ASAP, but given that often you’re in a hurry that isn’t likely to be timely. Surprising somebody with an EV when they aren’t expecting one is just bad business. Rental companies who do that are at fault.
Never looked at the OP, or the referenced article. I’ve been commenting on @GDavenport’s experience. If I were given a surprise Chevy Bolt I wouldn’t be happy either.
-IGU-
EVs are rapidly going mainstream. And the rental companies are on board (I suspect they will enjoy the lower average maintenance costs). So pretty soon everyone who rents cars regularly will have to get used to receiving an EV periodically.
It’s like were in a hall of mirrors. Everyone only sees the reflection from their point of view.
While we’ve talked (and agreed) that EVs should not be foisted upon a person who is unprepared for it, we have not aligned on other important points.
I had to change my route to recharge. I didn’t get to go the scenic route or properly benefit from free time due to charging limitations, and time constraints.
I had to recharge. period.
These aren’t benefits, no matter how you try to slice it. Even if I had known all the things about recharge points and route planning, I would have had to make compromises.
Instead of a lovely drive up curvy roads off the beaten path on the way to central PA, (better views, fewer miles, less time) I took a toll-based interstate, had a larger detour, spent 1000% more time on a refuel which I wouldn’t have needed at all in an ICE.
When the battery technology or the experience improves, I’ll reconsider joining the club.
For the record, I was in the pro-Tesla club beforehand and considered buying an S as late as 2021. I couldn’t convince myself that it would be a good first car, so didn’t buy. This rental has definitely provided some perspective.
If you are an electric car owner, you may have been making compromises since day 1 and have forgotten the freedom and capability still offered in superior ICE offerings. No amount of propaganda is going to influence that perspective (gained from 1st hand experience).
Serial TSLA investor, although, not currently.
Sometimes it is hard to tell. 
Andy
Always safest to go with sarcastic. 
What you say is very true. The enthusiasts, early adopters etc are going to not be too concerned about a some restrictions or need to plan ahead in order to gain the benefits of cleaner air, less noise, smelly gas stations, oil politics and CO2 reduction.
In the US the lack of universal easy access to fast charging stations is being addressed at an increasing pace. And now that Ford and GM have realized that the Tesla Superchargers are a much better system (easier to use, more locations and better maintained) the fast charger build out will accelerate but still take a few years to have satisfied your trip needs.
(All that said I am going on a 3000+ mile trip not including side trips in a few weeks to areas with few Superchargers. My baseline route is only ~100 miles different than the ideal)
I actually don’t understand the thinking of the rental car companies on EVs. Maybe they have data that is not being shared? Maybe most rentals don’t travel beyond the range of the EVs and rarely need to be charged by customers. Or maybe the maintenance is so low that they are OK with some unsatisfied customers.
I’ve rented cars (never an EV) mostly for business over 100 times at least and I’ve had a few that had quirks that took a while to figure out. I think the Tesla would be much more difficult if you never drove one.
Mike
Talking with an acquaintance at a car show over last weekend. He is a hard core VW guy, and eyeing the Buzz, except he doesn’t want the extra huge one being touted for the US. He prefers the smaller version offered in the EU.
He must have missed the bit about GM and Ford jumping on the Tesla bandwagon. I suggested that he might want to hold off a few years, until VW gets on board with the emerging charging standard, rather than have an oddball EV with thin charging support.
Steve…“is it Tesla compatible?”
The original article cites three explicit reasons why rental car companies are loading up on EV’s. First, as you point out, they have lower maintenance cost. Second, they seem to hold their value really well on the resale market - and for a company that buys a lot of cars and then sells them after a year or two, that’s a huge benefit. And the third is that is a strategic choice by manufacturers, who have been entering into “partnerships” with rental companies, as a way of speeding the number of folks who have an experience driving EV’s.
The OP specifically notes the irony of that last objective, since getting hit with a surprise rental EV is a really bad introductory experience and is unlikely to foster consumer demand.
Cynics might suspect a fourth reason - selling to rental car fleets has traditionally been a really good way for car companies to move unwanted metal. But I seriously doubt that’s the reason. All of the domestic EV makers (including and especially Tesla) have had robust demand and high prices for their vehicles throughout the last few years. There just hasn’t been a time period when automakers have had to dispose of low-demand inventory for EV’s.
I’ll doubt that reason; rental companies rarely own a car more than 2-3 years, and “maintenance” during that period is minor, if it happens at all. Maybe a couple oil changes. Anything else? You don’t change spark plugs, timing chain or anything else and generally an OEM warranty will cover most things anyway.
I’ll doubt that reason as well. As we have seen, prices for new EVs are coming down. That inevitably craters the prices of used, as has happened now twice. It’s like when PC prices kept coming down, “old” PC prices came down even faster.
Agreed. Maybe the logic was “get them where they can test drive” but it’s a really bad idea to force people into a rental of a system they’re unfamiliar with, especially if they’re not expecting it. It’s like asking a guy to borrow his adding machine and he hands you an iPad open to Excel.
Pretty bad idea, I think.
Both things can be true. Rental car companies typically hold the cars they own (as opposed to lease/buyback deals) for about 50K miles - so they’re selling them before they get to the point where maintenance costs start kicking in and warrantees start running out. If EV’s do have lower maintenance costs, though, the benefit will be in being able to hold the cars longer - not having to turn your fleet over every 2-3 years, and maybe get some more mileage out of them.
That seems to be the case for Hertz, any way:
For the rental car company, depreciation expense from EVs is lower than internal-combustion engine vehicles because Hertz keeps electric cars longer, and partly because they are cheaper to operate and anchor rideshare programs, another area where Hertz keeps cars longer. Rental car companies like Hertz and its rival Avis Budget Group keep them longer, Zaffino said, and at least for now, charge a premium price for many EVs, though a Hertz spokeswoman declined to confirm an average price for EVs or gasoline-powered vehicles.
EV prices have been very volatile - as were ICE prices there for a long time also. We had a period where used vehicle prices were really high as new cars were difficult to get, both for EV’s and ICE’s. The question isn’t whether used EV prices are coming down now (they are), but whether over the longer term the average depreciation - in different time periods - will be higher or lower for EV’s. The rental car companies seem to think it’s lower for EV’s.
Digging in a little more, there’s also perhaps a little regulatory incentive/COVID response going on here as well. As noted in the Hertz article, renting/leasing to rideshare operators became a big part of rental car companies’ business model coming out of COVID. Uber subsidizes drivers to use EV’s rather than ICE cars, aiming to have a 100% electric fleet by 2030 - which isn’t going to happen, but goals are goals, and they’re backing it with non-trivial money. Uber probably believes (correctly IMHO) that they need to green up their operations, since modal shifts and deadheading push up the carbon footprint of a rideshare model enormously compared to the status quo.
Force, yes. Optional, perhaps a great idea. I had a week-long rental from National (where you can pick any car and go) and when I got to the car lot, saw that they had a Polestar 2. I quickly looked up whether or not our resort had a charging station and upon determining it did, I decided to risk taking the Polestar. Turned out to be a great decision for me and perhaps for Polestar (I might be in the market again for one). I say risk because the hotel had only six charging stations and occasionally they were all full. If I had to forgo or change any plans because of my inability to charge, I would certainly have been turned off from owning an EV - but at least it would have been my fault and not Nationals.
I think to the rental companies, the cost of maintenance isn’t the cost of the maintenance itself but rather the downtime of the vehicle. An oil change takes 30 minutes or so and $30 or so, but bringing the vehicle to the garage, getting in line, doing the paperwork, having a manager check everything out, etc takes time and means that that vehicle can’t go out the door during that time.
Yes, so it’s hard to see why you continue to assert things from ignorance.
No, you thought you had to change your route because you didn’t know any better.
Well, probably not the way you think. One of the misperceptions that’s common is that charging the car requires more time and effort than gassing up. Actually, it usually takes less.
When on the road, the best way to charge with trivial time or effort is to stay places where you can charge overnight (no, this probably won’t cover all charging, but it would have for you). In your position, the first thing I would have done is make sure they provided me with a charging cable and adapter(s). Then I’d ask the rental company for a fully charged car. If they couldn’t/wouldn’t give me one, I’d go to the nearest convenient supercharger and charge it up. Then I’d call the place I’m staying the night and ask them if I can charge my car there. If not, I’d switch to a place that did (there are many).
Actually, my experience in traveling for business tells me that I’d actually start by calling the office and telling them I’d gotten stuck with an EV and ask them to find me a place to stay where I could charge overnight.
It’s not hard, it’s just different. And, as with any travel, ignorance can cause hassles.
-IGU-
Even if the answer is yes, it’s not that simple. Because when you get there, the chargers may be in use by other people. Two weeks ago I stayed at a hotel with 2 chargers, the Tesla one (NACS) was taken when I arrived (after all, it was 3:30am!) so I had to use the slower charger with my adapter. Then last week I stayed at a hotel and got lucky, the Tesla (NACS) charger was available (at 1am!), and I used it all night to reach close to 100% by morning when we continued our journey.
But in most places, it is really easy to make sure your Tesla has enough charge to get where it is going. That feature is built-in to the car software, just tell it where you are going and follow it’s directions. It’ll bring you to a supercharger along the way when necessary. And the stops are usually very short, just enough to use the bathroom and perhaps buy a coffee. A few months ago, on the FL turnpike, I started charging (250kW charger FTW), walked into the rest stop, urinated, and then got in line at Dunkin to buy [what they call] coffee. While waiting for my coffee, my Tesla app told me that charging will complete in a few minutes, so I bumped the limit up from 80 to 90%, and when I got out to the car, it was at 86% or so. And then we were on our way.
IGU simply ignores the fact that it’s not convenient to plan out every aspect of your ride ahead of time. I often don’t know what hotel I’m going to stay at. I drive as long as I feel like and then find one; they’re everywhere after all. ICE cars have no such issues; wherever you are, there’s a gas station, and filling up is so trivial that actual people now do it themselves!
Someday it may be as easy with EV’s, but it is definitely not today. Not close. (For IGU and enthusiasts it may be “worth it”, but that is not the same thing.)
Yea that doesn’t sound like a hassle at all. In fact what I would do is just buy solar panels and mount them on the roof so that I could charge the car while driving.
Andy
I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that calling around trying to rebook your hotel at the last minute is actually more time and effort than gassing up.
When we stayed at that hotel two weeks ago at 3:30am, we chose the hotel at 2:45am when I was getting tired of driving. We still searched for a hotel with a charger. When we stayed at the hotel last week at 1:00am, we chose it at 11:30pm. Again, still searched for a hotel with chargers. Why not? Most hotel chains allow it as a search parameter.
For normal people, it is closer than you think. When I say “normal people”, I mean people who stop every 2 or 3 hours to either stretch their legs, use the bathroom, have a snack, take a brief break from driving, walk the dog, etc, or some combination of these. I’ve done the Atlanta to Miami run straight a number of times, but driving 9 hours straight is no fun at all, and at my age I certainly have no desire to do it. When my kids do the driving, they can do a 5 or 6 hour stretch straight, but I just won’t do that anymore. About 15 years ago, I did the 640 mile drive in exactly 9 hours with one solitary stop for 4 minutes to fill up. Meanwhile all 5 kids were sleeping in the back of the minivan for the entire 9 hour trip!
As far as “worth it”, that’s an individual thing. Last week and a half I drove 1600 miles and used 433 kWh. Out of those, 120 kWh were from superchargers at about $0.35/kWh, 150 kWh were at $0.13/kWh, and the remainder were at chargers that had no additional fee (movie theater, supermarket, Topgolf, library, etc). That comes to a total of $87. In my previous sedan, that trip would have used 94 gallons of gasoline (regular), at $3.29/gal, that would have cost me over $300. So, for a regular person, over $300 versus under $100 is also part of the equation. You could argue that I chose more expensive hotels, and that would be true, but I choose more expensive hotels now anyway because I like the additional comfort (and the free higher quality breakfasts).
I gotta call BS on that one - at least the time portion.
I can fill my gas tank from nearly empty in about 5 minutes. I can’t fill any EV today in 5 minutes.
Now I do understand a bit of what you’re trying to say. The “right” way to fill an EV conveniently is to do so overnight or while at some other stop. In those limited conditions, the EV takes a moment of your time to plug it in and potentially deal with giving the charger your credit card information. In a minute or two, the charging is started and you are free to do something else while the car charges.
With a gas/diesel car, you need those same couple of moments to get started, but then the entire fill process in done in just a couple more minutes. There is no need to find something else to do.
But you can’t change the fact that it takes a decent chunk of time to fill an EV from anything close to empty. And even fast chargers such as Tesla’s still take 15 or 20 minutes to get you from nearly empty to around 75% charge. That’s 3 times longer than gas, and doesn’t actually fill you up. Can you do that at a lunch stop while traveling? Sure. But only if there is both a fast charger AND some place to eat at that location.
–Peter
You know, that’s probably not enough. I’d suggest covering a trailer in solar panels and drag that along to add to your charging capacity.
–Peter