Agreed. The Bolt is a great car but it should never be rented out, under any circumstances. Most Teslas will charge 4 to 5 times faster than the Bolt for the first half of their charging curve. Any EV rental that charges at less than 150Kwh or so is probably not going to be a good experience.
Real-time exposure of the challenges of EV use
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Due to charging issues. Buying an EV if you can't charge at home is kinda dumb if you ask me.
100% of EV buyers bought their EV instead of ICE.
Tesla has the highest customer satisfaction of any major car company. Of course this is not true of all EVs.
I have said it many times, an EV purchase decision depends on your use case, just like any vehicle. A Porsche 911 is a fabulous car, but wouldn't work to well for a parent who needs to carry kids all over the place.
The point is, oftentimes effective change needs a catalyst or nothing gets done.
I'm not that familiar with the Bolt, but I do see a lot of them around here. I live in an area where maybe 80% of ICE cars are import makes, but for EVs there are a lot of Bolts and Teslas.
If it has those kinds of limitations, then I'm not sure why it would be in a rental car fleet. And there's no excuse for it being delivered with 25%. But it seems reasonable for a grocery getter, taking the kids to school, etc. where the owner can charge at home.
My kid would love to be dropped off at school in a 911. Or the park.
Good news ???
Oregon & Nevada says...
there's lithium in them thar hills.
Oregon & Nevada says...
there's lithium in them thar hills.
Dr Ferdinand Porsche said something like, "It's the car nobody needs but everyone wants..."
Beautiful...
Good news ???
Oregon & Nevada says...
there's lithium in them thar hills.
Depends on where. If it's in a designated wilderness area, then forget it. If it's Forest Service or BLM, then someone could stake a mining claim although at this point any potential mining needs to have a plan for a water source and eventual remediation. And then there's the cultural significance of various sites. That might be the toughest obstacle to any mining.
If I'm renting a car I'm either driving a long distance or I'm flying to visit my parents home which has no public charge and I'm going to want to drive around and see people and do stuff. No electric rentals for me.
In the old days the press would spend some time to expose the lack of planning and execution by Hertz.,Now they can’t.
No they didn't. A full 78% of them bought their EV, in addition to owning an ICE vehicle. Big difference. Because is proves the fact that EV's cannot do the job that ICE can 78% of the time. If they could they would simply get rid of their ICE vehicles entirely.
But they can't. Because it would be far too much of an inconvenience for them. Everytime this topic comes up it keeps hitting the same wall. When people discuss the common sense impracticality of EV's that actually exist today, the EV people try to dismantle their argument with a bunch of smoke and mirrors.
It doesn't work because what always ends up happening, is reality always rears its ugly head..... Just has it has this time with JHZR2's rental. Yes, the vehicle should have been fully charged. But that in itself didn't cause his problems. Trying to find a place to charge it, then waiting a ridiculous amount of time to do it, did.
EV's are not the issue in themselves. It's the fact they take too long to charge...... Assuming you can quickly and conveniently find a place to charge them. Which you can't.
If and when that ever changes, they might have some marginal success as a stand alone vehicle for some, but not for most people.
Other than the need for the shuttle, SeaTac is actually not the worst airport to rent at that I frequent. National is our preferred vendor, and when you have the app (& status) it’s simple. Walk directly to the executive area when you get off the shuttle, pick the car, use the app to scan the barcode, accept the contract, drive to the exit with ID & CC in hand. Usually from shuttle to being on the road takes me no more than 6-8 minutes.
Austin, on the other hand… you’ve got about a 1/2 mile walk in the terminal, then about another 1/2 mile walk (at least it feels like it) to the rental terminal in the Texas heat and humidity.
O’hare’s shuttle to the rental center is about a 10-minute ride from the terminal… landing at 5am and busing over while it’s still dark is sketchy, as it seems the lobby of the rental center is a free community sleeping area and all the counters are closed.
Uh, they bought an EV instead of ICE. No one is saying they did not have another vehicle. I sure do.
I have said many times an EV is not for every use.
And no, my EV does not take too long to charge; I charge it in the garage when not in use. About every 3rd or 4th day.
In 16K miles I have been on a Supercharger under 30 minutes and that was to learn how it works. My ICE cars take far longer to fuel up; worse than that, I have to go somewhere to do it! What a drag.
In my use case, the Tesla is far more convenient. And far cheaper to operate. That doesn't mean EVs are for everyone or every case.
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Yep. Rightly or wrongly this is the basic reasoning behind municipalities and states passing "X" bans at some date way into the future.
That is not the way to do it. You cannot legislate technology, or have a government force people to spend private money on infrastructure.
Correct. It is not the role of government to dictate how we live, eat and many other things.
True it's not the way but humans are not infallible. They're hypocritical, "lazy" (physically and intellectually), operate from a poor philosophical base and are hardwired to gain an advantage over their advisory in any way possible.
You should know that's not true. For example we would not have NASA or any of the advancements which came from it. Another example is the Interstate Highway System. Emissions systems are other examples. The MIC is full of examples by itself.
Your stat does not prove anything about EV and ICE. You can twist it either direction as you have or simply state they already had a ICE vehicle and now have an EV. Reality is no data exists what the intention was .
JHZR2
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Agree. Though it’s been the case for every EV I’ve ever rented - four different instances at three locations.
So, I kind of agree, but each time Hertz has given me an EV there has been a low SOC. The first one I rented was plugged in when I got it. But it was a Tesla with the slider that lets you stop at a certain SOC. So I got it with like 70%. Others just were undercharged.
The issue with Hertz is when I got the car, it was marked as 100%. They fixed it. I asked where in the SeaTac garage I could charge, they had no idea - no corporate capability to top one off there!
That was a big part of the issue. The bolt has no capability to tell me where the charger was. I was reliant on various maps. First one at the cell phone lot was a flop. Finally found a website that was better.
www.plugshare.com
I was pretty concerned to be honest. There are a lot of vagrants. The Walmart was closed and the charger was in a hidden corner.
I purposely rented a Tesla once, and got them twice after. I’ll say that its setup makes it much easier. That’s a map/systems integration issue.
But all the same, it is an inconvenience regardless. Here’s an example at a 250kW supercharger on a model 3 in NV:
So it’s always slow.
Yes, that’s a Chevy bolt thing. The maps don’t exist in this car, or I am unaware of how to set it up. There are functions that if you set your home it can figure out when you need to charge, but everything else seems contingent upon the use of o star that isn’t enabled…
This was a work rental, and I wasn’t going to change. Frankly based upon my Tesla experience I wasn’t concerned. Then reality hit me….
I would be in the same boat if a rental tesla didn’t have data/maps though, to be fair…
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