt good enough fodder to fool many of those who wrote to Tom Flyer.
Hertz is smart… ride the green marketing bandwagon. In Reality, Hertz is only as green as their fleet mpg average is, which is probably about as green as the color of smog…. or Toyota.
Great timing for this article at least on this end. I do my renting from Hertz so when I was looking to put the 1100+ miles on someone else’s vehicle this past New Years weekend, they got the call. Through my past rental record, memberships, and asking very nicely, I got a 2008 Prius with 3500 miles on it for the same price as a “standard” Corolla-sized rental. It didn’t have factory or Hertz GPS installed but otherwise it was nicely equipped. (Stinking “smart key” system never worked even after RTFM, reset the switch buried under the steering wheel column and doing everything but spraying holy water on the fob.) The Prius wasn’t a bad car, but it flat out hates mountains as my forward motion and ear drums were tested on a regular basis on the WV Tollroad’s many climbs. (44mpg to NC, 41mpg back home in a partial snowstorm.)
I still want to know how their Subaru Outback fits in their “Green Collection” – they get OK mileage but not “green” mileage.
The Hertz collections aren’t filled with gross polluters as they don’t have numerous Hummer and hulking-SUVs as part of their collections. Many of their premium collections are filled with cars we discuss that normally aren’t in fleets – G35, MX-5 Miata, Volvo S80/XC70/XC90, and the dreaded Crossfire. While my closest airport isn’t a Hertz “premium” rental site like LAX, JFK, Vegas and so on, it is busy enough to get a near contant stream of their collections cars including one of the Hertz Mustangs that I had out several months ago.
I’ve only seen one Hummer H2 at the airport location and the clerk behind the counter was all but begging me to take it for a huge discount. I declined since many highway miles lay ahead and snagged the keys to an S80 that was worth the money. I can’t imagine employee reimbursement paying people back for the miles put on an H2!
I’ve seen quite a few Prius rentals at various rental sites and think this is a good thing. When a small family is buried somewhere in Orlando, what are they doing? 2-burned out adults in the front. 2 screeching mouse-deprived kids in the back. Luggage under the hatch…and they are sitting and rotting on the I-4. Let that engine shut off and save some gas money for the overpriced everything down the freeway.
In what universe does an Outback get 28mpg? Or are they playing bait-and-switch by using only the highway MPG and not the combined MPG?
FWIW I got about 29 a couple of times on my 99 Outback/automatic, but that was under very ideal circumstances: Going slightly downhill in the Rocky Mountain West, CC set at about 60 and in no hurry to get anywhere. City MPG was much closer to 22-23 max.
The Buick Lacrosse?
The Hyundai Sonata?
Aw, give me a break!
Actually, I think Hertz’s “Green Collection” concept has been out for a while.
If my recollection serves, it used to only include high-MPG subcompacts and hybrids (e.g. Prius, Toyota Camry Hybrid, Ford Escape Hybrid, etc.).
Apparently, that was not attracting enough customers so they just redefined what ‘Green’ is.
The 28 mpg figure is probably because, more or less, “28 is the new 30.” Since the EPA ratings were all lowered for 2008 MY vehicles, it seems as if most lost about 2 mpg. I noticed that the other week, Chrysler trumpeted that it had “x models that achieved 28 mpg,” in contrast with GM’s claim last year that they had x models that reached 30 mpg.
There will be a backlash in the green movement after it becomes clear that many of the companies claiming to be green are in fact nothing of the sort. Businesses that proclaim they are “carbon neutral” will find that such proclamations no longer carry much weight among far more skeptical media and consumers.
Business Week
http://tinyurl.com/3x3d9y
Reminds me of “user-friendly.”
I’m guessing that the Outback is “green” insofar as it is probably among the mileage leaders for all wheel drive vehicles with some carrying capacity. In other words, it isn’t green, but greener than most comparable alternatives.
I think we’ll just keep our ’07 PZEV Focus, thank you.
Um….yeah…I’ll take a Town Car now please….