Silvercar gets Acquired by Audi

Audi, Rental Car
5 Comments
622 View(s)
Reading Time: 2 minutes
This page may contain affiliate links. This means I receive a small commission if you choose to purchase through a link I provide (at no extra cost to you). This helps me continue to bring awesome free content to you!

Silvercar is one of my the rental car services I love a lot. It’s simple and straight forward with great customer experience. Everything is digital and you don’t have to worry about a humongous amount of paperwork before or after the rental. Check out my review of my experience in San Francisco. Silvercar was founded in 2012 and lets you take complete control of your rental with your smartphone. You actually need your smartphone to start the rental. If yours is dead at the time of arrival, Silvercar will loan you one to get your rental initiated and the car unlocked. So make sure you always know your login credentials.

Yesterday I received the news that Silvercar has entered an agreement to be acquired by Audi. Silvercar’s complete fleet are mainly Audi A4 cars. Audi has already invested in Silvercar and is now taking it over completely.

Let’s see what happens. Audi has already a car rental service called Audi on demand. As far as I know it’s only available in San Francisco right now. I never used them, because the prices are a little bit too high. Will they dissolve Silvercar and rebrand it as Audi on demand? Will Silvercar live on? We don’t know yet.

Audi and Silvercar expect approval by applicable regulatory authorities with the transaction concluding in the first half of 2017.

I haven’t rented to often with Silvercar but every time I enjoyed my time with an Audi A4. However, Silvercar made a mistake with some of their models. They had neither backup sensors or camera which is a standard nowadays. They fixed this with the newer model year cars but the old once are still in the fleet.

Silvercar had a lot of extras for which you got overcharged with conventional rental car outfits.

  • Free GPS Navigation
  • Free WiFi Hotspot build in
  • Only real toll fees. (In San Francisco the cars are equipped with a FasTrak transponder and you only pay for the tolls you would pay if you had your own transponder. No daily fee for the transponder itself or using overpriced cash rates instead of the toll by tag rate.)
  • Free Satellite Radio

If you are an Audi owner you can get a free day (minimum 2-day rental) or two days (minimum 4-day rental) off with your myAudi account. I still have a coupon with a view free rental days I never used. If you have one too, make sure you use it soon. Who knows what they will do once the deal gets approved.

The future will show us what Audi is doing with this service. So what do you think about the takeover? Are you excited or worried? It’s not always good when a big corporation takes over a small business.

Just in case you want to give Silvercar a try, please consider using my referral code. This will give you and me $25 after you completed your first rental.

Read more about it on the Silvercar Blog or Audi Press Release.

And no, this is not an April Fools Day Hoax!

Audi, Rental Car, Silvercar
Condor is new Alaska Airlines Mileageplan Partner
BMW Ultimate Driving Experience Tour 2017
0 0 votes
Article Rating
Subscribe
Notify of
guest

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

5 Comments
Newest
Oldest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

[…] early 2017 came around and Audi acquired Silvercar. When I wrote about the acquisition, I already guessed if Audi will just dissolve Silvercar into… Read more »

[…] service is a great idea, but service areas are very limited so far. With this service Silvercar, which is owned by Audi now, is… Read more »

[…] for rentals starting September 24, 2018. You are able to rent an Audi A4, A5 Cabriolet or Q5. Audi itself bought Silvercar about 1.5 years… Read more »

[…] next-gen and Audi-owned rental car company is now introducing a new car class in its fleet nationwide at 9 markets. As of […]

[…] Silvercar just got acquired by Audi itself recently and it’s great to see that they move forward and not just buy Silvercar and close… Read more »

5
0
Would love your thoughts, please comment.x
()
x