Page 13 - IAV Digital Magazine #478

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Increasing Number of Japanese People Are Renting Cars for Everything But Driving
By Spooky
Car-rental opera- tors in Japan recently observed a very strange trend – a consid- erable number of their clients were renting cars but logging an unusu- ally low mileage or not driving the cars at all.
Renting a car is a very efficient and convenient way of getting from point A to point B, and operators prefer the distance trav- eled to be as long as possible, as they make more money. So when a number of lead- ing car rental and car sharing com- panies in Japan noticed that a sig- nificant number of their clients were renting cars, but not driving them at all, they started getting worried. They couldn’t fig- ure out why it was happening, though, so they did some surveys and got some pretty interesting results. It turns out that people are increasingly
using car rental services for a variety of rea- sons, except driv- ing.
NTT Docomo Inc., a popular vehicle-sharing service operator in Japan, told
the Asahi Shimbun that a 2018 survey revealed that one out of its every eight users rented a car for services other than trans- portation. The largest number of respondents said that they rented cars to sleep or rest in, followed by those who claimed that they used them as quiet, comfortable places to talk on
the phone with friends, family or business part- ners.
“Usually the only place I can take a nap while visiting my clients is a cybercafe in front of the station, but renting a car to sleep in is just a few hundred yen (several dollars), almost the same as staying in the cybercafe,” one Tokyo man said.
Some people reported renting cars to have lunch in, watch TV, put on their Halloween cos- tumes and even do facial stretch- es said to reduce the size of their
face.
The main advan- tages of renting cars for purposes other than driving are affordability and accessibility. It only costs 400 yen to rent one for 30 minutes, and it can be picked up from one of the tens of thousands of parking lots across Japan. So instead of looking for a place to eat or take a nap, people prefer to rent a car in advance, using their smart- phones.
“Cars can be used for private space, one NTT Docomo official
said. “People used our vehicles in more ways than we expect- ed.”
And NTT Docomo isn’t the only company to have noticed the unusual trend. Times24 Co., the leading car-shar- ing operator in Japan reported similar findings. In its survey, clients said they rented vehicles to sleep in or use as work- space, while one person reported renting a car to store bags and other belongings in because the nearby coin-oper- ated lockers were all taken.
Car-sharing serv- ice operator Orix Auto Corp. con- firmed that it too noticed that many of its cars were being turned in with “no distance traveled”, but wouldn’t disclose how the vehicles were actually used.
“We have no clear idea how they actually used our vehicles,” an Orix public rela- tions officer told Asahi Shimbun. “The only thing we can say is that data show a num- ber of people rent cars without driv- ing them.”
The unusual trend can be traced back to the aftermath of the 2011 tsunami, when people started renting cars just to charge their mobile phones. Even though most clients still use rental cars for driving, the num- ber of those using them for other purposes is slow- ly rising.
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