Silvercar: Hints for the next locations?

This weekend, I rented my first Silvercar at Los Angeles airport, and had an absolutely fantastic experience.

If you’re not familiar with Silvercar, let me fill you in. Silvercar is only located in the following locations: Austin, Dallas Love Field, Dallas/Ft. Worth, Los Angeles, Miami, Phoenix, San Fransisco, Denver, Ft. Lauderdale and soon to be Chicago. They only rent Audi A4’s featuring free wifi, navigation, leather seating, a fair fuel up plan, easy toll usage and other features that ordinarily would be a hassle at standard rental car companies.

As you can see, their footprint is fairly limited, focusing on major cities. Based in Dallas, it’s no surprised they’ve got both airports covered there. They’re covering the primary hubs – in Chicago, Denver and San Fransisco for United, and Los Angeles, Phoenix, Miami, Chicago and Dallas for American. Suppressing, they’re also in some smaller cities, though I suspect those are fairly to easy to get into considering the market.

Anyways…so…as I was being driven back to the terminal from the Silvercar building at LAX, I had a chance to chat with my driver about future Silvercar expansion. While I wouldn’t take anything he said as concrete, he seemed well informed, and hinted at a few locations for Silvercar expansion (and lack thereof).

Atlanta is high on the list

Atlanta being the busiest in the country is high on the list since it could serve one of the largest rental car markets there is. Being a hub for Delta, it also allows to company to expand into the Delta footprint, whereas currently they’ve focused on cities served primarily by United and American. Apparently Atlanta is very high on the list, and is suspected to be one of the next locations to open.

New York is not high on the list

I figured NYC would be a major hotspot for rentals, but because of a lot of restrictions, and limited spacing, it’s apparently not high-up on Silvercar’s radar. While it’s busy for sure, I can equally see the headaches it could cause, not to mention it being located in the midst of all those New York drivers. 🙂

DC is a likely soon city

Living just outside of DC, I mentioned it being a great idea for Silvercar to open a location at either Dulles or Reagan. Apparently, that’s already being considered. The traffic in DC is a nightmare, but having a rental location outside of Dulles makes very good sense — it’s actually a fairly easy drive and rental process to get it done there. I’m glad to see DC as a possible focus city.

The Northeast is a known gap

Silvercar appears well aware that the Northeast is a huge gap in their system, and even though they aren’t serving many airports as it is, they have no presence in the Boston/NYC/Philly/DC market, which is a huge missed opportunity. They seem well aware of that and are trying to find the optimum city to start service in there before expanding. See DC reasoning above?

That’s what I gathered from my driver in the short 10 minutes it took to the terminal, but I’m glad he shared his knowledge with me, since I think Silvercar is trying to get the word out on their brand by a ton of word of mouth. They’re doing well so far, and I’m really excited to see them open up in more markets.

If you’d like to earn $25 towards your first rental (which also provides me with a $25 credit), please use code JLAROUNIS at checkout on Silvercar’s website. As always, thank you for your support!

Do you think these predictions are correct? What other cities would Silvercar be a good fit in?