How to get the best deals on car rental

Getting the best deal on your car rental doesn’t have to be difficult. It’s just a matter of knowing where to look, how to compare car hire companies and keeping your ear to the ground about great deals. Here, we’ve listed the sure-fire ways to ensure the next time you hire a vehicle, you’ll be bragging to your mates about what a great deal you got:

Do your research

Knowing what’s on offer and by who is the first step to being able to decide between what is a genuinely good deal and what isn’t. Do some research and find out what each of the car rental companies have to offer. Some may specialise in providing a different range of rental services.


Let others do the work for you

Don’t have time to spend hours looking from website to website? Why not use a hire car comparison website to find out which company is offering what you want? There are now websites that help you compare different car rentals so you can make your choice faster. For the time poor, why not put your faith in the experts?


Don’t leave it to the last minute

Last minute bookings always lead to overpriced fees. Give yourself as much time as possible to find a great deal well in advance to avoid having to settle with an expensive car rental company a few days before you need the vehicle.  


Join loyalty programs


Apart from frequent flyer points, many car rental companies offer loyalty specials and offers only to those who are registered for their newsletter or loyalty system. This is a great way to find out about deals that aren’t necessarily advertised.



Through Work

Many companies have longstanding relationships with car rental companies. Use this to your advantage. You may be able to get a great discount on a rental car simply by presenting proof that you are an employee of your business.


Ask for a referral from a trusted source

If you have a friend or relative that has recently hired a car from one of the companies offering the best car hire Melbourne has to offer, why not ask them how would they rate their experience with that company? Referrals from friends and relatives are the best way to get a genuine opinion on businesses and their services.


Negotiate

Itʼs not always appropriate, but in some instances you may try to negotiate your rental deal with the car hire company. Remember, all they can say is no, so there is no harm in trying.

Jump on a good deal when you see it

Similar to cheap flights, cheap car hire gets snapped up fast so if you are lucky enough to come across a great deal, jump on it before itʼs gone!
Getting the best car hire deal is easy if you know where to look. I hope our tips on how to snag a great vehicle hire deal has given you some useful ideas for the next time you are in need of renting a car.

All-Electric Luxury Car INZIO

The Li-Ion Motors new electric "supercar" INZIO looks like a cross between a V8 Jaguar and a Ferrari and can cruise at 170mph. It also has a range of 250 miles. This thing can get from 0 to 60mph in 3.4 seconds. INZIO is a two-seater sports model, and the design isn't exactly bashful. INZIO is a machine that looks like it means business. It looks so good you might even get discounts on your car insurance  if you let your insurance guys look it over.


INZIO has successfully trashed quite a few of the common conceptions of electric cars. If you're a car designer, the performance figures all add up to one thing – Power. Electric sports cars have been a sort of novelty in recent years, with some grunt but not much sustained performance to achieve the "Wow" effect. INZIO is very obviously a very different beast, and a competitive beast.

INZIO is expected to be coming out in 2011, with a price tag of $139,000. For a high-performance sports car, that's actually about average. This car has "classic" written all over it, and could actually be the Mustang of its generation.

The power factor has produced some very interesting statistics. Battery power output is over 40kW, with an upgrade to 96.7kW also available. The electric motor produces 145kW. This is no slot car, and those power figures would be respectable for a racing car. From available publicity, the manufacturer seems to be being a little coy about providing specification details, but to achieve that speed involves a very high level of power to weight efficiency, and let's face it, very good design.

The Green side of INZIO

INZIO doesn't produce emissions. If you want to be strictly tourist/purist about it, the high-power electric engine may generate a carbon footprint, but electricity can be sourced from anywhere these days, so that's a slightly specious way at best of looking at the car as a Green product.

As a matter of fact, the Greenest part of the INZIO concept is that it is very likely to encourage a lot of other car designers to start looking seriously at producing very good quality electric car designs. The seemingly endless struggle to get electric cars on the road in the face of petrol-based primitivism hasn't exactly encouraged innovation over the years, and INZIO has now provided irrefutable proof of high-power viability in electric vehicles.


A watered-down version of INZIO on a conventional frame would make a good family sedan, and probably make a positive difference to car insurance quotes as well, because they'd be very reliable vehicles. Mainstream vehicles don't need this sort of grunt, in fact they could probably make do with about half the performance of this car.

A further very Green aspect of this design is that finally it's looking like electric power for heavy vehicles is a real possibility. That's been a major issue, but this level of grunt could easily drive a range of basic freight vehicles without much difficulty, and it's fairly easy to see how extra power could operate the
big rigs.

At this rate, Li-Ion Motors may be the first car manufacturer to start winning environmental prizes. If so, they've earned them.