Using Kyte for car rentals

As I mentioned in my post about Turo, the huge fleet cuts rental car companies made during the pandemic have left people scrambling to find a rental car as the world quickly returns to its old travel patterns. We've had trouble finding any cars at our favorite location (Albany Amtrak) and when we do find cars elsewhere, they're always really expensive.

I'd heard about a new car rental start-up called Kyte that completely does away with the concept of car rental lots and instead has an employee come to you on both ends of the trip to deliver and pick-up the car. We were planning a drive up the California coast through Big Sur and figured we'd give Kyte a shot. 

Long story short: it was super convenient and really reasonably priced, especially for a 1-way trip. 

We booked our trip to start at 10am from the apartment where we were staying in West Hollywood. We got an alert that our delivery person (called a "Kyte Surfer" in their lingo) would be a little late, but the app kept us apprised of their live ETA. Our surfer arrived at 10:45 and we were checked in and ready to drive by 10:50. Our trip ended 3 days later at a hotel in the heart of downtown San Francisco, and the Kyte Surfer had no trouble picking up the car from our hotel valet when the rental end time arrived. (It was a small hotel and I'd made hand-off arrangements directly with the lone valet captain before I left for dinner). 

Avocado nav unit not included 🥑🗺

We did have one hiccup: we'd reserved an SUV and we got a notice ≈24 hours before our rental that they had no SUVs and that a sedan would be swapped in. We were given a grace period to cancel with a full refund if this didn't work for our needs. The sedan option was fine and Kyte automatically issued us a refund for the difference in price. (Kyte's only car choices are: "Economy", "Sedan", and "SUV").

keeping the choices real simple...

Not bad for a three-day, 1-way rental with liability insurance!

Everyone I've mentioned Kyte to says something about "Enterprise picking you up". I've only ever done that once, at a rural Vermont Amtrak station, and I had to get in the car with the employee, drive back to the Enterprise office with them, and then go through all of the normal car rental lot paperwork procedures. I can't imagine they'd "come pick you up" if you were in midtown Manhattan... or drop you off there. With Kyte, our driver had a scooter in the trunk and he zipped off to his next client as soon as he'd completed the quick mobile check-in procedure and ID verification with me.

I did notice, though, that airport pickup and drop-offs require meeting at a designated point near the airport (I'm assuming to avoid running afoul of airport rental car regulations). At SFO, for example, they meet you at a nearby subway station's Park and Ride lot. A full list of the various airport drop-off locations is here. 

For those of us who don't own a car (and therefore don't have our own liability policies), it's nice to see Kyte spelling out the insurance coverage clearly. This is in stark contrast to Lyft's new-ish car rental platform where they abjectly refuse to tell you if you're covered for liability or not.

Kyte in currently available in 13 US cities. 

If you'd like to use my promo code (briank4) to sign up, we both get $50 in credits.