Zipcar likes to promote itself as an environmentally responsible company, and prominently hypes the green benefits of participating in Zipcar on its website. I agree, and if every city in the country had Zipcar, America would have much less dependence on foreign oil, with all the geopolitical ramifications that implies. If Zipcar wants to go further along those lines, though, they should encourage use of hybrid cars by reducing or eliminating the mileage fees for users of the Prius.

Ostensibly, the mileage fees on the cars pay for your gas. They usually don't make much of a difference, because the fees don't even kick in unless you travel over 120 miles/day. If I'm just driving around town, to Stop & Shop and Target, my gas is free. But if I want to drive upstate for the weekend to go skiing, the mileage fees kick in. It usually works out to be about a wash -- the extra mileage fees you pay are probably about what you would pay for a tank of gas on your long trip. In fact, the extra fees on long trips subisidize the free gas you use on short trips. So the extra mileage fees aren't really a problem for me, and they still make Zipcar a better deal than renting from Hertz or Enterprise.

Without a fee break for hybrid cars, though, there is actually a disincentive to take a hybrid car on a long trip. You're paying for gas that you aren't using. You're paying for other people's gas. So while we should be encouraging people to drive hybrids as much as possible, Zipcar members are penalized for doing so. Everyone agrees that it's more "geo-friendly" to take a hybrid on a 400-mile round trip from NY to Boston, but since you're paying the same for gas as everyone else, it makes no economic sense.

So, it's my humble suggestion that Zipcar get some people to crunch some numbers, and figure out a way to make it a better deal for people to drive hybrids.

-- Anonymous, February 17, 2005

Answers

Dear Kevin I do agree with you on this matter becouse, time to time I am driving to Tampa, Florida and it about 2k miles using Enteprise car if they slash fees on hybrid cars or any car in their fleet it will great.

-- Anonymous, February 17, 2005

I agree whole heartedly that Zipcar should logically charge less per mile for its hybrids, but it may be a smaller decrease than you would think. Although Hybrids get astounding efficiency in city driving, which is what Zipcars are intended for and do a lot of the time, they also have batteries that need replacing every several years, and so that bumps up the cost per mile considerably. They still end up costing less and polluting less, but the difference isn't as great as most people assume.

-- Anonymous, March 15, 2005