Road Tripping Europe with Renault Eurodrive
When planning our trip we explored various transportation options: the traditional backpacking and train trip, one where we would bus or fly to new destinations, or one where we would drive ourselves thousands of kilometers around Europe. For us, our preference was easy - we love road trips! We travel really well together, we enjoy making pit stops and taking scenic routes, and we love having our own space. We knew we wanted to have a vehicle to take us around on our journey, and once we finalized that option, we needed to figure out how we could make that work. The challenge was finding an option that would allow us to have a vehicle for a long duration but not cost an arm and a leg.
Since we are both Canadians and neither one of us is a citizen of an EU country or the UK, and since we would not have a long-term residence or job while we were in Europe, we couldn’t seem to find an option that would allow us to purchase and register a vehicle. If we wanted to have a car, it seemed like our only option was a car rental or long-term lease. Fortunately, we found the perfect solution through Renault Eurodrive. We wanted to share our experience with others who may be considering a similar trip, or for travellers who spend more than 3 weeks in Europe and would like to explore an option that isn’t through a rental car company.
What is the Renault Eurodrive long-term lease?
A long-term lease through Eurodrive is simply a long term car rental. If you meet the criteria for the program you can lease the vehicle for any length of time between 21 days (3 weeks) and 185 days (roughly 6 months). During this time you are the owner of the car. You have the registration in your name, you carry the owner document for the vehicle, and you are responsible to fill up with gas or diesel. The car comes with a guaranteed buy back, which means at the end of your lease Renault owns the vehicle again and it is no longer in your name.
The long-term lease through Renault is an option for travellers who are visiting Europe and meet the following criteria:
They are a resident outside the European Union
Have plans to travel in Europe between 21 days and 6 months
Have a valid drivers license in their home country, and you have to have held it for over one year
You must not be in Europe for business purposes
You must be over 18 the day the vehicle is delivered
Benefits of the Renault Eurodrive Program
At first glance the Eurodrive program seemed like a good fit, but finding a car option for us was the first step. There are a lot of other pieces that come with having a vehicle – insurance, emergency support, flexibility to travel throughout Europe without restrictions, and the option to have two drivers. The Renault option addressed these issues for us, and we will break each of them down into a little more detail:
Insurance is included in the lease: Multi-risk insurance with no deductible is included in the lease package, and this made us feel safe and covered if anything happened to us while we were on the road. It was also great to have it included in the package so we didn’t need to worry about setting up third party coverage. Renault took care of the application at the same time as registering and ordering the vehicle. It was a smooth and easy process.
Includes 24/7 emergency response: In addition to full insurance, we were given a 24/7 Emergency Response number to call if we ever experienced issues with our vehicle. It was great to know we would have support if we got a flat tire in the middle of nowhere, or if we had a maintenance issues while on our trip.
No kilometer maximums: This benefit may be one of the best! Since we planned to cover a lot of ground, it was important that we could be free to drive as much as possible. We traveled over 15,000km in our first 2 months, so having an unlimited option was perfect for us.
Limited country restrictions: You can drive to over 42 countries in Europe with your lease. This was a fantastic option for us, as all of our planned countries were included. The only countries we were considering that were not included were Moldova and Albania, however these were not difficult to exclude, and the restriction had an insignificant impact to our overall plans.
Flexible pick and drop off locations: There are 29 pick up and drop off centers located throughout Europe. Most of them are in France or around Western Europe, but there are plenty of options depending on where you plan to start and end your journey. The centers also arrange to pick you up from the airport, and drop you off at the airport or train station after you’ve returned your vehicle. That little touch is really appreciated so we did not need to arrange to find a taxi or Uber once we landed or returned our vehicle.
Includes GPS: A GPS screen was included in our vehicles. It was an important feature for us so when we were choosing a vehicle we made sure a GPS was outlined as an included feature of the model we selected.
Includes multiple drivers: The cost of the lease includes multiple drivers at no extra cost. This is a great option for couples and groups who are travelling together, and a great savings opportunity compared to a car rental company. There are also no extra fees for young drivers below the age of 25, as you may experience with other vehicle rentals.
No hidden fees: You pay for your lease in advance – a deposit when you book the lease online, and the second part a few days before the start of your trip. After those payments there are no extra charges, no security deposit, no credit card imprints, no extra fees for anything – unless you extend your trip. Note – depending on which country you pick up your vehicle in, there may be local permits required for all vehicles. For example, we needed to purchase a 5 euro permit in Germany so this was paid upon our arrival, but it was to comply with local traffic requirements, not because it was an extra Renault fee.
Overall condition of the vehicle: The vehicle you receive from Renault is brand new! You are the first driver of the vehicle, and in our case the car had less than 10km on it when we picked it up from the centre. The cars are very clean and there is even a little welcome gift. It is important to note that the car does not come with a full tank of gas. There is enough to get you to a nearby gas station, but they communicate this very well and even help direct you to the nearest station so you can fill up as soon as you live the centre.
Vehicle options to fit your needs: Renault has many different vehicle choices depending on your preferences. Everything from a small compact car to a larger passenger van. You can also select options such as diesel or gas, manual or automatic, and car accessories (such as child and baby seats). All of the prices and options are available online, so finding a car to fit your needs and your price point is very easy. For example, we realized we could save over 400 euros by having a manual car instead of an automatic.
Ability to purchase the vehicle: This wasn’t something that was important to us, but it is a great option provided as part of the program. If you love your vehicle so much that you would like to purchase it, Renault can arrange for your to purchase the vehicle after your trip. There isn’t too much information on the type of discount you would recent for purchasing a “used” vehicle, but there is likely some sort of discount and tax advantage to purchasing the vehicle after you have driven it around on your trip.
In addition to the program benefits, the website and application process is user friendly and easy to navigate (Click here to go to the Renault Eurodrive website). Online you can find multiple brochures and details about the program, all of which provide valuable information to determine if the Renault Eurodrive program is right for your needs. You can also price a vehicle based on the length of your rental, size of your vehicle, specifications, and accessories. It was really helpful for budgeting purposes, and we could experiment with the start and end of our trip based on which pick up and drop off locations may impact the overall cost of the lease.
Once you’ve made the decision to book, the online process and forms you need to complete are very straight forward. You work closely with a representative in Canada, so the time difference is minimal and you can have your rental confirmed quite quickly. On average it took about 2 days from our original inquiry to confirmation of our booking. Once it is confirmed you receive a few emails with your confirmation documents and more details on the program. It was a very smooth process for us.
Short Falls of the Program
Overall our experience through Renault met all of our needs. We’d probably rate our whole experience a 90%+. We would do it again without hesitation, and we recommended it to everyone we met on our travels, as well as friends and family planning trips to Europe that exceed 3 weeks. However, there are a few areas that didn’t go as smoothly as we hoped:
GPS limitations: Both vehicles we had came with GPS, however the GPS was programmed with specific countries. Unfortunately, only about half of our countries were listed, and we were unable to program the disk to include more countries. We stopped by a Renault shop when we were in Germany, but they were not able to eject and download more countries for us. We ended up buying a TomTom, but if you are relying on this as your only GPS, you may want to ask about this feature in advance to make sure your required countries are available.
Pro-active maintenance issues: We were super lucky and didn’t run into any issues that required us to use our insurance. However, we did notice a tire bump about 3 months into our first rental. We still had a month to go before returning the vehicle, so we called the support line to get advice on whether or not we should have the tire serviced. Our fear was that the tire could burst and become an emergency, so we wanted to be pro-active and fix it before it was an issue. We had a few phone calls and it seemed like the call centre was set up to handle emergencies and not inquiries. A few calls went unanswered, likely because it wasn’t urgent, and when we finally were directed to a shop we were told they could only fit us in for an appointment in 4 weeks. So we took a chance and continued to drive. It worked out fine in the end, and there were no issues when we returned the vehicle, but it didn’t seem as helpful as we hoped.
Information regarding regular maintenance: Our North American SUV has a gas engine and needs an oil change at least once every 6,000 km. With a diesel engine we weren’t sure when we needed an oil change, and it was hard for us to find any information on this. We emailed our Canadian contact to ask, and they responded within 1 business day letting us know that we didn’t need to worry about an oil change until we approached the 30,000km mark. We didn’t hit that high, but we felt that it was good information to have, especially for those who will have the car for a long period of time.
Unorganized pick and drop off: It is very handy that you are able to organize a pick up from the airport when you land. You provide your flight information, and you confirm pick up a few days in advance, however the details are not very specific. When we landed we didn’t really know where to go or where we would meet them. Part of us expected to see a big welcome sign with our name on it, but it was definitely less formal. When we landed we needed to borrow a phone to call the pick up office, and then we were given instructions to meet. The same thing happened for our drop off. For both drop offs we were there before the agent and had to wait a little while. Everything went smoothly once we met up, however we were lucky that we had phones and were able to contact the right people at the meeting place.
Limited Eastern European presence: Although there are 29 pick up and drop off locations throughout Europe, most of them are in France and Western Europe. Germany is about as far East as you can get, so that really limited our pick-up and ending locations. As Renault is a French company, it is cheaper for you to start and end your lease in France. For us it could cost an extra 300 euros to have a pick up and/or drop off outside of France, and that would have a large impact on our transportation budget. It also makes it difficult if you run into an emergency and need to end your trip early. If you are in Eastern Europe, you need to drive yourself to a drop off location, and that could be quite far depending on where you are. Also, we were super fortunate to be able to end our trip early and drop off in London, England at the end of 2018. As of 2019, Brexit discussions have caused Renault Eurodrive to close the London location, so now there are no UK options for pick up and drop off.
Length of trip limitations: The qualifications of this program are very clear – it is not intended for people who plan to work in Europe. However, we felt that it missed an option for folks like us. People who do not plan on working, but also plan on spending more than 6 months in Europe. Because it has a 6 month maximum, we had to be a little “creative” with our leases. We did the first lease in Sharleen’s name, and rented it for the first half of our journey. We had the first vehicle from the beginning of May to early September. We then picked up our second vehicle, but this time put it in Darrell’s name. We knew this was a bit of a risk, because we had been in Europe for over 6 months at this point, but our hope was that there wouldn’t be an issue by having it in a different name. We experienced no issues doing it this way, however we did consider it to be a “creative” solution to meet our needs.
As mentioned previously, we were so happy with our experience with Renault, and we highly recommend it to anyone looking to explore Europe by car. It was the perfect transportation option for us, and we have no regrets about it at all! If you have further questions about our transportation around Europe, please don’t hesitate to ask!
