Bio-Beetle Eco Rental Cars opens in L.A.

This is in the shameless self promotion category. Please distribute at your pleasure. I apologize for posting across different forums.

The Grand Opening of the Los Angeles Bio-Beetle Eco Rental Cars office is this Tuesday, February 28. Open house from 10am to 2pm. All are invited. The press release is below.

Contact: Shaun Stenshol, Founder/President, Bio-Beetle Eco Rental Cars (310) 337-1729, email: info@bio-beetle.com, web site www.bio-beetle.com

What: Grand opening and open house. Shaun Stenshol and LA Bio-Beetle Representatives will be available for interviews and rides!

Where: Bio-Beetle Eco Rental Cars office, 9146 S. Sepulveda Blvd, Los Angeles. For directions call (310) 570-3896 or (310) 337-1729

When: 10am to 2pm – Tuesday, February 28, 2006,

Press Conference: 11:30am

VEGETABLE OIL powered rental cars
Debut in Los Angeles

Los Angeles, California – Bio-Beetle, Inc., a Maui, Hawaii based corporation, announces the debut of 100% biodiesel rental cars to California, beginning with their new office in Los Angeles. Bio-Beetle Eco Rental Cars is introducing diesel vehicles that will be powered solely by biodiesel, a diesel fuel made from vegetable oils. Bio-Beetle is the first and only rental car company in the world to offer rental cars fueled exclusively with biodiesel.

Bio-Beetle made its original debut on the Hawaiian island of Maui in January of 2003.

“Our goal is a sustainable society, and Bio-Beetle is a step in that direction, giving visitors and LA residents a renewable energy option when renting a car,” said Shaun Stenshol, Founder/President. “Or, as our slogan says, ‘Give the planet a vacation the next time you take one.’”

“Besides the obvious less polluting benefits Bio-Beetle Eco Rental Cars offer, the renter is saying that they would rather support American farmers than the oil industry and the wars that are fought for that oil, plus they are doing something pro active to help prevent things like drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and being part of oil spills like Exxon Valdez,” said Pamela Miedtke-Wolf, co-owner of Bio-Beetle.

Bio-Beetles are unmodified diesel Volkswagen Beetles, Jettas, and Passats. The weekly rental rates in Los Angeles will start at $199.

Biodiesel production in the U.S. was 75 million gallons in 2005. That’s up from 25 million gallons in 2004. Biodiesel is non-toxic in pure form (B100), biodegradable and significantly cuts emissions.

More information about Bio-Beetle can be found online at: www.bio-beetle.com. Please visit www.biodiesel.org for more information on biodiesel.

Shaun When I Go To Calif For Vw Trainning, Can I Get A Rental? And Were Can I Get Bio In Calif (upland Calif) How Close To The Airport Are You?

vwrobert51 said:

Shaun When I Go To Calif For Vw Trainning, Can I Get A Rental? And Were Can I Get Bio In Calif (upland Calif) How Close To The Airport Are You?

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Hey Robert - Of course you can rent from us. We currently have one fueling location in Culver City, and refueling is done by appointment only. Our cars do go a long ways on a tank of fuel. We will deliver a car to you at Ontario airport, and our office is located at LAX (a few blocks away on Sepulveda).

Here is the first news story generated by our press release, in the Honolulu Star Bulletin. One small correction is that we have 12 rentals on Maui, not 8.

http://starbulletin.com/2006/02/25/business/story01.html

That is so awesome, congratulations! Next time my parents need to rent a car, I want to direct them to you

Good on ya, mates! I'll give you a call the next time we're in LA area!

Wow, I just happen to be planning a trip to CA in late summer and plan on doing a lot of touring of the CA coast! Here's my quesion, any way I can pick the car up in LA and return it somewhere else? I presume that that's not possible, but worth asking!

Thanks for the positive feedback y'all.

Pelican18TQA4 - Thanks for asking about a rental. We pretty much want to keep the cars in the L.A. metro area, because of refueling. We do not want regular diesel put in our cars. That said, depending on your route and where you want to drop off the car, we might be able to accommodate you?

What mixes of biodiesel do you run your beetles on?

EDIT: never mind "announces the debut of 100% biodiesel rental cars"

Im surprised audi5000tdi isnt having a heart attack about running B100 in all those PD's

Or reminding Shaun that Volkwagen doesn't warrantee using anything higher than B05.

Congratulations, Shaun. I'm surprised you didn't open the first mainland site in S.F. or Seattle though.

Question: Will you be including a list of reputable filling stations in the car? For people who want to drive up the coast or something, it might be a good idea so that they can make wise choices come time to fill up.

That said, what's the plan if they come back with dino in the tank? Service charge? LOL

Good luck, and lots of business to you.

~BeetleGo

BeetleGo

We plan on opening up in S.F. and maybe even Seattle at some point. A great deal of our Maui renters are from those two places. We chose L.A. as our first mainland office because it's California and we have an old friend there, who is very enthusiastic about Bio-Beetle, to manage it for us.

At least to start, refueling will be done at one location, and we are requiring our renters to fuel up only at that location and with one of our rental agents. We hope to have our own pump of biodiesel at/near our office in the near future, so that will be a little easier. And over time we want to be involved in opening up B100 locations around L.A. If anyone here has any ideas on locations I'd like to hear them.

That said, what's the plan if they come back with dino in the tank? Service charge? LOL

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There are no guarantees, but we are heavily stressing to our renters that they need to fuel up only at locations we provide. If they run into trouble, they will need to call us before they put other fuel in our cars.

The mainland deffinitely presents challenges we don't have in Hawaii, but in the long run it will work out.

Ever thought of renaming your company to Bio-Beetles, Etc. ?

I know. And wait til the other auto makers start selling their diesel models in the U.S., we'll be Bio-Focus, Bio-Camry, Bio-Escort, Bio-Alero, etc.

Alero? They're bringing Oldsmobile back?!

AHHHHHHH!

Actually, that makes me wonder...

If Oldsmobile was a sinking ship, why not put a diesel engine in a few Oldsmobile models before it died? I know, I know, the old Oldsmobile diesels were teh suck, but...

Then, if it worked, bam, you don't get bad press from laying off people, you get good press for getting such a high MPG vehicle, and you move the diesels into your main line.

If it doesn't, no big deal, Oldsmobile's dying anyway.

But, they squandered that opportunity.

I just flew into LAX this past January for vacation, and was lamenting the lack of diesel rental cars. Congrats on getting this off the ground. I'll be sure to look you up next winter when I head out there again.

If you're interested in branching out to the east coast, look me up. I'd love to be involved in any way. We don't have as many B100 stations, but they are coming.

VW fuel police are watching

Did you buy new cars, or "out of warranty". After the press this is getting, VW is going to 'black flag' any claim you have. If not, let us know your secret. Around here, a pine air freshener on the mirror seems to get their 'warranty denied' stamping hand all a twitch.

B5 = Max VW fuel BOOOOOOOOOOOOO

TDIPASSATGUY: Something tells me that these guys know what they're doing, and have no plans whatsoever to go to a dealer.

Front page news on Yahoo right now!
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060301/sc_nm/life_biodiesel_dc

TDIPASSATGUY said:

Did you buy new cars, or "out of warranty". After the press this is getting, VW is going to 'black flag' any claim you have. If not, let us know your secret. Around here, a pine air freshener on the mirror seems to get their 'warranty denied' stamping hand all a twitch.

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We buy new and used cars. I don't worry about the warranty because, in my personal experience (well over 300,000 B100 miles & now adding about 20,000 + miles per month), VW TDI's don't have a problem with B100.

Our press conference /Grand opening on Tuesday generated an incredible response from the media, far exceeding all expectations. from all of the L.A. basin news outlets, including at least 6 tv news stations (KCAL, NBC, KTLA, ABC, CBS, FOX11) Paul Harvey, CNN, Inside Edition (do not know when it will air yet), NPR (tomorrow), etc. It was a great day for biodiesel advocacy, and of course Bio-Beetle. And we anticipate many follow-up stories.

Your self-promotion on this site would not be shameless if you were to, say, offer TDI Club members a steep discount off rentals. ;-)

When will they get it right ?!?

aarrrggghhhh! Reuters via Yahoo - "with four cars fueled by filtered vegetable oil." Pounds head on dashboard ...

Shaun, do you have any consideration of adding say TDI Passats or M-B E320 CDIs to your fleet for your more "premium" customers?

I wish you all success and hope to see Bio-Beetle outlets throughout North America!! (Oh, and that discount for TDIClub members would be great too).

Edit: By the way, I was wondering... do you do anything to ensure that your cars are not misfuelled? Maybe a locked fuel cap with a different key (which only the rental offices and approved fuelling locations have? -- hair-brained idea, I know). Otherwise, I imagine you do what they do with rental cars here in Germany: put conspicuous, bright flourescent "DIESEL ONLY" stickers on the fuel filler flap, on a corner of the windshield and in other locations around the car.

Bio-Beetle should sell franchises, like Enterprise or Thrifty does. I'm sure there's a few folks on here that would like to run a TDI rental business but don't know where to start.

Audi5000TDI said:

Naw.... that's anti competitive and anti American, and Big Business.

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Wh..huh?

Oh, and as for the Passat question...

Bio-Beetle said:

Bio-Beetles are unmodified diesel Volkswagen Beetles, Jettas, and Passats.

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(my emphasis)

My bad

Wish there was a way of communicating that you don't HAVE to run these cars on biodiesel, but BIO-BEETLE makes it a priority: like non-smoker cars....

It's all too easy for people to dismiss biodiesel when they assume that you are running an SVO business.

Good luck though. GREAT to hear you got a lot of press. Time to work on that sound-byte!

~BG

Just saw you guys on NBC 4 the other nite!!

Knowing what you are doing, and having time to do it for fleet are 2 differant things. His next vertical intigration will be a shop with his own wrenchers. As many of you have found out, good TDI techs don't stay at VW long.

Bio-Beetle TDI Club discount

ICNTDRV said:

Your self-promotion on this site would not be shameless if you were to, say, offer TDI Club members a steep discount off rentals. ;-)

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I've been thinking about this actually, so my partner and I have decided to offer a 5% discount to members of tdiclub.com. This is the same discount we offer to Better World Club members. To receive the discount just mention that you are a tdiclub.com member and provide your user name.