Background:
Silvercar, is a rental car company that only rents out silver Audi A4’s, A5’s, and the SUVs Q5’s and Q7. They also aim to make rental cars hassle free with free toll tracking, WiFi, and fair refueling prices ($9.95 fee, plus market rate on fuel you used).
In 2017, Audi fully acquired Silvercar, and as of now in 2021, they shifted from shutting down their airport locations to moving operating to existing Audi dealerships. Currently, Silvercar has 31 locations across the US. While not the most convenient for airport travelers, there are some dealerships located quite close to airports, in particular- Orange County (SNA), Ontario (ONT) and San Jose (SJC) are all served by an Audi dealership within 5 miles from the airport. Depending on comparable prices across the other rental agencies, it might be worth a quick Uber of Lyft to the Audi dealership.
We have rented from Silvercar before, and had a pretty good experience back in 2018 renting an Audi A4, when Silvercar still operated out of airports.
Booking:
My family recently got a new Audi e-tron to try out for a lease last year, and with that purchase I found out I would get 7 days of Silvercar rental for free as part of the Always Audi Program! Pretty cool offer.
So we used 3 rental days from the Always Audi Program for our recent August road trip to Northern California, and the Q7 was available for my dates. You can use Always Audi free days on any car available from the A4 to the Q7.
Normal cash rates were $160 a day for the Q7 which is high but also quite normal given the current rental car situation going on.
When applying the Always Audi free days, you are still responsible for some taxes/fees, so while the $160 per day was waived, for the 3 day rental we were still on the hook for about $40 in taxes/fees.
Delivery to You:
Silvercar has a service called “Delivery to You” at certain locations where they can deliver the car to you within a set radius (15/20 miles). This service does start at a $50 additional charge and unfortunately won’t take you to the airport. We requested for the service online after our booking to see if it was available, and cool enough it was!
We opted for this so the car could get delivered straight to our house. It worked out great, and totally worth the $50 roundtrip cost.
Essentially, Silvercar will call you the day before to confirm your drop off time, and they will come deliver the car, you scan the QR code on the car with the Silvercar app, you click some boxes and then you’re good to go! No paperwork needed. Just make sure all of your information is up-to-date on the app (credit card, driver’s license) as I’ve heard reports the app can be glitchy. But we didn’t have any problems, it probably helped we have rented before and had a profile already.
When they delivered the car it was essentially two player mode with one person driving a separate car and one driving our vehicle. Once they both arrived, the one driving our vehicle started cleaning the car again before handing it off.
Then for pickup, they quickly check the car, clean it up, and take it back. Easy no hassle!
The Car:
It was nice to have an SUV for a road trip, and the car had navigation and heated seats. The car also had Sirius XM radio, and WiFi. The WiFi was a bit spotty at times, but still a nice feature to have. CarPlay is also available, which is nice because the Audi navigation is quite horrendous.
The car was a 2019 model Q7 (gray, not silver lol) and I was a bit surprised that it already had 50,000 miles on it. Normally at traditional rental car companies I don’t remember them having that many miles on them.
The car can technically fit 7, but the 2 seats in the third row have really poor legroom, so it’s more designed for smaller kids in that back row.
The Verdict:
I enjoyed my Silvercar experience and was happy that I could use some of my free day credits! The “Delivery To You” program was great and loved how it could be sent right to my house.
Have any of you rented from Silvercar? Share your experiences below!
Cheers,
Ty
Have any questions? Comment below or email me at takeofftotravel@gmail.com. You can also view all my other posts here! Thanks for stopping by!
I have rented multiple times from SilverCar. Under the old SilverCar program it was flawless. Under the new Audi program it was less than stellar. It took me over 30 minutes at the Audi dealership to do what I did in 5 minutes at a dedicated SilverCar location. And it costs around double the old cost. Somewhat disappointed. I guess the old SilverCar was too good to be true.
Oh no, sorry to hear it took so long! Hopefully they fix that. Thanks for sharing.