Thrifty Car Rental – Finding a Hybrid Rental Car Can Be Tough
Thrifty has very limited hybrid rental cars available at their airport locations. Even at San Francisco International Airport, it’s tough to find a Prius to rent from Thrity.
Thrifty Car Rental, not really one of the nation’s major rental car companies, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group, a publicly traded company. Thrifty Car Rental and Dollar Rent A Car were formed in 1990 by Chrysler itself. The company rents mostly Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep cars in the United States. A quick check on Thrifty website also indicates other cars can be rented including the MINI Cooper S, the Hummer H2, the Ford Focus and even Ford vans, but they’re highly dependent on airport rental locations.
If you’re lucky, and if Thrifty decides to offer hybrids for rent at other locations, here’s what you do. Thrifty classifies the Prius as “Compact 2-4 Door.” So you’ll need to specify this car type while checking rates and availability, otherwise you can waste a lot of time looking around and clicking on “See More Cars.”
But you’re super lucky if you land at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). This is probably the only place in the U.S. that you can find a rental hybrid.
Here are some typical rates of renting a hybrid Prius from Thrifty at LAX. As we normally do with our other hybrid rental rate surveys, we took a look at three different rental rates for hybrid cars:
- a one-day rental (pick up on Monday and return next day); pick up June 15 and return June 16, 2009.
- a weekend rental (pick up on Friday and return on Monday); pick up June 19 and return June 22, 2009.
- a one-week rental (pick up on Monday and return the following Monday.); pick up June 15 and return June 22, 2009.
Here are some results. Note that taxes, surcharges and fees are not included in these rates, which could add more than $30 per day to the base rate.
Thifty one-day rental rate. June 15-16-2009: $114.59 per day for Toyota Prius.
Thifty weekend rental rate, May 19-22-2009: Average $105.49 per day for Toyota Prius, which is $316.47 for the weekend.
Thifty one-week rental rate. May 15-22-2009: Average $80.36 per day for Toyota Prius, which is $562.52 for the week.
Have you rented a hybrid from Thrifty? Share your experience with us.
