Electrification
A Thoughtful Strategy
At Enterprise Mobility, we are exploring strategic solutions to successfully execute electrification across our fleet. As a global mobility leader, we have embraced the broader transition to electrification and are committed to doing so in a thoughtful way.
As an organization, everything we do starts with a simple but significant concept – “listening to our customers.” How we manage our electrification strategy is no different. The best path is one that maintains a long-term perspective and puts the customer at the center of everything we do along the way.
Electric Vehicles
As a mobility leader, we recognize we have a significant and unique role in building consumer awareness of EVs and reinforcing a positive experience while customers drive them, helping to promote long-term market viability. We are well-positioned to build consumer awareness and assist with understanding the technology.
Ultimately, this must be grounded in the needs of the customer; so our focus is on ensuring our customers have an exceptional experience, and providing vehicles that suit their mobility needs. Our vast vehicle rental and mobility lines offer an opportunity for market exposure, and our fleet mix will continue to evolve with and reflect the broader market. Currently, Enterprise Mobility has several thousand EVs in our global fleet with more consistently being added to select markets in the U.S., Canada and Europe.
Building Confidence
Providing EV awareness and knowledge among our team members and customers is key in creating confidence and a great experience throughout our rental and mobility services. For example:
- We’ve steadily transitioned nearly our entire global company car fleet to EVs. This is giving our team members the opportunity to experience and provide feedback on EV technology, while also helping us to better understand the overall customer experience related to charging, range and our own operational needs.
- Listening to our customers through our industry leading, customer feedback process – which is a proprietary measure that helps us to better understand customer needs and pain points, including those related to EVs.
- Focused on pairing the right vehicle with each customer by understanding their unique use case, travel requirements, preferences and concerns.
Infrastructure
We know customer satisfaction in an electric vehicle is most closely tied to charging experience while en route or at a destination. For Enterprise Mobility, only about 20 percent of our daily rental business is short distance, so the majority are covering over 90 miles, requiring an EV rental customer to access charging during their trip. That’s why availability, operability, reliability, convenience, safety and efficiency of charging options are critical for broader adoption of electrified mobility.
Even more important, we’re looking beyond how many plugs are available and working to identify power needs and access – both in our locations and the communities we serve. This includes:
- Modeling power needs for varying levels of EV penetration at our locations.
- Establishing relationships and collaborating with electric utilities.
- Collaborating to share information with utilities about power needs to support proactive investment that is prudent.
Electrification Activations
We’re working with our partners, clients and customers globally to understand their needs and put electrification programs and pilot efforts into place. This is helping to further enhance broader awareness for us and for our customers, and strengthens future opportunities.
Enterprise Mobility, in collaboration with Xcel Energy and with Jacobs, published the results of a joint study — Electrifying Airport Ecosystems — exploring the future electric power needs of U.S. airports and the industries that contribute to their ecosystems.
Using two airports as case studies, Minneapolis-Saint Paul International (MSP) and Denver International (DEN), the study results show there is a narrowing window of opportunity for “no-regrets investment” in the large-scale power infrastructure needed to support electrification. It further underscores the need for collaboration and partnership across industries to implement essential upgrades to airports’ power infrastructure to meet future operational, cargo and passenger needs.
A collaboration with vehicle-to-grid (V2G) charging provider, Fermata Energy, and nonprofit community development finance organization, BlueHub Capital®, to provide a resident of affordable housing development at Codman Square, Girls Latin Apartments in Boston, Mass., a low-cost EV rental. The project uses a bidirectional charger — one that can both charge an EV battery and release electricity from the battery — to supply electricity to the utility company when the battery is not needed for driving and the utility company needs extra electricity to meet peak loads.
In the U.K., Enterprise Car Club offers members a range of fuel-efficient cars and vans that can be rented by the hour or the day. About 7.5% of the Car Club fleet is currently made of up of electric vehicles, with more consistently being added. Many of the vehicles are dedicated to local governments or specified business locations, where these employers are saving time and money by replacing their company cars, taxis and mileage reimbursement (grey fleet) with access to self-service EV vehicles. For example, Enterprise Car Club is supporting Edinburgh City Council’s goal of increasing the use of EVs by expanding its fleet in the city.
The municipality of Herzebrock-Clarholz in Germany is using an electric vehicle (EV) from Enterprise equipped with telematics technology for its municipal employees. Using connected software developed by Enterprise, the vehicle collects information, such as mileage, and the municipality analyzes the data to better understand and leverage it to introduce future innovative mobility solutions and achieve its sustainability goals. The EV also is made available to municipal employees outside of business hours as part of a car-sharing model, providing employees the opportunity to try out electromobility in everyday life.
Enterprise Flex E-Rent partnered with Costain, an infrastructure solutions company, on a pilot effort to test the use of electric vans at Costain’s major project sites. The pilot program trialed EV vans on three major road infrastructure projects across the U.K., with vehicles tested across different teams and workplace scenarios. The pilot is part of Costain's Climate Change Action Plan, which aims to achieve net zero carbon by 2035, including zero emissions from their company car fleet by 2030.
Enterprise Flex-E-Rent offers plug-in electric vans available for daily rental as well as for longer-term flexible rental at 14 Enterprise Flex-E-Rent depots in the South of England and the Midlands. The vehicles available include: Mercedes 55/44 kWh eSprinter vans, which have a range of up to 90 miles on a full charge — depending on the payload — and smaller 35 kWh Mercedes eVito Panel vans, which can be fully recharged in six hours and also have a range of up to 90 miles.
As part of our participation in National League of Cities, Enterprise Mobility engaged local governments in Columbia, S.C., Houston and St. Louis to understand how cities can develop equitable electric vehicle policies, programs and charging investment strategies to meet the mobility needs of underserved communities. The result was the Equitable Electric Mobility Playbook — a resource for policymakers and their stakeholders to recognize how an inequitable landscape can impact historically marginalized communities and explore ways to accelerate electric mobility adoption within their own communities.
In the summer of 2024, the South Pasadena (Calif.) Police Department became the nation’s first law enforcement agency to completely replace its gasoline-powered vehicles with electric vehicles, with the help of Enterprise Fleet Management. To make the switch, EFM assisted the city in acquiring 10 Tesla Model Ys as patrol vehicles and 10 Tesla Model 3s for detective and administrative duties. The transition is expected to save about $4,000 a year per vehicle on energy costs, plus additional savings on maintenance, such as brakes, oil changes, air filters and more.
In 2022, Enterprise Fleet Management worked with Domino’s Pizza to integrate 100 electric vehicles into their franchise and corporate store fleets, leveraging key strategic partnerships, taking careful steps to ensure operating conditions could work and working to ensure infrastructure support could uphold both employee and customer expectations without compromising success. Today, the program has expanded to 1,100 EVs nationwide, making it the largest electric pizza delivery fleet in the country.
Partners, Collaborations & Investments
Board Member — North America’s largest electric vehicle coalition representing the electric utility sector to support accelerating the necessary power grid investments that enable charging infrastructure at scale
Advisory Board Member — Project funded by U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Vehicle Technologies Office at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) which aims to help inform recommendations for long-term investments at airports, including future power needs
Limited Partner — Global investment platform helping to lead the transition to a sustainable energy future, bringing together entrepreneurs and forward-looking energy, real estate and industrial companies to advance clean energy innovation
Participant — Jointly funded initiative, including the DOE, leading electric companies and more than 500 stakeholders to ready the electric grid in support of the accelerated development of EV charging infrastructure.
Sponsor — Organization comprised of city, town and village leaders focused on improving the quality of life for their current and future constituents, with more than 2,700 cities across the nation supporting their mission.
Collaboration — Xcel Energy provides the energy that powers millions of homes and businesses across eight Western and Midwestern states. Headquartered in Minneapolis, the company is an industry leader in responsibly reducing carbon emissions and producing and delivering clean energy solutions from a variety of renewable sources at competitive prices.
Electric Vehicle FAQs
Q: How many electric vehicles are in your fleet? What EVs makes/models do you offer for rental, and are they available in certain locations or nationwide?
A: We have several thousand EVs available today in select locations throughout the U.S., Canada and Europe. Our fleet mix throughout our mobility lines continue to evolve with the broader market and we consistently add EVs based on that. We buy electric vehicles from different manufactures and continue to work with a number of partners on this as the landscape evolves. We have purchased EVs from Tesla, Polestar, Nissan, Hyundai, Kia, Renault, Toyota and others. They are available in select locations.
Q: How much does it cost to rent an electric vehicle?
A: Just like all rental vehicles, EV rates are determined by several supply and demand factors including location, dates of travel, length of rental and availability, as well as when the reservation was made. Rates are noted online where EVs are available.
Q: How much does it cost customers to charge their rental electric vehicles?
A: Customers are responsible for paying for their own charging while the vehicle is in their possession. Access to public EV charging varies by market, as does the cost to use the chargers. Some charging stations are free, and others have a higher cost, typically dependent on the charging speed. There are local charging networks that customers can connect with to assist them with finding and paying for charging while driving a rental EV [for example: PlugShare.com]. Customers should consult with their renting location to understand expectations regarding the level of charge at which an EV should be returned and any resulting costs.
Q: Are you all installing charging in your locations?
A: We are working with several charging companies to help us to facilitate the ongoing installation of charging stations throughout select neighborhood and airport operations. More importantly, we’re focused on identifying how much power each of our locations has available,and modelling power needs for varying levels of EV penetration to ensure the ability for future infrastructure to serve our customers.
Q: How can customers reserve an electric vehicle?
A: Customers can check availability and reserve an EV through Enterprise, National or Alamo by going online or calling to make a reservation.
Electrification News
