A rather strange trend has been seen in Japanese car rental companies, where many clients are renting cars, however don’t seem to be driving the cars at all, or in some cases, have an unusually low mileage. 

While it’s one thing to have a car and not use it on a daily basis, the main purpose of renting a car is to have it when you need to get to a specific place.

Car rental companies also have it in their best interests that renters will travel the longest possible distance so that they make more of a profit. 

When many successful car rental companies started to notice a significant decrease in mileage, they started to worry and could not understand what had caused this. After doing some research, they were shocked to find out that people were actually using these cars for everything but driving, with a survey showing that every one out of eight users rented a car with purposes other than driving.

Many people were found to have rented a car to have a place to rest in or even spend the night in. Other’s claimed that it serves them as a comfortable and quiet place to make private phone calls or to use as a workspace. Some explained that they wanted the rental car to have lunch in, watch television, and even to put on their Halloween costumes. 

Since renting a car has become so affordable and accessible, costing a mere 400 yen for every half hour, many people have simply decided that it’s worth it even if it’s not for transportation purposes. 

This is similar to what happened back in 2011 after the tsunami, where people started to rent cars just to charge their smartphones. 

Who knew that a car could serve so many useful purposes?