Mike Swan hopes to have 60 electric vehicles in his rental fleet at Localmotion Ltd on Happy Valley Road in Devonshire by next year.

“We are at 15 micro cars, and will be at 19 by July,” Mr Swan said. “We have an allocation from Government of 34 cars. We could theoretically increase to 200, but we don’t want to go that high.”

He is working to secure space in a couple of spots around the island for an increased fleet.

When he created Localmotion, his business plan was a simple one.

“I thought I would buy a few cars, generate some revenue, then buy some more to grow, organically,” Mr Swan said. “I borrowed money from my uncle to buy my first four cars. I am extremely grateful to him. Other than that, we are self-financed. We don’t owe the bank any money.”

To date, he has sold close to 30 micro cars and has done more than 1,000 rentals.

He said over the past six years in operation they have encountered “substantial issues” moving ahead.

To start with, the pandemic set them way back.

“We went back to subsistence salaries,” Mr Swan said. “Fortunately, during Covid-19, we got some long-term rentals. We cut our rental rates way back just to break even, just so we could keep things turning over.”

Rental rates were $140 a day for the Bermi400, including insurance. However, he was forced to slash the rate to $35 a day, including insurance.

Today’s rates are $160 a day for the Bermi400 and $170 for the XEV Yoyo Max. They are all two-seaters, but he is interested in four-seaters.

The next problem was shipping snafus caused by the global health crisis. At one point, his shipper stopped sending cars from China to New York so Mr Swan tried to get his cars sent to Baltimore and then trucked to New York, then brought over on the MV Oleander.

In 2021, a shipment of eight new cars stalled when the ship reached Maryland because the stevedores could not get the vehicles off the boat.

“They could not figure out how to release the brakes in the cars to drive them off the ship,” Mr Swan said. “So the cars stayed on the ship and went back to China and ended up in a customs warehouse there.”

A year and a half later those cars are still there.

“I have signed all the paperwork to get them released, but it is dragging and dragging,” Mr Swan said.

In the meantime, he has purchased eight more cars, which arrived in January. So far, four have sold. The others are out for rental. The new cars, XEV Yoyos, are Italian-designed cars that are 3D printed in China.

“We call them the Yoyo Max,” he said. “They have air conditioning and heat and the windows close. We also find that these cars drive a little smoother than our Bermi400s.”

Mr Swan’s plan is to have a three-tiered fleet of premier, standard and budget rental cars.

Their premier car will be called the Hurrcn and will get about 200 miles on a charge. It will be two feet longer than the cars they have now and about a foot wider.

His standard car will be called the Swizzle and will get about 100 miles on a charge.

By comparison, the Bermi400, gets 50 to 60 miles per charge.

At the moment, they do not have an online booking system. They interact with customers through e-mail, through phone calls or in person.

“We will need an online booking system once we go to full fleet, but right now you have to call, e-mail or come by in person,” Mr Swan said.

He thinks the personal touch is one of the reasons they have a large, repeat client base.

For the past four years, he has been lobbying the Government to allow a second car on an assessment number, as long as it is electric and a micro car.

“We have so many people who want to buy these cars as a second car for their kids or grandparents,” he said.

He thought it would not increase traffic on the roads because most people would simply drive them to work, and they would spend most of the day in a parking lot.

So far, he has had no success in this regard, despite making five different submissions to the Government.