It’s probably due to corporate travel policy on rental car. Most of the time it’s limited to certain class of vehicles, and it’s a hassle to upgrade depending on the company policy (screen capture price comparisons, director/VP approval, etc.)
Because most rental cars suck, and if you want an actual good one for a week or more they charge a fortune. And sometimes when you show up at the rental car agency the specific model you reserved isn't even available.
It's not so much dislike at rental cars--I rent them regularly when I fly someplace--it's that they're a hassle. In my largely Uber and Lyft-less area, there are a couple of rental car places that are only open during regular business hours. So renting a car for the weekend (very possibly a time when others are renting as well) would involve taking a taxi there before they close on Friday and dropping it off on Monday morning. That's a huge hassle for something I do at least every month so it's not a vision; it's something that I do on a regular basis.
Why couldn't companies that actually produce cars just rent them out? I'd really like to have a mono-brand short-term rentals, but they just don't exist. Why is the case different for taxis?
Why would car rental companies (or airlines, or hotels, or anyone else in the travel business who noticed this particular quirk of how businesses conduct travel) want to discourage this? It doesn't help them at all to make this change, and would likely seriously hurt them.
To the extent that that's cheap, you'll see the utilization of the rental cars go down. To the extent that it's not cheap, why are people using this service?
There is some kind of happy-ish medium there, but it's another chip away at the claims of the omnipresence of rides-for-hire.
Taxi company that isn't a taxi company. Hotel company that isn't a hotel company. And now, car rental company that isn't a car rental company. And, as always, all the regulations are somehow bad.
The PR person compares this to lead paint certification, but I'd argue that the bulk rented apartments need that too. Instead they're fighting sales tax on the rentals. Besides this, cars are far more dangerous to others when maintenance gets lax.
Maybe someone needs to do to rental cars what Uber did to Taxis.
If I could order one on my phone, have it be ready or turn up, and avoid all of that complexity over insurances and tolls then I would probably sell my own car and use that.
I’m sure the rental companies have some digital stuff, but I generally associate rental cars with queuing at an Avis counter for an hour after a long flight, lots of paperwork and getting hit with fees etc. For exactly this reason I tend to stick with Uber on business trips over rental cars.
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