Audi is planning to roll out an on-demand car rental service across the UK by the end of 2018, offering users the full range of its vehicles via a smartphone app and price plans that range from a single hour up to a week.
Audi On Demand has been trialed in San Francisco and from a base at Munich airport. The next location will be Beijing, where the service will start operations within the next eight weeks - but Audi has plans to expand it to 15 countries by the end of the decade. The system allows the app user to choose an individual vehicle from a stock list, and the car is then delivered to the user within two hours of it being ordered.
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Prices vary from region to region, but in the US a Q7 costs around 270 dollars (£210) per day, and at the Munich airport site a Q2 has a rental rate of 14 euros (£12) per hour.
Bettina Bernhardt, the managing director of the Audi Business Innovation department responsible for On Demand, told Auto Express that British customers would be offered the service “within the next 18 months”. “The UK will be one of the first countries in the expansion,” she confirmed, before adding, “We will be using the dealer network to assist with this across the UK. It won’t be offered just to London; dealers who want to help with it will be able to participate.”
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The trials in San Francisco revealed that just under a third of On Demand customers accessed the service to drive high-performance Audis - S and RS models, plus the R8 - while 15 percent used the app to set up an extended test drive while considering a vehicle purchase. Audi’s US network offered discounts of around 1,000 dollars (£770) to On Demand users to went on to buy a car.
Bernhardt also revealed that the On Demand service will expand beyond vehicle rental to include chauffeur services via the same app. “The chauffeur service will come first in China,” she said, “and we may partner with an additional company to deliver it. It depends on demand in each country, but it is planned to have it in certain locations in Europe and the US, including the UK.”
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