Yahoo Autos We rented a Tesla Model S Plaid through Turo, and here’s what it was like
Renting a car through Turo is a lot like booking a room through Airbnb. However, at this point, you’ve probably already booked a stay (or lots) through Airbnb. We recently had the opportunity of booking a car through Turo for our Tesla Model S Plaid review, but now it’s time to tell you how the Turo part of this arrangement worked.
The initial setup is a little more tedious than booking through a traditional car rental company like Avis or Enterprise. That’s to be expected when you’re trying to rent a car from another private citizen, though. Browsing through available cars is certainly more tantalizing for enthusiasts. Outside of the special high-horsepower Hertz rentals, the traditional rental agency choices are going to be full of drab options. In Turo, you can page through everything from a cheap-to-rent Prius to extra-pricey stuff like the Model S Plaid we went with.
And we do mean extra-pricey sometimes. The owners of the cars set the prices, so renters are subject to the rate they see. In our case, the Tesla Model S Plaid we rented was listed for an eye-watering $888 per day. That’s for picking it up at 9 a.m. and dropping it off by 9 a.m. the next morning. We only needed it for 12 hours, so we dropped the car off early, but that doesn’t get you a discount.
Another thing you should know, when figuring out what car you can rent and how much it’s going to cost, is that the big number you see in the listings when looking at all available cars is not the price you’ll ultimately pay. Yes, the Model S Plaid was listed at $888 for the day, but there was also a non-negotiable $191.56 trip fee. Turo says, “The trip fee is a percentage of the trip price calculated by Turo, and varies based on the expected costs to support the trip, the vehicle’s value, trip duration, and other factors.” In addition to the “trip fee,” Turo requires you to select a “protection plan” on vehicles of high value. The Model S Plaid qualifies under this rule, and the “standard” plan added another $355.20 to the overall trip cost. If you book early enough, Turo will give you an “early bird discount” of some nominal value (depending on the booking price), but that doesn’t do much to dent the cost. In total, our day with the Model S Plaid rang up to $1,434.76. Yowza.
With that much money spent, you’d expect to have the world at your fingertips, but if you only rent for a single day, this car’s owner limits the rental to just 100 miles of total driving. If you go over that amount, a $4.44/mile fee applies. It adds up quickly, so we kept it under 100 miles for our purposes.
