Speaking of rental EVs, a co-worker arrived late in the evening during a business trip last month. Hertz offered him a Tesla Model X or a twelve-passenger van. So he took the Tesla. Except the next day, he found he couldn’t charge it using the charger in the parking garage next to the hotel. There may have been an adapter in the car, but it was in the glove compartment, which had been locked by a previous renter using a code unknown to the Hertz people and they had no way to reset it, so he swapped the car for a conventional ICE vehicle. It’s ridiculous that it was possible for a rental car customer to secure that compartment in a way that the rental car company wasn’t able to unlock.
Indeed.
My rental came without any charging cables or adapters. I figured they were expensive and easy to steal. But it sure would have been handy to plug into my friend’s house.
The rental market is one of the worst applications for EVs. The main advantage of an EV is for daily driving, starting full at your home and running around your town. When you go on a trip, you need to at least consider the charging situation. (Tesla makes it very easy, though). As much as I love my EVs, I 'd think twice about using one for a rental. Especially since it appears that rental companies don’t have their act together at this point.
I can imagine this is true. My first road trip with my EV was a little frustrating, and I did it on purpose to work the kinks out.
This is ridiculous.
That was meant to be “gave”, not “have”, of course.
Yes, it is ridiculous. They refuel their ICE cars, they could certainly plug in their EVs between trips. The car has a nominal range of 300 miles, which would have been plenty. It was also pretty annoying that they didn’t include a charging cable, but i can see why they might worry about theft.
We test drove the Niro, and it’s not a bad car. Pretty small in the grand scheme of things but fully functional as a daily commuter. It’s fast charging is a little limited by the technology, but as a daily commuter that shouldn’t be an issue.
I think we’re going with a Chevy Equinox because with the incentives available it’s about the same price as the Niro and much bigger and more comfortable. It’s not the best at fast charging either, but this will be my commuter car. We have a Ford Escape hybrid for longer trips, especially for skiing.
Small is good for me, especially if it has a tight turning radius. I like easy city parking.
Yeah, i think its “fast” charging is fairly slow. It charged nearly as fast at a regular type 2 charger. Maybe a factor of 2 difference. My next car is likely to be BEV, and used for everything except road trips, where the storage capacity and easy refilling of my existing ICE Subaru Forester will take over. If the rear seat is reasonably comfortable, the Niro might be a viable option for me. Plenty of range for anything other than a road trip, small, and it drove nicely. I’d check the crash test results and features before actually buying, but this made the “take another look” list.
We found the rear seats to be fairly comfortable, at the cost of cargo space. Not a bad trade off for a commuter car.
I’ve rented an EV twice on trips and both times it was great for me. Got the car fully (or nearly fully) charged, did not have to give it back charged, and both times the price was cheaper than the ICE equivalent. Once in SC and once in FL. I realize that my experiences may not be typical, but just to provide counterpoint anecdotes.
I should have been more precise. About half the time I rent a car, it’s basically from airport to hotel and maybe a few short side trips. I’d never use a full charge, and I’d love an EV. Other rental experiences would require charging, and that may or may not be an issue.
I must be drunk posting or something. Or the use of commas is not good enough in English. Parentheses work, though.
I drive in Unbridled mode (which doesn’t make me seasick), [but] without one pedal driving (because that makes me seasick).
Sorry, but unbridled sounds like full throttle mode on a Tesla (full power if you dare). I think “bridled” mode would fit you better and you might find one pedal driving works for you. We are typically in “chill mode” and one pedal driving works AWESOME. It really works so much better than we thought it could. If you come in hot and regen isn’t going to slow you down in time, don’t worry, Tesla will slow you down. Not that it comes to that often since I know our car now. I control it. But I know what it can do.
Unbridle: Get the feeling of downshifting, increased throttle response, a sporty steering feel…
Re: rentals
My most recent rental was in Houston for an Ioniq 5 from Enterprise. The experience was easy, easier than a comparable gas car. Some details…
- They gave me the option of completely being responsible for returning it fully charged, or charging a nominal “less than gas” rate if I returned it depleted. They waived anything if it was at least returned at 70% charged. I returned it at 55% and they still didn’t charge me anything.
- At the counter, I could check out an adapter cable, but since I was in a metro area with many local chargers, and stsying within metro, I opted not to at the recommendation of the desk person.
- They didn’t offer to familiarize me with the car, so I had to figure out all of the on/off lock/unlock start/quit obfuscated behaviors of the car model myself. The displays/GUI and buttons/knobs of the car were totally alien from the bare-bones mid-90s cars I was used to. How do I turn you off, I just want to turn you off!
Most of our big “road trips” have been from a destination airport, not home, so we’ve rented an EV almost every time. Typically because I was in the market and a two week test drive is a great way to learn about a car. Since I was test driving something specific each time I’d use Turo. It worked well. Most of the time we’d be renting from a “mom and pop” style rental company (i.e. they had half a dozen cars in their inventory). They’d know enough about the car to have detailed instructions, have it charged up correctly, etc, etc…
(Them knowing the perfect, uncrowded, right-by-the-gates, pickup and drop-off point was a huge bonus too: never been so quick in and out of ATL in a personal car, let alone a rental.)
Four years ago, I stated that I wouldn’t by an electric car because the money saved on gasoline didn’t cover the extra cost of the car. Now I ask, is this still the case? I’ve heard that they’ve come down in cost, that’s why I’m asking.
My current gas driven car gets about 26 MPG, and I spend about $40 a week in gas, and that varies of course as the price of gas varies.
Our BEV was less expensive than the PHEV that was on our shortlist (RAV4 Prime). The BEV was more expensive than the ICE we would’ve got - Subaru Forester. I haven’t done the math to see when the fuel for the Forester would end up costing us more than BEV.
That’s one logical way to evaluate the decision. However, you might also factor in the cost of maintenance, and the fact that driving an electric car is a much better experience (even noticed by someone like me, who never cared about cars very much except as a way to get from A to B).
Some quick research comparing a Nissan Kicks to a Nissan Leaf, both small four-door hatchbacks.
Kicks: vehicle is about $21k. Cost per mile is (4.00 $/gal)/(33 mi/gal) = $0.12 per mile.
Leaf: vehicle is about $28k. Cost per mile is (0.25 $/kWh)*(0.30 kWh/mi) = $0.08 per mile.
So, that’s a savings of about $0.04 per mile, which means $7k would require 175k miles to balance out.
But that number is very dependent on the vehicle and your local costs. For example, my cars being driven in SoCal:
Lexus RX450h: (5.00 $/gal)/(30 mi/gal) = $0.17 per mile.
Chevy Bolt: (0.08 $/kWh)*(0.25 kWh/mi) = $0.02 per mile.
Tesla Model 3: (0.08 $/kWh)*(0.20 kWh/mi) = $0.02 per mile.
You should do your math for the cars you’re considering in the area you live. For a fueled vehicle, the cost per mile is the price of a gallon of gas divided by its miles per gallon. For an electric vehicle, the cost per mile is the cost per kilowatt-hour multiplied by the kilowatt-hours per mile. See above for examples.
Two factors to the decision, one on each side of budget, in addition to @Pleonast’s fine cost evaluation.
In the pro BEV/PHEV - see what if any federal, state, or dealer incentives may be available beyond for purchase or lease, as I stated upthread, we secured $12000 in incentives with our PHEV (had to do a lease, but we’ll be buying out before the lease is up).
In the con for BEV/PHEV - get an estimate from an electrician - IMHO both are good with at home charging, or at least available/cheap apartment or at work charging, but in general adding a level 2 charger seems to run around $1500, but if your house or panel isn’t up to it (like mine) it might be closer to $10k (which of course, includes a new and needed panel for our house, but might break a short term budget).
Which is why we did the PHEV first, since it does fine on level 1 charging.
A timely question. This article is from 3 days ago.
It describes a small CUV that will be the same price in both ICE and BEV forms. BIG caveats: it is not released yet, so the prices may change; it will not be available in the US (at least initially); and it is from Stellantis.