Car Rentals Becoming Contactless, Connected, Convenient

As Americans begin to travel this summer — perhaps for the first time in two years — they may find that, in some cases, renting a car is a new experience.

Car rental companies are developing or rolling out contactless experiences, where everything from choosing the car to unlocking it and driving off is done through an app. Beyond that, a growing number of rental cars are going to be connected and electric.

Expediting, Automating Completion of Car Rentals

Avis Budget Group is expanding its completely contactless Avis QuickPass offering, which is available at a growing number of airports to members of its Avis Preferred loyalty program.

“Due to strong consumer feedback and efficiencies we’ve seen in our workflow, we are dedicating additional resources to expand our Avis QuickPass offering,” Avis Budget Group president and CEO Joe Ferraro said May 3 during the company’s quarterly earnings call.

Customers can open the Avis app when they arrive at the airport, choose a vehicle before they get to the lot, proceed directly to the lot, locate the car in the lot, open a personal QR code in the app and scan it to open the Avis facility’s automated exit gate and drive off.

“Additionally, upon vehicle return, customers can close out their rental themselves, enabled by our connected car technology for an expedited and automated completion of their rental,” Ferraro said during the call.

Avis Budget aims to have QuickPass deployed at the majority of its key airports by the summer travel season.

Taking the Hassle Out

Hertz, similarly, is “reimagining” its app and has pilot programs currently underway to field test touchless exit gate and rental experiences.

“As we enter the summer peak season, we have already initiated enhancements to the customer experience,” Hertz Global Holdings CEO Stephen Scherr said April 27 during the company’s quarterly earnings call. “Our objective is to provide customers with a seamless digital experience every step of the way — in short, to take the hassle out of renting a car.”

The company will also be enhancing other parts of its digital operations. It is collaborating with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to modernize and digitize the Hertz customer experience, with Oracle to upgrade Hertz’s back-office systems and Stripe to improve Hertz’s payment systems.

“These initiatives will improve the efficiency and integrity of our operations and equip us with the tools to improve customer experience,” Scherr said.

Accelerating the Adoption of Electrification

In addition, a growing number of the vehicles available from Hertz will be electric. The company is now renting Teslas in 20 markets and expects to do so in 40 markets by the end of the year.

Hertz also announced a five-year partnership with Polestar that will bring 65,000 Polestar 2 electric vehicles into the fleet.

“We continue to talk to multiple EV manufacturers to accelerate the adoption of electrification of our fleet while promoting a lower carbon footprint,” Scherr said. “I would like to see more than 30% of our fleet being electric by the end of 2024.”

Between now and then, at an accelerating pace, the car rental experience will be changing — becoming increasingly electric, contactless, connected and convenient.