In theory if the people used the in-car travel planning features it shouldn't have been a problem, but if Hertz wasn't telling them about that then you could have a very stressful experience.
I had to make a trip from Tucson, AZ to Bisbee, a super common route you would make as it's a popular tourist destination. Bisbee is about 80 miles from the supercharger down Interstate 10. By default, the cars are configured to stop charging when they get to 80% or something like that. Your average consumer is not going to have a clue because that's not how gas pumps work.
There was 0 public charging infrastructure after the Supercharger, not so much as a public J1772 charge point (It might look like it using an app, but they are broken or nonfunctional). The Model 3 gets under 200 miles of range going the pace of traffic, which is 80-85 MPH. Then they take a wrong turn or drive around at the destination and burn up the last 30-40 miles.
The poor sucker that rented the Tesla was told it would get "270 miles of range". When he left the charger it said he had over 200 miles to go. But reality sinks in, and at some point in the journey, if they get even slightly distracted, they will find themselves 50 miles from the charger with 30 miles left.
And the reason gasoline took off as a fuel was because it was frequently used as a degreaser before we decided to burn it instead, so you could buy it in tins from the blacksmith in whatever town you found yourself stranded in. There's nothing analogous to that for EVs.
A model 3 realistically gets 4~4.5 mi / kWh, US 16A@120V is rated for 1500W continuous, so that's about 6.5 miles per hour of charging. 20A@120V is close to 2000W continuous, so that's about 9 miles per hour.
In that situation you might start knocking on doors.
I know this thread is entirely about comparing apples and oranges, but the historical examples weren't getting a full tank from a small local Blacksmith back then and so it doesn't make sense to worry about getting a full charge in this situation either.
You could certainly offer to pay someone for electricity from their home or business, but then you're parked in their driveway for a period of time waiting. And the social aspects of this make it a lot more challenging than simply walking up to the local blacksmith and buying a gallon or two of solvent off the shelf so you can get to the next town.
You're at that point relying on the kindness of strangers.
On the other hand, I've had the "I noticed an external outlet near my parking spot, do you mind if I plug my car into it while I shop/stay at this hotel/eat at this restaurant?" conversation plenty of times and there's no "challenge" to it nor "transaction". The most common answer I've got has been "I don't see why not" because it's not really a transaction for most businesses, whatever extra they spend on electricity they easily make back in making a new customer or keeping an existing customer happy. In a few times I got back "there's a Level 2 charger hidden at the Library across the street and the fees support our local library" or "we have a deal with this parking garage a block away that has chargers and we can validate your parking for you when you get back", which just goes to show how normalized it already can often be as just another "parking consideration" of "where to park" when you ask businesses about it. Most businesses are used to answering "is there a good place to park?" questions. Parking is normal operations for a business, not "relying on the kindness of strangers". Electricity is "just" an amenity of parking, already in some businesses' minds. (Not enough businesses yet, sure, but more than you might think.)
To be fair, I've never been in a "life or death" situation where a "No" would have been some terrible catastrophe, but I've also never known anyone in my lifetime that had to buy gasoline from a small town Blacksmith or Pharmacist either.
This is just a different way of saying "If people put in more work this wouldn't be a problem", but you're ignoring the context - people who rent cars are often in a hurry, need transport now and need to get someone now. This all indicates that they are busy, and your suggestion is that they should work harder to get the same result?
It's not just Tesla either. All major EVs come with route planning. If you have range anxiety you're using it wrong. This isn't even the driver's fault, how can they know about these features if nobody tells them? I don't even fully blame Hertz for this. Tesla should be marketing the route planning nationwide. Show people how life with EVs actually is instead of leaving them in the dark and letting them think that owning an EV means a roll of the dice every time you get behind the wheel where you might not find a friendly plug in time and be stranded on the side with no way to jerrycan more miles.
I'm not claiming that the systems are hard to use, I'm saying that it's an additional friction over ICE cars, in which you don't need to put in extra work to learn a piece of software, you don't need to wait for the rental assistant to explain how it works and you don't need to plan refuelling stops to coincide with rest times.
As a renter, I give them my booking number, my drivers license and my credit card, then jump in and head straight to my destination. All the other stuff that the Tesla's required may be easy, but we go from 2 steps (pay and drive) to 5 or more steps.
TBH, if Hertz had wanted this to be a success, the biggest thing they could have done was made sure that the cars were always fully charged before the customer drove off.
Route-planning is kinda irrelevant when you're doubling the friction required to rent a car.
Sorry but that is a hyper-obnoxious comment. I've never yet driven an EV, and range anxiety is undoubtedly something I will experience when I eventually get to. I don't want that in the context of being away from home on work or holiday.