Why is renting a car so expensive

Get useful tips, expert advice and cute animals in your inbox every week. I agree to Money's Terms of Use and Privacy Notice and consent to the processing of my personal information.

Sign Up Newsletter Subscribe successful! You will now receive Money's Dollar Scholar newsletter at Reply anytime to let us know how we can improve. Make sure we land in your inbox, not your spam folder.

We just sent you a welcome email. Sometimes email clients send our first email to a spam or promotions folder. If you don't see us in your inbox, check these folders, then drag and drop the welcome email into your inbox. The bottom line Rental car prices have been surging because demand is high and supply is low, both due to the coronavirus crisis and the chip shortage.

I should also avoid certain locations especially those near nature destinations. One silver lining, according to Weinberg, is that most rental car brands offer free cancellations on reservations. By Julia Glum September 8, Money; Getty Images. Ads by Money. In the Post story, official Enterprise Holdings spokesperson Lisa Martini said the company is working with manufacturers to source more vehicles and meet the demand.

The paper also reached out to Hertz Corp. But the bachelorettes, in their bloodlust for a Toyota Matrix, had discovered neighborhood locations anyway and were now pillaging their stocks, achieving the same result. So what does that mean for you? Often rental companies, including Enterprise, do not charge a cancellation fee to members when reservations are booked through the company itself, rather than a third-party website.

With 18 months of pent-up cabin fever clogging the airports and roads this summer, there is unfortunately no white knight coming to the rescue. Rather than flying, should you road trip to your destination?

The pandemic has a lot to do with the skyrocketing rental costs. Last year, amid the plunge in travel, rental companies shed a large number of cars from their fleets as they tried to survive. Now they find themselves in short supply just as Americans are ready to start moving again. Companies trying to replenish their auto fleets are also running into issues due to a shortage of semiconductor chips hampering the auto industry.

One analyst at Deutsche Bank who follows the industry described it to the Washington Post as an "extreme example of supply and demand. Car rental, like the airline and hotel industries, relies on dynamic pricing to determine how much a customer ultimately pays to book a vehicle.

The response to supply-and-demand is immediate. Because rental companies have a fairly fixed amount of stock available, the more Americans try to get cars, the higher prices will go.

Inflation is at a year high. But these Mad Money megatrends could help you fight back. As of p. For most of the past two years, all the focus has been on the coronavirus, but these biotechs have big plans to develop inoculations against other diseases, too. He exercised 2. Let's go shopping. Another electric startup, Rivian, has roared into the market with no sales but a higher valuation than Ford and GM. Rivian's debut in the public markets has investors buying up shares of other EV sector start-ups.

The IRS makes inflation adjustments yearly, but this year they coincided with hot October inflation data. He noted that there are other viable stocks to buy in the lithium recycling space, but reaffirmed that QuantumScape is his top pick.