Asleep at the wheel: Japanese rental cars used for anything but driving

Car rental companies in Japan have figured out why some customers are returning their vehicles with barely a mile on the clock.

Rather than travel from from A to B, as many as one in eight “drivers” are using their rental cars to grab forty winks, catch up on work or even brush up their language skills, according to industry surveys.

The unusual habits came to light after Orix Auto found a number of its 230,000 registered users were not driving their rented vehicles, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper reported.

Other rental firms noticed similar anomalies in their customers’ mileage records and approached them hoping to get to the bottom of the mystery.

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Times24, which has more than 1.2 million registered users, found some clients napped, worked or even used their rented vehicles as storage space for personal belongings when nearby regular lockers were full.

The Asahi quoted one respondent, a company worker in his early 30s, as saying: “I rented a car to eat a boxed meal that I bought at a convenience store because I couldn’t find anywhere else to have lunch.”

The newspaper cited the ease with which cars could be reserved online, noting that Times24 cars cost as little as 400 yen (£2.95) for half an hour and were available for collection from more than 12,000 locations across Japan.

NTT Docomo, which operates a similar service, found in a 2018 survey of 400 customers that one in eight did not rent cars to drive, with most of the non-motoring respondents saying they used them to sleep in or to talk on the phone to family, friends and business clients.

Some preferred to take advantage of the peace and quiet to watch TV or practise their singing or spoken English.

“Cars can be used as a private space,” a Docomo official told the Asahi. “People used our vehicles in more ways than we expected.”

Orix appeared to disapprove of people using its vehicles for anything other than driving, and reminded customers of the environmental harm caused by leaving engines running to power the air conditioning or heating while they snoozed or sang karaoke.

“Motorists should shut off their engines when they’re not driving, and we do not recommend that our customers rent vehicles for purposes other than traveling,” an Orix official said, according to the newspaper. “We believe it’s best for our cars to be used for driving.”

Orix Auto is one of several companies that allow registered users to reserve cars online and unlock their chosen vehicle with a prepaid card. For a monthly fee of 2,000 yen, the firm offers a standard car for as little as 200 yen for 15 minutes.

Anecdotal evidence suggests some users are taking advantage of the service’s low cost and convenience to nap while doing the rounds of client meetings on business trips or to escape bosses and other colleagues during lunch breaks. There has been a rise in the number of services – from karaoke to dining – catering to the solo customer.

The need for a restorative daytime snooze is clear. One survey conducted using fitness trackers in 28 countries found that Japanese men and women slept on average for just six hours and 35 minutes a night – 45 minutes less than the international average. That made them the most sleep-deprived of all the nations surveyed, a phenomenon blamed partly on punishing working hours and long commutes.

A separate poll by the health products maker Fuji Ryoki found that 92.6% of Japanese over the age of 20 said they were not getting enough sleep.