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Enterprise Will Be Your First Shot at Scoring a Chevy Volt Rental Car

If you’re dreaming of going green with your next car rental you might get your wish by the end of the month. Keys to the Chevrolet Volt are just beginning to fall into the hands of drivers across the country, and that means that rental car companies are also getting to spend some time behind the wheel.

Enterprise Rent-A-Car is putting out the claim that they’re going to be the first to offer the Volt as a daily and weekly rental car before February rolls around. Just don’t expect be able to pick one up at your neighborhood airport or rental office, as it looks like the very first Volts will be arriving at Enterprise's Mark Christopher Auto Center in Ontario, California. It sounds like they’re already hard at work installing the new charging stations, so reserve your spot in line now!

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Electric Cars Are Coming To An Enterprise Rent-A-Car Near You

Car rental companies have been promising the electric slide at the rental car aisle for many months now, and now it looks like another vehicle will be making an appearance next year. Enterprise is teaming up with CODA Automotive to put about 100 of the all-electric automobiles into the hands of everyone from the crunchy-granola-type to those in business suits.

These new cars might not have the same brand recognition of the forthcoming Nissan Leaf or Chevrolet Volt, but they definitely know how to do their thing for quite a bit of time without a need to swing by the pumps. Full charges usually take around six hours, but if you’re short on time, just two hours on the charger will result in a 40-mile range.

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Green Travel / Road Trips / Cars / Nissan LEAF / Travel News / Electric Cars / → All Tags

Can Road Trippers Embrace Nissan's New 100% Electric LEAF?

Another day, another sleek electric car with a futuristic design and eye-popping mileage. This time it's Nissan unveiling their slick new, purely electric LEAF. 100 miles on a single charge and a mere 30 minutes to recharge via a specialized charging station. No hybrid engine so zero emissions. Who wouldn't want to get in on some of this environmental goodness?

For starters, anyone who uses their car for road trips. The Midwest isn't exactly a forest of recharging stations, and even electric cars stop moving when they run out of juice. It takes 16 hours to recharge the LEAF on a standard household plug away from home. It's simply impossible for environmentally-conscious road trippers to go greener than hybrids.

The way we travel was different a few years back, before the recession; people drove their cars inside cities and took airplanes when they wanted to leave. The recession has however caused more and more Americans to choose the road over the friendly skies. The traditional response from pure electric advocates — "how many road trips do people really go on after they get out of college?" — just doesn't work any more.

This unfortunately means there's a tradeoff between the tangible environmental benefits of going totally electric now and the medium-term benefits of having a robust hybrid market.

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Electric Cars / Electric Car Tours / Ecotourism / Velib Bikes / → All Tags

Paris, Australia Plan Velib-syle Public Electric Car Networks

Electric cars seem like a great idea, but its hard to believe they'll ever really catch on with the driving public without some serious incentives. Officials in France and Australia, however, think they have it figured out: they plan to launch low-priced electric car sharing networks modeled after the wildly successful bike-sharing program Velib. Autolib will station 4,000 battery-powered electric cars in and around Paris, with users paying a monthly membership fee of between 20 and 30 euros and rental fees of between four to five euros per hour for the cars. To go along with the rollout, the city plans to install 1,400 electric charging stations, so you'll never be far from the juice you need to keep going. (After all, electric cars can only operate for an hour or two before they bonk.) A similar effort is going on in Australia, where an outfit called Better Place is working with a Renault-Nissan alliance to introduce electric cars, charging spots, battery exchanges, and renewable energy technology to the good people Down Under. When will all of this be completed? It depends on who you ask. French officials claim their system will be up by 2010 and the Aussies are predicting a 2012 launch, but it's doubtful that automakers will have fleets of acceptable vehicles ready in that time frame. But in any case, it's nice to see zero-emission vehicles get a little encouragement, and we look forward to zipping around Paris or Perth in a snazzy electric car.

[Photo: EV World]

Related Stories:
· Autolib, Paris's Public Electric Car Service [concierge.com]
· Electric Car Network Down Under [psfk.com]
· Better Place [Official Site]
· Electric Car Tours [Jaunted]