In quest to go green, US firms retool car fleets
Companies are looking for ways to cut down on greenhouse gases and save money on increasingly expensive gasoline.
from the June 22, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 3
"In January, we tried to do a story on what companies are doing to turn their fleet green, but we couldn't find many who were willing or able to talk about it," says Phil Russo, executive director of NAFA. "But at our meeting in May, we asked people what had happened, and they said, 'This is part of our corporate mandate: We're trying to turn green.' "
In a survey earlier this month by PHH Arval, one of the largest fleet-management services in the United States and Canada, 45 percent of fleet managers said their interest in the environment had grown significantly in the past year.
"One of the things that came out of the survey is that companies are struggling. They feel like there is not a good variety of vehicles that meets their needs and is available," says Karen Healey, who is in charge of PHH's green initiatives.
This is certainly what some car-rental companies have found. Over the past several years, Hertz has had only 50 to 100 hybrids in its fleet. "We are Toyota's largest customer in the world…. Basically, they didn't want to sell us any, and we just had to beg," says Frank Camacho, vice president for marketing at Hertz.
Indeed, hybrid orders have been difficult to fill, says Bill Kwong, a spokesman for Toyota in Torrance, Calif. "We have had very limited production," he says.
But with production of hybrids increasing, Toyota is now willing to sell Hertz 1,000 vehicles this year, with the fleet growing by another 2,400 in 2008, Mr. Camacho says.
Enterprise says that it, too, would buy more hybrids if it could get them. Instead, it has found it easier to acquire some 41,000 "flex fuel" vehicles that can run on various combinations of ethanol and gasoline.
RSS feed
