Olympic fever sends Beijing car rental price skyhigh!
As the Olympics are getting closer, and closer, many people are expected to rent cars during their stay in Beijing. Of course, if there is mass demand for a product, prices usually rise accordingly.
Prices appear to be as follows:
Model – Price per month – Deposit – Gearbox
Old Jetta – 5000 – 10,000 – Manual
Newer Jetta (01 model) – 4800 – 5000 – Manual
New Jetta(07) – 6500 – 5000 -Manual
Santana – 5000 – 10,000 – Manual
Buick Excelle – 8000 - 10,000 – Automatic
Chery Cowin – 4000 – 10,000 – Manual
Chery QQ – 2000 – 10,000 – Manual
Xia Li N3 – 2000 – 10,000 – Manual
Hyundai Elantra – 9000 – 5000 – Manual
The above prices were taken from Autohome.com and appear to be an average basket of prices from various car rental companies. We’re not entirely sure why the prices are so out of touch with various other models – why the older Jettas are more expensive than the newer ones is a mystery, although we could guess that the older ones are easier to steal and give fake papers to thus they command a higher rental rate. Either that, or Chinese are just nostalgic people who like to drive the Jettas from their youth!
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I was also wondering about the Jettas. Could it mean the old Jetta is the Mk2, the newer the Bora and the new Jetta the Sagitar? Otherwise you’re looking at renting a car thats more than 7 year old for the Jetta, 7 years old for the newer Jetta and 1 year old for the new Jetta. That’s rent a wreck territory.
I guess as Ash mentioned for Jetta “01″ and “07″ mean model year instead of mfg year, that’s true various year models of car in production and on sales same time – Santana ,Santana 2000,3000 as another example.
However, the rental prices jump high mainly due to the new regulation of odd/even, almost half cars cut off from traffic. Of course,it’s for Olympic,after all.
So rental cars are exempt from the odd/even days and other such traffic control measures?
I guess the prices exclude all the foreigners who don’t carry Chinese drivers licenses.
Actually, these prices don’t seem that out of whack, except for the Elantra. I rented an automatic Bora for a few days once and it cost me around 300/day, and that was considered cheap.
No, rental cars *are not* exempt from the even/odd restrictions. So if you look at it from the point that you’ll only be able to drive the car for 1/2 the time, then it is quite expensive. But that’s the reason why so many people are looking for rental cars now in the first place.