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Comment by ado__dev | Hacker News Reader

I have had an EV since 2018, love it to death, but would absolutley never rent one. The biggest pain point with EVs imo is charging infrastructure. My personal car, I can charge at home so it becomes a non-issue.

But if I'm traveling to a new city that I'm not super familiar with, I do not have any desire to plot out where charging stations are, is the hotel going to have charging, is it going to be operational, etc. Too much headache and cost of public chargers on top of premium cost to rent an EV just doesn't make much sense.

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Same here. A few years ago I rented a local Tesla on Turo for a day trip that was several hours away, but since I just needed to drop it off "whenever" (by the next morning), I could find somewhere to charge it at my leisure. Then this fall I flew somewhere and was asked by the car rental company whether I wanted an electric car instead of the one I had reserved. With a return flight to catch under possibly tight time constraints and no idea where I would charge the car or how long it would take (both right before return and just driving around; I was going a long distance to a pretty rural area), I declined that sweet sweet offer in favor of a car I could fill up anywhere in under five minutes. If car rental companies actually want to rent electric cars, they would be wise to say you don't have to worry about recharging them, they'll do it themselves either at no extra cost or at whatever the cost would be if you did it yourself (not the "we'll refuel it for you at the low low price of $15/gallon!" that they offer for gas cars).

I charge my Tesla at home and I love it. But I visited family over christmas and driving around in their Rivian I was reminded how absolutely shit non-tesla charging still is. I'm not at all surprised EV sales are dropping when charging is as awful as it is.

I have a non-Tesla EV (Kia EV6). I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have gotten it if I didn't charge at home. (We've done a couple of long trips in it, including cross-country, but I had lower expectations of what the experience would be like)

Didn't I read in the news that Tesla had opened up its supercharger network to other brands?

Yes, but not in a way that benefits anyone immediately. They made deals with each individual brand (I think every US make except Stellantis now), in which those brands will start putting Tesla charging ports on the cars in future model years, and in some cases offer adapters to existing owners starting in 2024 or 2025. Each brand also needs to integrate with Tesla for payments in some way, since 99.9% of their charging stations don't have screens or payment terminals. The predictions I've read are that will mean new versions of each company's mobile apps, rather than having non-Tesla owners use Tesla's app.

I only rent EVs, if possible. I've gotten by just fine. Plugshare app makes it easy to find working chargers.

I've rented out a couple of cars on Turo, one an efficient 4-cylinder gas car, the other an EV. The EV renters seemed to have a realistic expectation of what to expect in terms of charging (I also included a level 1 charger for those with access to a plug).

> is the hotel going to have charging, is it going to be operational, etc. Too much headache

Remember when hotel wi-fi was like that?

I expect this situation to change (slowly) over time.

I do. And yes, when the infrastructure is there and is reliable, I'll be happy to switch.

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