"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,"said a 31-year-old male company employee who lives in Saitama Prefecture, close to Tokyo.
“Usually the only place I can take a nap while visiting my clients is a cybercafe in front of the station, but renting a car to sleep in is just a few hundred yen (several dollars), almost the same as staying in the cybercafe.”
Easy accessibility is a big advantage of car-sharing services. Customers can reserve vehicles any time 24 hours a day on their smartphones for immediate use.
It only costs around 400 yen to use one for 30 minutes that can be picked up at one of the firm's more than 12,000 parking places across Japan.
Those advantages likely lead more consumers to use rental automobiles for unusual uses.
Survey results by other firms show the number of customers who rent cars for reasons besides driving is steadily rising.
NTT Docomo Inc., which operates a vehicle-sharing service, found in a 2018 survey of 400 customers that one out of every eight users rented automobiles for purposes other than transportation.
An overwhelmingly large number of respondents said they slept or rested in vehicles, followed by customers who said they used cars as spots to talk with friends, family and business clients on the phone.