renting a Toyota Prius (on vacation or business)?

Hello everyone,

it would be wonderful to be able to rent a hybrid car as a rental car.

Unfortunately, hybrid cars are disappearing more and more from US rental fleets.

The rental company renting out most hybrids was Hertz. Two years ago, it was no problem to get a Toyota Prius in Chicago, Orlando, Miami, Seattle or Portland.

Today, for Hertz Orlando and Miami the website states "car group is not available" anymore. Toyota Prius in Seattle and Chicago is "sold out for these dates". That seems to apply to every single day of the year though. For Portland, it says one should call the Portland Hertz station directly.

With most of the other car rental companies (Avis, Budget, Enterprise), already in the past it was really difficult to book a hybrid.

The only happy news is that Sixt in Miami added the Prius to their fleet in late 2011, but I wonder if they only added one single vehicle. For most of the time I tried to book it, it wasn't available.

It would be great, if there was a website that helped booking hybrids.

For example in San Francisco, Toyota Priuses are still available on Hertz.
But one finds that out, only by looking at Hertz.com.

There was a link in an old thread here on the forum, about renting a Prius from a dealership instead of a rental car company. I can't post any links as I'm a new member, the thread was called "Where to Rent a Prius" and was started 16th of June, 2006.

Does this still work?
The link provided in that thread just leads to an error message now.
Are there any Toyota dealerships renting Prius cars close to the Chicago or Seattle airport?

Any information would be highly appreciated.

Hopefully some day, more hybrids or electric cars will get into US rental fleets, so that rental car travellers can also try to keep their impact on nature as little as possible.

Best regards,
rentalcardriver

 

Thank you CycleDrum.
Thank you JimboPalmer.

That's very informative as a reply.

I still have to get used to this renting from a dealership idea.

I realize that it actually is a little bit more complicated.
Because one has to:
- first get to the dealership, which is more complicated as they are not located inside of or close to major transit hubs
- deal with the dealership opening times, so limited in early morning or late evening on weekdays
- deal with dealership being closed on Sundays
- look at the individual dealership website, to find out if they rent cars, and if they do, which ones.
Finally, if I get it right, one has to make the reservation by phone?
No internet booking possible, as far as I saw, which also seems more complicated.

Continental Toyota in Chicago has the Prius listed as rental, for 42.99$ a day.
But the Elmhurst Toyota f.e., only lists Yaris, Corolla, Camry, Sienna. So it seems like there's no Prius at that location!

Plus, I wonder how the rental procedure is. Do the dealerships have a dedicated rental counter? Or does one have to wait between crowds of other people having their cars serviced?

How strict are the dealerships, when it comes to returning the car (inside of car might be not so clean anymore, or there might be a scratch on the outside of the car)? Traditional car rental companies don't care if the inside got dirty after renting the car for 2 weeks, or if it's only a small scratch on the outside it's no problem either.

I guess, in the end, one probably has to try that "rent a car from the dealership" out oneself, to get an impression.

Thank you again for your responses.
Have a good Sunday!
rentaldriver