Wednesday, August 15, 2012

We rented our first vehicle since getting the ActiveE

The ActiveE as our only car has been working out great. After 14k miles of driving all electric, we just rented our first car since getting the ActiveE for a trip to San Francisco. A Toyota Camry was $180.00 for a week from Enterprise via Costco.com with unlimited mileage. In 5 days we drove 1001 miles.

Surprisingly after driving all those miles, we saw one Volt and that was it. Not one Nissan Leaf, ActiveE, Tesla, iMiev, or Ford Focus. We did see a Tesla charging station at Harris Ranch off I-5 headed north and two Level 2 AE chargers at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco on the first level as you enter the garage towards the very back.

We timed our service visit so our ActiveE would be in the shop while we were out of town. Glad we did, because we have a spline issue. Dealer hopes to get car back to us next week sometime.

When you run the numbers, it's a pretty amazing deal to just rent vehicles when you need to take a long trip. You don't have to worry about mechanical issues, tires, depreciation, splines (lol) or anything else.

We're rolling in a 328i for the time being and looking forward to the return of the ActiveE.

1 comment:

  1. Pretty cool Todd. Seven months and this is the first time you needed to rent a car, that's great. BMW is working on a rental service for BMW i customers which I thought was a great idea. If you buy an i3 and you have a trip that exceeds the cars range you can go to your dealer and rent a BMW for the trip. I hope they make it hassle free and you can do a quick exchange. Ideally I'd like to just drop off my i3 and drive away with the rental and when I come back my i3 is fully charged, washed and waiting for me. Also, let me pre-register for this service so they have my credit card info and drivers license on file so it doesn't take a half hour to make the exchange.

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