At the Everly Inn in Prince Edward County, Ont., summer brings brisk demand for taxis to drive guests back and forth on Loyalist Parkway to one of the nearby wineries or downtown Picton bars and restaurants. This year, however, the cabbies are missing, largely the result of high gas prices eating into profit margins. And so, in May, the three-suite bed and breakfast, which focuses its business on sustainability, launched an EV car service to shuttle the inn’s guests.
The service could not have come at a more opportune time for the Inn as the travel industry tries to recover from the pandemic. Ride-share services are short staffed, airlines are cancelling flights and rental cars are sold out. If you manage to reach your destination, you might not get to explore your surroundings.
Rental agencies had to “de-fleet” during the pandemic’s travel shutdowns, and are now struggling to “re-fleet,” or buy new cars, amid a supply-chain shortage. EV owners are taking advantage of the rental-car shortage by listing their vehicles as rentals. The Car-sharing platform Turo said searches in Canada for EVs are up eightfold this year as vacationers try to dodge high gas prices.
“Hosts have been able to jump in and save summer vacation plans for a lot of Canadians and international travellers,” said Bassem El-Rahimy, senior director and head of marketing in Canada for Turo.
This re-fleeting could be an opportunity to electrify the rental market. Turo Canada recently found in a survey that 66 per cent of respondents would be more likely to buy an EV if they had the opportunity to drive one for a few days to a week, making rentals an untapped marketing tool for EV makers.
This could also pose new challenges, said Rob Minton, associate vice-president of connected car business development at Ontario fleet-technology company Geotab. Rental agencies must install chargers and take on re-fuelling responsibilities that are usually handled by renters for gas-powered vehicles. They also compete with consumers to buy the few EVs that are available, and staff need to be trained to coach drivers who are unfamiliar with EV ranges and don’t know the charging options in the area.
“Given the level of electric vehicles that are in rental fleets today, the ROI is probably not there yet,” said Minton, especially for small agencies to install chargers. “If you believe that EVs are the future, as a rental-car company, then you’ve just got to make that leap of faith.”
Rental companies are instead taking more creative approaches to buying EVs. Hertz recently said it would acquire a fleet of Tesla vehicles, dedicating some to Uber drivers. Minton said these types of deals can extend the life of rental cars until new models are available, since long-term renters, like ride-sharing drivers, are less picky about getting new models.
At the Everly Inn, the original plan was to drive guests on evenings and weekends in the innkeepers’ own Tesla, but then requests came in from other local businesses for the service.
“The response for that was just bonkers,” said Mark Pavlidis, co-proprieter of Everly Inn. “We did try to do it lowkey to start, just kind of doing this on the side. But already, we’re getting calls from people that we had no contact with that have been sharing it.”
The Everly Car Service now has a dedicated section on the company website and is considering buying another Tesla and hiring additional staff to operate the fleet.
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