Ten years later, we picked up a BMW from Avis in Munich and drove it without incident (unless you co

A lix Davidson says she was "totally excited" when her car rental company recently offered her the keys to a Toyota Prius in Seattle. It was her first time behind the wheel of a hybrid electric vehicle.
ez rental car But her enthusiasm quickly turned to frustration when she couldn't figure out how to start the car. "We pushed the button, which looked awfully like our computer's 'on' button, waved the little stick in front of it," says Davidson, a researcher for an environmental organization in Washington. "Nothing."
This past summer, Enterprise, the largest rental company, announced a major electric vehicle rollout. You can now rent everything from a Nissan Leaf to a Peugeot iOn. And Hertz expanded its electric car fleet in 2011 to include the Chevrolet Volt, the Smart ED and the Tesla Roadster.
The American Car Rental Association, a trade group, expects more puzzled ez rental car looks from customers as they rent these new vehicles. But its members have had some experience fielding the questions. ez rental car "Let's face it," says Sharon Faulkner, ez rental car the group's executive director. "It doesn't even have to be an electric car, or a specialty unit, for customers to be confused."
How true. I remember renting a car in Germany ez rental car a few years ago. It wasn't immediately clear how to shift the standard transmission into reverse. It took 20 minutes of fumbling with the gears in the parking lot of a restaurant before I was able to coax the car into backing up. That rental ran on old-fashioned unleaded gasoline.
Stephanie Wolkin recalls the Renault Megane she rented in Montpellier, France. She loaded her luggage into the open trunk and drove off. When she arrived at her rental home, she couldn't open the trunk. "The key didn't work, and there was no lever," says Wolkin, a retiree who lives in White Bear Lake, Minn. "We panicked."
Two young boys watching the Americans struggle with their voiture finally let them in on the secret to prying open a Megane trunk: Point the key at the rearview mirror in the middle of the windshield, ez rental car and press the button on the key. "Presto!" she says. "It opened."
Jody Beck also recalls a rental in France, a car that sometimes refused to start. She phoned the agency, which dispatched a tow truck. "The tow truck driver ez rental car got the car to start immediately as I tried, in my basic French, to describe the problem," says Beck, who works for a nonprofit ez rental car organization in Washington. "The hotel owner finally figured out that we didn't know that the diesel car had a manual choke."
You don't have to travel overseas to be confused. Danielle Laatsch rented a car in Pensacola, Fla., a few years ago and couldn't make the windshield wipers work. "I promptly drove into a storm," says Laatsch, ez rental car who now lives in South Korea. ez rental car "I had to wash the windows every few minutes for an hour to clear off the windshield. And yes, I learned my lesson and now always check out everything ez rental car in the parking lot."
That's good advice, but not necessarily obvious, especially for those of us with a Y chromosome. We'll figure it out as we go along, we assure ourselves. And we don't need to read the manual either, even though it's often conveniently located in the glove compartment.
Faulkner says you shouldn't leave the car rental facility until you can do the following: start the car, unlock the steering column, turn off the car and remove the key. To that, I would also add: turn on the lights and operate the windshield wipers.
Here s a question that puzzled me.  Four years ago I rented a car in Germany for the day. I got a small Mercedes wagon don t recall the model, but definitely a European model that is not available in U.S.  My first time driving a Mercedes
Could not figure out how to get the key out of the ignition! ez rental car I ve seen other cars where you pushed a little lever behind the key,and similar approaches, and I looked everywhere for something ez rental car like that. No luck.
The Prius does not have a key per se. At least not mine. It has a key fob which the car detects. If the key fob is not in range, the car will not go anywhere. You don t even use the key to unlock the door it senses it in your pocket. I have had several rentals that had similar arrangements. Very 21st Century!
A couple years ago I had, I believe, ez rental car a Chrysler rental from Enterprise.  As the key was already in the ignition when I got in, i didn t notice that it was basically a small piece of plastic not the typical metal key until I was about to leave my meeting and freaked out when I got back in the car and saw what was in my hand.  I looked around for ages for the missing key until a security guard at the college I was visiting told me the plastic WAS the key.  Sure enough, it worked but I haven t come across one like that since.
My husband received an electric car when he rented in Los Angeles and loved it me, not so much.  I had a rental in Indianapolis that threw me for a loop.  Drive wasn t necessarily drive I had to turn around and ask the employees of the agency check-out gate to show me how to get the automatic transmission to go out of first gear.
Yes, but this was only for about a 6-hour rental.  Another ez rental car wrinkle is that the key had an insert that you could pull out guess it was for trunk access or something. But the part left in the ignition would still start the car.
Like you, Chris, I had forgotten the agent s instructions for getting the first car I rented in Europe (Italy) into reverse.  After checking in for a two-night stay at an Umbrian agritourismo, our host asked me to move the car from where I had parked it on arrival.  I drove over to a the spot he had pointed to, fronted by a wall.  I felt I was parked too close to the wall, but I kept inching closer ez rental car and closer to it while getting increasing frustrated pushing the gear shift this way and that in a vain effort to go backwards.  Finally, my wife figured out where reverse ez rental car gear was located before I caused a low-speed collision with an immovable object.
Ten years later, we picked up a BMW from Avis in Munich and drove it without incident (unless you count not being able to completely shut up the talking GPS unit) for a few days.  But on as darkness was falling on a rainy afternoon in a nearly ez rental car deserted ez rental car parking lot near the castle of Mad King Ludgwig in southern Bavaria, the car wouldn t start.  We pulled out the owner s manual, but it was written entirely in German and beyond our comprehension.  There was a phone number for Avis that we could have called, but we didn t know if we would get an English-speaking person to assist us.  Finally, while tearing my hair out, figuratively speaking, I did something ez rental car that I had apparently been doing unconsciously since getting the car:  I put my foot on the brake pedal while turning the ignition key and the engine roared into life.
So here s what you should do before you drive a rental car off the lot:  Adjust the driver s seat and the rearview mirrors; figure out how to turn the radio and air-conditioning/heating on and off; find the turn signal, headlight and window washer controls; determine how to use the GPS and Bluetooth gadgetry, if the car has them; turn the engine and off at least three times to make sure you know how to do so.
If you are renting a car during the winter and plan on driving into the mountains, don t assume that tire chains will be in the trunk.  You will probably have to ask for the Ski Package (which will include a roof-mounted ski-rack) to get chains, ez rental car even if you don t plan to drive to ski area.  Although I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, I rented a 4wd Ford Explorer for a trip to Yosemite one February, and to my chagrin, after arriving in the mountains I discovered that tire chains were not in the car.  Luckily for me, chains weren t required during my trip and the car s 4wd was sufficient to get me safely over the few sections of snowy roadway that I encountered.
Finally, pull out your cell phone, and shoot photos or a video of every area of the car s exterior, before you start out.  If you find even small scratches, go back into the rental agency s office, show your pictures to a customer representative, and have the damage noted on the rental agreement so you don t have to pay for what a previous rented did to the car.
Like you, Chris, I had forgotten the agent s instructions for getting ez rental car the first car I rented in Europe (Italy) ez rental car into reverse.  After checking in for a two-night stay at an Umbrian agritourismo, our host asked me to move the car from where I had parked it on arrival.  I drove over to a the spot he had pointed to, fronted by a wall.  I felt I was parked too close to the wall, but I kept inching closer and closer to it while getting increasing ez rental car frustrated pushing the gear shift this way and that in a vain effort to go backwards.  Finally, my wife figured out where reverse gear was located before I caused a low-speed collision with an immovable object.
Ten years later, we picked ez rental car up a BMW from Avis in Munich and drove it without incident (unless you count not being able to completely shut up the talking GPS unit) for a few days.  But on as darkness was falling on a rainy afternoon in a nearly deserted parking lot near the castle of Mad King Ludgwig in southern Bavaria, the car wouldn t start.  We pulled out the owner s manual, but it was written entirely in German and beyond our comprehension.  There was a phone number for Avis that we could have called, but we didn t know if we would get an English-speaking person to assist us.  Finally, while tearing my hair out, figuratively speaking, I did something that I had apparently been doing unconsciously since getting the car:  I put my foot on the brake pedal while turning the ignition key and the engine roared into life.
So here s what you should do before you drive a rental car off the lot:  Adjust the driver s seat and the rearview mirrors; figure out how to turn the radio and air-conditioning/heating on and off; find the turn signal, headlight and window ez rental car washer controls; determine how to use the GPS and Bluetooth gadgetry, if t