Last year saw the Daily Rental Group acquire 30 extended-range electric Opel Amperas and start offering them from locations in Brussels in Belgium and Frankfurt in Germany as well as in Amsterdam.

Nor is it the only self-drive hire fleet to move into electrics. In the UK in London the Hertz on Demand car-sharing fleet – car-sharing/pooling is increasing in significance – offers Amperas too (marketed under the Vauxhall brand name in the UK) alongside Mitsubishi’s i-MiEV and Nissan’s LEAF.

In the USA Hertz clients can hire a LEAF, a Chevrolet Volt or a smart fortwo electric.

Hertz is also making the last-named vehicle available to customers of Italian private high-speed train operator Italo-NTV from locations at two of Rome’s railway stations.

Europcar is offering the LEAF in both London and Paris, France.

The number of electric cars available for rent worldwide is of course a fraction of the number of conventionally powered cars that can be booked.

The former total is set to grow, but much will depend on driver acceptance and the willingness of governments and the private sector to support provision of the necessary infrastructure. Until then rental fleets are unlikely to put huge numbers of battery-powered vehicles into service.

After all, they have been caught out by alternative fuels before, points out Andrew C Taylor, chairman and chief executive officer of Enterprise Holdings: as well as Enterprise Rent-A-Car it embraces Alamo Rent A Car and National Car Rental.

Several years ago his company played its part in trying to encourage the adoption of E85 – ethanol – by ensuring that nearly 30% of its US fleet could run on it. Unfortunately the programme failed, he admits, partly due to a lack of response from customers, but partly too as a consequence of the limited number of E85 fuelling stations.

‘For us, this pointed to the fact that if an alternative product is brought to market without sufficient consumer interest or incentive to support it then it will fail under its own weight,’ he observes.

‘A network of charging stations to support usage is essential,’ says Hertz International president, Michel Taride. ‘Cities need to have plans in place to develop electric vehicle networks, bringing together stakeholders including vehicle manufacturers, charging station providers and customers.’

He praises London for the steps it has taken towards the provision of charging facilities. Launched in May 2011 and run by Transport for London in partnership with Siemens, Source London should eventually boast 1,300 public charging points.

Hertz itself already operates 16 of them at six locations across Greater London including Heathrow Airport and London City Airport. Hertz data shows that the average electric vehicle rental in Britain’s capital is six hours, with an average journey of 27.1km.

‘In addition to on-street charging however, companies should install charging stations in buildings and business campuses to support fleet cars as well as personal cars,’ Mr Taride states.

In Germany Hertz on Demand is supplying electric vehicles to the car share fleet used by IBM employees to drive between Stuttgart Airport and IBM’s campus at Ehningen, some 30km away. Intelligent charging facilities have been set up on the site controlled by IBM software that optimises the use of renewable energy.

Enterprise is working to foster support for electric cars through a number of collaborative projects in the USA involving, among other organisations, the Transportation Sustainability Research Center and the Electrification Coalition. In the USA it is also developing the Driving Futures Network: rental branches that will offer an expanded fleet of electric and hybrid vehicles, including Volt and LEAF.

‘By providing and promoting these alternatives, the network will help consumers better understand and accept them,’ Taylor says.

Rival Hertz agrees that education is the key to the wider adoption of electric vehicles.

Speaking in Britain last year, Taride said that the UK government and the car rental industry should launch a joint marketing campaign to convince consumers of the benefits of battery power.

One example of the way in which Enterprise is working to encourage the adoption of electric vehicles is through its activities in southern California.

It is offering them there from almost a dozen locations and has been piloting a scheme from its Torrance branch in conjunction with the South Bay Cities Council of Governments (SBCCOG) that offers people who own electric cars a 15% discount if they need to rent something with a longer range.

They can charge up their own vehicles at Enterprise during the rental.

Back in 2010, Enterprise helped SBCCOG lease and prepare six electric vehicles to launch its Local Use Vehicle project to help it assess how they can help reduce emissions and fuel consumption. Furthermore, over the past seven years the Taylor family, which owns Enterprise, has given €26.85m ($35m) to the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St Louis, Missouri, USA and its Enterprise Rent-A-Car Institute for Renewable Fuels to support renewable fuels research.

Rental fleets are taking full advantage of the global communications explosion to improve their offer to both business and private customers.

In North America, Enterprise Holdings has been applying unique QR – Quick Response – codes to its entire rental fleet in the USA and Canada. Customers who scan them – they are to be found on vehicle windows and key tags – with their smart phones thereby gain access to Enterprise’s ONRAMP Concierge website.

As well as being able to obtain information on the vehicle they have rented, they can connect to other sites such as Gas Buddy, which tells you where to find the cheapest fuel, and Yelp, which provides information on restaurants, shops and other services in whichever locality you happen to be in.

At selected locations in Germany and other markets Sixt is attempting to speed up the entire cumbersome process of picking up a hire car and claims to have reduced it to a few simple actions that can be completed in seconds.

Customers enter all the information needed to rent a vehicle on Sixt’s website or by using a Sixt smart phone app including their name, their driver licence number and their chosen method of payment. They are then assigned a barcode, either on their reservation confirmation or on their smart phone.

When they pick up their car keys all they need to do is place the bar code on a scanner and produce their licence. QR codes can be used in a similar manner.

Sixt has launched a series of smart phone apps including those for Android and Windows Phone 7.

Last November it incorporated Passbook into its iPhone app – it claims to be the first international car rental company to do so – allowing clients to create their own “passes” for storing and managing all relevant information about their booking on their iPhone.

All customers need to do is reserve the car of their choice and the iPhone app will issue a collection pass. They can then use Passbook to look up the date and time of collection and the whereabouts of the rental office.

The app can tell if the client is in the vicinity of a Sixt rental desk on the day the booking starts and a notification displays the pass’s access feature on the iPhone’s lockscreen. Users are also given access to a QR code, which can be scanned at the rental counter, again reducing the time it takes to complete the transaction.

Avis, Thrifty and Europcar are among other rental fleets that have been busy launching smart phone apps. In another initiative, Hertz is now offering mobile wi-fi for an additional charge in a number of markets including Spain, Italy, Australia and New Zealand.

While there is no denying that many of the global rental giants took a battering when recession engulfed various key markets in 2009, they have for the most part subsequently recovered.

Enterprise Holdings and its affiliate Enterprise Fleet Management enjoyed record revenues during their 2012 fiscal year. In 2011 Sixt Group saw its earnings before tax soar by 35.8% to €138.9m – a record for the company – resulting in a profit after tax of €97.5m: a 37.8% rise.

The first three quarters of 2012 saw the group’s rental revenue improve by 7.6% although leasing revenue was down by 4.6%.

Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group reported records earnings in 2011 with a net income of €119.56m ($159.6m) compared with €98.28m ($131.2m) in 2010.

The first three quarters of 2012 saw Europcar’s consolidated revenue decline by 2.8% to €1,505m compared with the €1,548m achieved during the first three quarters of 2011 although its EBITDA – Earnings Before Interest, Tax, Depreciation and Amortisation – grew from €87m to €108m.

Stronger revenue streams have propelled many of the rental companies down the expansion trail with Enterprise Holdings among those leading the charge.

November 2011 saw it acquire ailing PSA Peugeot Citroen’s Citer car rental subsidiary in France along with its Spanish rental subsidiary ATESA with a total fleet of some 30,000 vehicles. Both are now being rebranded as Enterprise.

With rather more long-term significance, last year saw Enterprise Holdings move into China and take a stake of approximately 15% in rental company eHi AutoServices.

Though a small operator in comparison with the former Citer/ATESA business with just 7,600 vehicles, it offers them 383 locations in 48 cities across the country. As a consequence it is well placed to grow further in one of the fastest-expanding rental markets in the world.

Through its Alamo and National brands Enterprise is expanding in South America too, and in Brazil and Uruguay in particular.

Budget Car Rental has opened 60 new locations in Spain in the first half of 2012 with more planned – in some respects a surprising move given the country’s economic travails – while Sixt is moving into Thailand with a dozen outlets.

It is also setting up a franchise network in the USA and reports that it has already been contacted by over 100 potential franchisees.

Some rental groups report that many customers are now renting cars that are rather more upmarket than the standard saloons and hatchbacks they might have hired previously. In the US, the Wall Street Journal reports that Enterprise Rent-a-Car has now expanded its Exotic Car Collection to 13 locations in six states, Hertz saw its luxury car rental business grow by 15% between 2011 and 2012 while a start-up company called Silvercar has just started offering nothing but silver Audi A4s at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport in Texas.

‘Customers see a Jaguar for $225 (€168.50) and they’d rather drive that than a Toyota Camry,’ Adam Belsky, Enterprise’s group sales and marketing manager for the Exotic Car Collection in Los Angeles, is reported as saying.

The most popular car among his clients?

The Range Rover Sport, for $250 (€187) to $300 (€225) daily.

And the most expensive? A Bentley GTC convertible: for a mere $800 (€599) to $900 (€674) a day.