Renting an electric Car - ease / difficulty finding charging stations?

[Robbie Cottam]

Hertz in west Hampton “upgraded” me to an electric car one night.

I got in it, it had 36 miles available.
The overpaid, under educated hertz employee told me to just go charge it at 11 at night…

Luckily our hotel wasn’t that far away and they had a charger…

That could have turned out very badly

 

[Mikey15]

I am not ready to rent an electric car.

I am throwing out the magic number of 26 hours before your flight leaves for home to devote your undivided attention to recharging the car. You might get it charged in 3 hours leaving you at T minus 23 (hours) to resume your vacationing -- sleep, theme park, meals, etc. But then you might not. If you only gave yourself hours in the single digits then you will be anxious trying to get the car charged.

If you need an extension cord for the 120 volt 12 ampere L1 charger the cord had better be heavy duty (14 gauge or fatter).. Otherwise the cord could overheat and stain the finish or the upholstery with molten plastic or rubber..

I’m not entirely sure where to begin with this hypothetical depiction of EV charging.

If you have an L2 charging option at your accommodations, you can plug it before bed and wake up to a charged car. If you’re out of all options other than L1 charging, and you have the mobile connector for it, you similarly would plug into an outdoor outlet on the building or lightpost and resume whatever dining / swimming / relaxing / sleeping you’d otherwise be doing. While you’re correct that an extension cord if needed should be an appropriate gauge, how does that have anything to do with upholstery? The plug is on the outside of the car.

And L2/L1 are just there if it makes sense to do. Every new / rental EV has L3 capability if you actually just need a quick charge somewhere to make it to the airport.

 

[kdonnel]

I am not ready to rent an electric car.

As an EV owner, I am not willing to rent an EV, though I did recently in a specific situaiton. I needed a car for just a few hours and the Polestar 2 from Hertz was only $25 for the day. I had the car for such a short period of time I did not need to charge to return it at the requested return level.

The uncertainty of charging in an unfamiliar area is just not worth it.

Tesla has a big advantage of a reliable DCFC network.

DCFC for every other brand is a crapshoot. I have never been stranded or had to resort to my third choice but I have not had an experience that resembles buying gas on a road trip.

At the moment I am in Panama City Beach, FL. The closest DCFC is nearly 50 miles away. There appear to be about 7 options for L2 but when you actually read about them on PlugShare.com you find out that they either don't work, are consistently blocked, or are located at EV hostile dealerships that do not provide public acces.

I am lucky that I am at a small condo that has a 110 outlet available. I charged at the DCFC 50 miles away on my way in knowing that I might not be able to charge again until I was leaving and back at the DCFC station in Chipley FL. A charging stop that if there was reliable DCFC available at my destination was totally unnecessary.

That little 110 outlet though will give me 3 miles an hour of charge. More than enough overnight to cover the little driving I will do during the day.

But having access to that 110 outlet is not a given. Having access to L2 charging at a hotel that advertises L2 charging is not a given. I have pulled up at hotels on other road trips and found the one or two chargers already occupied.

When it is a road trip I have planned that is fine.

When it is a car rental it is more planning then I want to do.

 

[herdtoDisney]

I was just on a road trip last month in Voltara (my Volt, which is a PHEV) and I actually didn't charge-I used gas-except when I was at my adult dc's home where I plugged in my level 1 charger. I did get a hotel on the road one night that had a charger, and I pulled in all excited and jumped out to find...a tesla connector

We really are in the wild west of away-from-home charging. It's actually why I bought a PHEV (plug-in electric hybrid) over an EV, at this time, because I make trips and I need to KNOW I can fuel. I think the only way I would rent a EV on vacation was if I staying somewhere that I could access a wall plug for the level one charger (like a house rental).

 

[ClapYourHands]

Yesterday I did a quick day trip and used Hertz EV special. Charging is a pain, and created a lot of stress that was not worth it. Maybe if I were there for a longer trip and staying someplace with a guaranteed overnight charge, but relying on public chargers during the day was a huge time-suck.

While you don’t HAVE to recharge if you’re not driving much, Hertz will charge a $35 recharge fee if you return it at less than 70% charged. The charge is higher if you return it less than 11%. Also, the car I had was set to stop charging at 90%, so there wasn’t much room to build a cushion. I have no idea how people who are doing a lot of driving on their last day get it back over 70% because there really isn’t the infrastructure for rapid charging.

I ended up downloading two apps because the charging stations I used were not on the same system. Disney doesn’t have many chargers. I went to a rapid charge station at Disney Springs, but there were only 4 chargers and they were full. Thought it was my lucky day because a car pulled out of one of the spots, but I couldn’t get the charger to work, and the driver who had pulled out came up and asked me advice about charging because she was unable to get it to charge, so I think it was just a faulty charger. I was able to charge at the top of the Orange garage (got the last of only 3 or 4 chargers there) but it required me to download another app, and this app had me prepay, which was confusing because I have no idea how much charge the car needed. Maybe it would be easier if I were an EV driver at home and understood the ins and outs, but I find gallons of gas much more straightforward.

 

[icc2515]

EV owner here. I would not hesitate to rent a Tesla in Orlando. That being said, if they try to give you anything besides a Tesla, say no, nope, no way. There is a supercharger about 8 miles from the airport. Leave yourself about 20 minutes to charge before you return the car. Always use the built in navigation, it will route you to a supercharger if you don't have enough juice to make the destination. Level 2 chargers are a joke. Half of them don't even work. Third party fast chargers are also mostly worthless as the rate of them being broken is high. There is a reason that Ford, GM, Volvo, Mercedes, and Nissan have decided to contract with Tesla for charging.

 

[AnnaKristoff2013]

When I was searching for info about charging the Tesla before return, I saw loads and loads of complaints about people picking up EVs that had little to no charge.

If these things sit for a long time between rentals I’m sure that depletes the charge too.

 

[kdonnel]

If these things sit for a long time between rentals I’m sure that depletes the charge too.

Not really.

Tesla and Rivian can have vampire drain due to Sentry and Gear Guard but I doubt those features are turned on for rentals.

Other brands of EV can sit for months and not lose more than a single percent.