Hacker News Reader

Comment by CharlieDigital | Hacker News Reader

Not sure about the economics for the rental companies, but for a consumer, there are practical reasons why electric aren't quite as attractive.

When you rent a car, more than likely you will be in unfamiliar territory. So it seems that it just adds to the stress of travel and yet another thing you have to pay attention to.

Will my hotel have charging spots? Will I be able to charge at the client site I'm visiting? How do I plan this long leg of the trip that I need to drive?

View on HN

Yup. I own a Tesla and it's been a great car. I charge it at home, and I know how the supercharging network works.

I've been OFFERED electric rentals in:

* Tromsø Norway (on a roadtrip through the Lofoten)

* Nelson NZ

* Brisbane AU

The reality is, when I rent a car on vacation, I'm typically doing more miles per day than when I'm at home. That's because I'm not sitting at work 9 hours a day! Plus, I don't know their charging situation. Even if it WAS Tesla, no doubt these places have fewer Superchargers per capita than California (even though of course Norway has a TON of good EV charging). I have no idea if I can charge at my (multiple!) homes throughout the trip.

I'm already dealing with the cognitive load of a different country, a different currency, often a foreign language, different driving standards (maybe on the other side of the road). Finding places to stay and eat. I don't need one more chore!

To put it simply: An EV is more convenient as our primary car, full stop. An EV would be less convenient as a rental car while on vacation.

No doubt? :-)

Norway has 503 Superchargers, 1 per 11,000 people.

California has 307, 1 per 130,000.

I haven't checked NZ or Oz, or looked at a map for Norway. There are also 10 times that many non-Tesla chargers, of which some will be the highest power.

All three countries have 230V domestic electricity, so in the worst case you can charge at about 2.5kW (more, e.g. 3kW, if you're more confident of the wiring).

You could even be so lucky to have 400V available in new housing in Norway, allowing up to 22kW home charging.

Thanks for the correction. BTW when I mention housing, I meant hotels :) Of course chargers at hotels are common, but, again, one more thing to worry about (especially if it's pay-per-use and requires some app/membership situation).

When you rent a car, more than likely you will be in unfamiliar territory. So it seems that it just adds to the stress of travel and yet another thing you have to pay attention to.

Will my hotel have charging spots? Will I be able to charge at the client site I'm visiting? How do I plan this long leg of the trip that I need to drive?

As a Tesla owner, driver, and 3 times Hertz Tesla renter, let me attest:

    - Hertz staff are poorly trained for Tesla rentals
    - The "must use same credit card" thing is worst than an absolute nightmare
      if one doesn't have the exact same credit card, landing late at night on
      a holiday weekend. The experience is so extremely bad, it sounds fictional!

FWIW I rented an electric volvo in november and its built in map (displayed by default even if you weren't using its nav system, which I did not) displayed charger sites. As it happened my hotel had a charger in the parking garage and the valets plugged my car in for me.

One anecdote does not data make, and I didn't know at the time of reservation that my hotel would be adequately equipped.

As a second anecdote, I also rented one from Hertz (Polestar 2) and while it could navigate me to charging stations, at least 50% of the time I was unable to charge at a given location due to technical issues. It was bad enough that I had to divert 30 minutes off my planned route to find a working charger.

I look forward to owning an EV someday but the rental experience right now and in my state was VERY stressful.

I had the same experience... in Sunnyvale / SF, of all places! I was shocked at how bad the charging infrastructure is for non-Teslas.

Level 2 Tesla destination chargers are everywhere in SV and you can use them with with any J1772 car using a simple adapter.

There are now also adapters for fast charging Tesla connectors to CCS1, but that is relatively recent.

Indeed: for awhile I was going to a place on Saratoga near Doyle in west San Jose, and they had a non-Tesla charging station in the parking lot. Almost always, every spot was occupied, even in the middle of a weekday.

Which city were you in?

Austin

The greatest barrier to EV adoption is the obstinance of early adopters that lack the capacity to understand why someone would use an ICE vehicle. Consequently, it hampers improvement in areas that need to be improved upon for wider EV adoption. It's quite ironic.

At least one great barrier is the reactionary response to anything associated with 'liberal', including anything that has to do with climate change. IIRC there's a correlation between politics and EV purchases. If even Musk can't persuade other reactionaries ...

Naw, you just need to buy a PHEV. That is what YOU, special unique snowflake (non political variant) would like.

> my hotel had a charger in the parking garage and the valets plugged my car in for me

So they just put the charging fee on your bill with the little bottles of gin from the minibar? I'm sure hotel power is reasonably priced...

I have never been charged by a hotel to charge my car

Power isn't free, you're paying for it somehow.

True, but in the sense that all guests subsidize EV users.

It was included.

On a recent trip, I reserved a gas car, but at the airport they tried to give me an EV. I went to the counter and asked for a gas car instead, since the place I was staying didn't have charging, and I didn't want to spend my vacation figuring out EV charging for the first time.

I would've considered the EV if I knew ahead of time, so I could've researched the charging situation before the trip.

I accidentally booked an electric vehicle a few weeks ago. I was halfway to looking up charging spots on Long Island when the guy at the Hertz counter offered me a Dodge Charger instead.

For the record, my hotel did not have charging spots, and the only ones I saw driving around were at the Broadway Commons Mall[0]. All of them looked full. I'm very skeptical of "charging infrastructure" being a prerequisite to suburban EV adoption - you have a house with a spare 220V circuit, right?[1] - but in this case my home is an eight story hotel building. Either it has chargers or I'm not renting an EV.

[0] Specifically, near the back next to the Round1 entrance.

Said mall also has an Avis/Budget office. No clue if the LIRR lets you carry luggage onboard, but if they do I probably should just take that instead of paying extra to rent at JFK...

[1] "My landlord won't let me plug in my car charger" is the usual response to this

> Said mall also has an Avis/Budget office. No clue if the LIRR lets you carry luggage onboard, but if they do I probably should just take that instead of paying extra to rent at JFK...

protip: lots of rental agencies only charge the premium for airport/train station pickup, but not for dropping off at one. YMMV.

I'd be reluctant to rent an EV at this point. But I own one, and I for sure won't ever being going back to gas. I can't see myself giving up the convenience, or paying $50 every week to fill it up. And only at special locations that stock gasoline. That's a hard sell.

In the US, the Kroger grocery chain offers discounts on gasoline depending on how much you spend on groceries during the month. Wonder if at some point they'll start offering discounts on charging, especially if you're shopping while charging. When I had a Nissan Leaf, I used to charge at a Kroger halfway between home and the office, but that was a third party charger with no association with the store. It would have been nice if my Kroger Fuel Points could have discounted my charging instead.

I think it's an eventuality that Gas stations pivot to charging stations in a tangible way. They already don't make much on fuel, so, provided they can get sufficient utility power, and a future exists where charging an EV is as fast as filling up a gas tank, they'll probably happily continue to exist selling snacks and drinks as they do now.

Good on you, you're an early adopter of electric personal transport tech. We need people like you to tough it out until the R&D dollars yield something that's actually at feature parity with what already exists currently.

Does "parity" mean "equal or better in every possible way"?

Because overall, if you ignore old and new and just analyze both on their merits, I'd say we have rough parity already.

Parity means you can charge your car in 5 minutes and then drive 3-400 miles, as you can in a gas car, access to repair facilities, and an average lifetime equivalent to regular cars.

We're not there yet, we will be, but it's going to take some time. The people who say 'electric cars suck' are the same sorts of people who leave negative reviews of a beta product, missing the forest for the trees in my book.

Same goes for the people who ignore critique and offer only praise. Gas/Diesel cars have a hundred years of engineering behind them. Their capabilities exist with purpose, and ignoring that is folly.

> Parity means you can charge your car in 5 minutes and then drive 3-400 miles, as you can in a gas car, access to repair facilities, and an average lifetime equivalent to regular cars.

So yes, it sounds like your definition of "parity" means it can do everything a gas car can and more.

If electric cars were first, would you demand that gas cars need to be able to power your house to reach "parity"?

I don't think you're using a good definition of parity. Two things with different strengths and weaknesses can be at parity if they mostly even out.

Electric cars have been around 150 years. Yes, parity means... parity in practicaluty to the end user.

There are multiple kinds of practicality where electric cars do better, and you're skipping them for some reason.

I have rented several electric vehicles and while charging is more difficult than getting gas it isn’t really an issue.

The most challenging experience was an electric camper. It had a 100 mile max range. I drove it from LA to Seattle without major issue. The only pucker factor was around Silicon Valley where I struggled to find functional fast chargers. No shortage of chargers, just very few that work.

The state of chargers is atrocious. Many of them do not work and the apps are horrible. Signup flows that ask for too much information and don’t set form metadata for auto-completion. Just endless papercuts.

I used A Better Route Planner which does a good job of tracking what chargers actually work but still has an infuriating UI.

For a regular rental car situation I would not hesitate to get an EV. In fact that’s my preference now that I am over the learning curve.

> It had a 100 mile max range. I drove it from LA to Seattle without major issue.

uhhhhhhhh, you stopped to charge every ~2 hours (12 charging stops minimum)?

Yes. It’s a camper van. I took five days to do the trip, mostly on 101.

It was an older conversion, not intended for long range travel. This is a once a year thing to relocate from Joshua Tree to the Olympic Peninsula.

I made a snack or took a quick nap in the back when charging. Travel days were 1-2 charge stops.

One problem with such a small battery is how quickly it charged. I was often done charging before I could make food, eat, and do dishes.

I don’t see how that’s different than needing to figure out gas station locations and not knowing how much you’ll use between points since you don’t know traffic or efficiency of that vehicle.

Realistically, unless you're in Manhattan or in the middle of nowhere, you're never more than 10-20 minutes away from a gas station.

I still remember the “last chance gas, no services next 90 miles” that you can still encounter in the high desert. But most places people drive there are stations everywhere.

And if you ARE going into the wilderness, you can easily bring a few Jerry cans.

Primary difference is that fueling up with gas is very quick. Charging is not (and is very variable depending on which chargers are available)

Efficiency is mostly irrelevant - unless you're going into the wilderness, you have a gas station within minutes of driving, and unless you are extremely careless, the chance you may end up in a place where you can't drive to a gas station is pretty much non-existent. Gas station locations are available on any phone that has internet connection, which again unless you are into extreme roughing it, is everywhere. I don't remember any time where I needed ever to plan around filling up, unless a) I am driving very long distance for hours (even then it's pretty easy) or b) I need to fill it up before returning the rental (usually there's a gas station right next to the entrance, with a properly inflated price to punish the fools that couldn't plan it in advance, but sometimes you may need to make a detour to get to it). With EV, it looks like much more of a chore.

This is a hopelessly urban take, and factually incorrect.

That comment would be much more valuable if it contained something beyond unsupported statement and something that I assume was meant to be an ad hominem attack.

I don't love looking for gas stations before returning a vehicle, but I know I can find one within a few minutes, they will pretty much always be "functional" and available, and it will take only a few minutes to fill up.

With an EV, I might have to go 10+ minutes out of my way (doubled for roundtrip), they might not work, and they might be full. And if I have to return with 80% charge or higher, it could easily take 30 mins or more of charging.

Also, it's really easy for the rental place to see exactly what percent you returned it with. In gas cars, as long as you're in the ballpark of "full" you're usually good to go, partly because there's not an easy way for the rental clerk to tell exactly how many gallons are in the tank.

If you return with <80%, what happens? Do they charge a flat fee or by the kWh? Most cars will taper charging speeds as you approach 80, 90 %. And then you have to drive from the charger to the car rental place. Hmm.

Yeah, I dunno! With gas, they would typically just charge you some exorbitant price per gallon, but if it's just for a gallon it would only end up being 8 bucks or something. I have no idea how they deal with electricity, but I could imagine the penalty being pretty high if it means they can't turn the car around for an hour or more.

Gas stations near highways tend to have big signs you can see from the highway, in addition to being near most offramps in built-up areas. In rural areas, there's usually signs on the highway letting you know when there's a gas station at upcoming offramps and which direction to turn to get there. When there is a large distance between gas stations, there's typically signage letting you know about that too.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com