We went to Chicago last month to visit family. Our plans included multiple stays with different family members and we knew we were going to log a lot of miles on our rental car. We had wanted to try Silvercar, and with a lot of drive time ahead of us, this appeared to be the perfect opportunity. If you are not familiar with Silvercar, it's sort of like Uber and Zip Car gave birth to a luxury car rental company.

Essentially, you download an app and use it to reserve and pay for your rental car, which is always a Silver Audi A4. Once you arrive at the airport you use the app to contact Silvercar, and someone comes to pick you up in an Audi A4. Upon pickup, you proceed directly to Silvercar's off-property warehouse location.

During our ride to the Silvercar warehouse, the driver pointed out several things to Angelo who was in the front seat:

GPS - already programmed with the warehouse location for our return on Sunday
Satellite radio
EZ Pass, with no daily fee - you simply pay for any tolls that are deducted while you are driving the car
Car charger plug for use with your own cords - so you can charge apple and android phones
How to connect to the Wifi in the car
The closest gas station to the warehouse for refueling before drop off

When we got to the warehouse, this was what we saw:

At that point, we simply picked a car, scanned a QR code on the front window, and were ready to go. No protracted negotiations about upgrading, no prolonged litany of "extras" like roadside assistance, insurance, or pre-paid gas to wade through, although a pre-paid gas option was offered. Note: I did take an extra moment to present my driver's license so that I could also drive the car.

It was a great experience for us. True it was a little bit more expensive than some of the other options, but we found that it was right in line with the cost of a renting a premium car elsewhere.

As a point of reference, I priced Silvercar versus other car rental companies for an upcoming trip to Denver. For a four-day trip, Silvercar came in at $13 less for the duration than the lowest premium car from another rental car company, and there were other rental car companies charging $180 more for a comparable rental over the same dates. That may not always be the case, and you do have the option of saving on compact and other types of cars at other rental companies, so it really is a personal choice.

We followed the pre-programmed directions back to the warehouse at the end of our trip. Upon arriving at the warehouse, a member of the Silvercar staff jumped in to our car to take us back to the airport so we did not have to take our bags out of the car and load them into another vehicle, which was a nice touch. Overall we really enjoyed the experience, and will definitely use Silvercar again, especially for trips of a shorter duration.