Are you curious about electric vehicles but not ready to buy one yet? If you rent a car, you can get an idea of this – and some car rental companies offer discounts.
But ensuring a seamless experience with an electric vehicle, especially if you’re renting one for vacation, requires a lot of planning because, while fast-charging stations are more widely available than they were four years ago, they’re still not as ubiquitous as gas stations.
For now, an electric vehicle may be best suited for a long weekend or a trip where you want to stay in one place and take day trips, rather than an epic coast-to-coast hike.
“A cross-country road trip?” said Damon Bell, senior research editor at Cars.com, an online automotive marketplace. “It’s doable, but it makes things a little more difficult.”
Most electric vehicle owners install special outlets at home that allow them to charge their cars overnight, so they don’t have to worry too much about finding public charging stations. However, if you are renting an electric vehicle for a trip, you should map the location of stations along the expected travel routes.
According to the federal government, there are currently about 70,000 public charging stations across the country with 186,000 ports or stands – the electric vehicle equivalent of gas pumps. But they are not evenly distributed. Fast chargers, which can charge a battery in minutes rather than hours, are generally concentrated on the East and West coasts and in parts of Texas.
Greg Brannon, director of automotive technology and industry relations at automobile owners group AAA, said driving an electric vehicle on a long road trip can increase the time spent in the car by 20 to 30 percent. That’s because you have to find chargers and wait for the battery to charge. In high demand areas, you may have to wait in line until a fast charging port becomes available.
“Electric vehicles don’t work particularly well on long road trips,” he said, especially if you rent a car other than a Tesla, which has the most extensive network of fast chargers. (Some non-Tesla cars, such as Fords and Rivians, can use some Tesla Supercharger stations, but only with a special charging adapter that is not widely available. However, major electric vehicle manufacturers are releasing cars powered by Tesla starting in 2025. Stations are compatible model year, according to Consumer Reports.)
The average range of an electric vehicle is now about 270 miles per charge, with range depending on battery type, road conditions, temperature and your driving style. Very hot or very cold weather can affect range. And unlike gasoline cars, which typically get more miles per gallon when driving on the highway, electric vehicles may have less range on highways because of the way the cars operate, Brannon said.
Planning your route and locating charging stations before you set off can help curb “range anxiety,” or the fear of a dead battery. Various apps, including PlugShare, can help you find public charging stations.
If this complexity doesn’t put you off, now might be a good time to try out an electric vehicle, as some companies are offering deals to encourage rentals. The major rental companies have experienced some ups and downs with electric cars. Hertz, for example, announced this year that it would reduce its fleet of electric cars because they were losing value faster than expected and demand was lower than expected. Hertz said in an email that the company has provided resources to train new electric vehicle drivers and has offered several models at comparable prices to gasoline-powered cars.
I rented an electric vehicle with my husband for the three-day Memorial Day weekend in the Boston area. At the city’s airport, a car rental company (Budget) offered a 50 percent discount to renters who switched their reservation from a conventional car to an electric vehicle. In a statement, Budget said: “We find electric vehicle rentals are most attractive to customers who have the ability to schedule charging throughout their trip.”
“I had already reserved an electric vehicle online and therefore did not qualify for the half-price offer,” said the customer representative. Still, my rate for an airport rental on a busy holiday weekend wasn’t bad — about $89 per day, including the myriad fees and cash back for an Amazon gift card, on a deal with Budget.
The first car we were offered, a Kia, lacked a basic charging cable. So we asked for another car and got a Chevrolet Bolt that had one. We planned to at least partially charge it by plugging it into a regular outlet in the house where we lived. But as we quickly learned, such “Level 1” charging is painfully slow – an hour of charging only gets you a few kilometers of range.
We found an Electrify America charging station near a local mall with four outlets. Two were fast chargers (the others were slower but usable ports that would have taken over an hour to charge the car). When we arrived on a Friday afternoon there was a fast charger available. The car was charged to 83 percent in about 30 minutes, which cost $6.72 including taxes. (This was a nice change from the typical $50 calculator to fill up my gas car.) We paid by credit card. Some charging networks offer discounts if you create an account through their apps, and some locations charge higher fees during peak times.
The visit went smoothly. Still, half an hour is different than filling the tank in five minutes.
Driving was fun. Electric vehicles are quiet and peppy because their design allows them to accelerate quickly. One difference that took some getting used to was the car’s “regenerative” braking, a feature common on electric and hybrid vehicles that feeds energy back into the battery when the car slows, increasing the range slightly.
In practice, this means that the car quickly loses speed when you take your foot off the accelerator, so you rarely have to press the brake pedal. (This is also why electric vehicles have less range when driving on the highway. There is usually less braking.)
We liked the car so much that we reserved it for a longer period of time, later in the summer, at a budget location outside the airport. Renting there – and paying in advance – cost about $31 a day for a late June/early July rental.
Here are some questions and answers about renting an electric vehicle:
Do I have to return the electric vehicle fully charged?
Typically, rental companies will give you the car with a charge of 70 percent or more and require you to return it with the same charge level. If you lower the value back below this value, you may have to pay a fee. (Budget fees: $35.)
Do hotels and Airbnb rentals offer electric vehicle charging?
Hotels are increasingly offering free charging as a perk, but call ahead to confirm chargers are working. Airbnb said searches on its website for accommodations with chargers increased by more than 80 percent from 2022 to 2023. The company recently announced a partnership with ChargePoint, a charging network, to offer hosts discounts for installing electric vehicle chargers.
Do I have to stay with the electric vehicle while charging?
Most mobile networking apps notify you when the car is almost charged, so you can drive off to grab a coffee or a quick meal, for example, and come back when the car is ready. It’s worth planning your stops at charging stations that are close to restaurants or other services.
But don’t dawdle. If you don’t move the car once the battery is sufficiently charged, you’ll face “idle time fees,” designed to discourage users from occupying ports while other cars wait.
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2024-06-21 13:00:08
www.nytimes.com
