Electric Ride for Rent

Enter ignition code. Hit the “run” button. Ping.

“Wow, that’s cool,” says Denise Kimes, who has just started a strawberry-red, electric sports car at Los Angeles International Airport without a key or any noise or sputter of exhaust.

In a minute, Kimes will drive away from EV Rental Cars, the first and only company in the U.S. to rent electric cars to the public, says EV Rental Cars spokesman Terry O’Day.

Later this year, the company will expand to seven California cities at locations run by its partner, Budget Rentals. (In Los Angeles County, the electric cars will be available in Beverly Hills and Burbank.) Another partner, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, will provide an electric shuttle bus to take passengers to and from LAX terminals.

Kimes signed up for the EV1 on a whim, after finding that Budget had no other reasonably priced cars for rent. (The white Jaguar XK8 was up for grabs but cost $350 a day.) The agency’s electric cars are available for $49 to $64 a day, with no refueling charges. The usual rate for Budget’s mid-size cars is $45 to $75 a day, plus gas. About 1% of Budget’s weekly rentals at LAX are electric cars, the company says.

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In the parking lot, Joseph Borges Jr., EV Rental Cars’ manager of operations, gives Kimes a five-minute orientation. He is used to drivers’ worries that the electric cars are nothing more than souped-up golf carts. The EV1 has a top speed of 80 mph, includes dual air bags and meets the same federal safety standards as other cars, he tells them.

The EV1--actor Ed Begley Jr. and ex-Secretary of State George P. Shultz own this model--will go from zero to 60 mph in less than nine seconds (about six seconds faster than the Ford Escort rental parked nearby). The car can also go 40 to 50 miles on a single battery charge, but routes must be planned in advance because recharging takes several hours. Borges gives customers a map of more than 300 free charging stations in Southern California (they’re located at malls, banks, museums and hotels) and his cell phone number for emergencies.

Kimes, a marketing representative from Sacramento, double-checks that she’ll be able to make a 22-mile, round-trip drive without recharging.

“I’m totally cool, right?” she asks.

“Totally cool,” Borges assures her.

EV Rental President Jeffrey Pink, a Los Angeles real estate developer, opened the LAX office in December 1998. Pink, a father of two toddlers, got the idea for the company after flying into a blanket of fog over Los Angeles one day, O’Day says.

“He just wanted to do something to affect their health and environment,” O’Day says.

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The goal, he says, is to try to boost the electric car market by giving drivers a chance to try an electric car without leasing one. Meanwhile, the company is doing its part to reduce smog. If its customers to date had rented gas-fueled cars instead, EV Rental estimates that more than 1 ton of pollutants would have been discharged. (In the South Coast Air Quality Management District, which covers Los Angeles County and three others, vehicles discharge about 3,800 tons of pollutants daily, an AQMD spokesman said.)

In April, the AQMD and the California Air Resources Board awarded EV Rental a grant of$400,000 in cash and contributions to expand the company’s operations.

“We consider this kind of a cause for capitalism,” O’Day says, “using the tools of business to promote a social cause.”

EV Rental Cars can be reached at (877) EV-RENTAL.