EV Car Rental Experience

by Ryan Parzick

I recently took my daughter on her first set of college visits to five schools in Southern California. I decided to use this opportunity to conduct a little experiment on something I have been curious about for a while now … what is it like to rent an electric vehicle (EV) and use it for long-distance driving? Not owning an EV myself, I knew the experience would be different than the traditional “grab a car at the airport and off we go” model I was accustomed to. Being the person I am, RESEARCH would be my key to making this a successful endeavor, so that is what I did. Lots and lots of research and planning.

After putting together an ambitious, but efficient, schedule of college tours and information sessions scattered throughout 525 miles of driving, I was ready to figure out how we would actually make this happen with a vehicle that did not have an abundance of fueling options like a traditional internal combustion engine (ICE) car would with gas stations littering the American landscape wherever one travels.

Step 1 — Pick the Right Car: Not only did the car have to be affordable, but it needed to be able to drive long distances without needing to be charged. At one of the major rental car agencies, I was astonished to find a Tesla Model 3 with a long-range battery CHEAPER than almost any ICE car on their available options. Perfect! This car was rated for 310 miles between charges, so in theory, it would allow us to get from one town to the next without having to stop to charge in between.

Step 2 — Pick the Right Places: Before leaving for the trip, I mapped out exactly where I needed to be and when. To reduce the need to charge on the road while traveling between schools, I rented only from hotels which had charging stations onsite. Hopefully, that would allow me to charge while we slept and provide us with enough battery life to make it from one school to another. I thought to myself, this will actually make our drives faster since we won’t have to stop for gas! That was in an ideal world, though, so I also planned my routes to include Tesla Supercharging stations … just in case. This would allow me to have a known location to charge on my route which would be accessible if the range of the car was not accurate or I ended up needing to use more of the battery life than originally anticipated. I knew I would be cutting some of the segments of the journey close (both with the amount of charge and the time required for travel between schools), so I needed contingency plans.

Step 3 — Set a Charging Schedule: In Step 2 above, I found the locations of where I would be charging, but I also needed to plan when charging would be most efficient. Unlike when renting an ICE vehicle, I had a lot of anxiety over when and where I was going to fuel this car and still make it to our scheduled events on time. Typically, if I need to get gas on a road trip, the experience does not make me take a detour from my route nor does it take more than 15 minutes to fill up and be back on the road again. EVs are different. As much as the charging infrastructure has rapidly expanded in the last couple of years, there are still uncertainties about reliability and accessibility to networks. The process itself also takes more time depending on the car and the electric vehicle supply equipment (EVSE) used for charging. Looking at distances, I determined the following:

• Segment 1 — Wednesday Night: Driving from LAX rental car location to San Luis Obispo was 190 miles. Perfect! If I picked up a fully charged car, I could make it to the hotel without stopping and charge overnight in the hotel parking lot.
• Segment 2 — Thursday Morning: After the morning tour at School 1, we needed to hit the road and drive to Santa Barbara in a window of 2 hours. This was a 97 mile drive, so it was doable, but we would be cutting it close with time. We would not be able to stop to charge and make it on time.
• Segment 3 — Thursday Afternoon: After the tour at School 2, we could make the drive to Claremont (137 miles) without having to be somewhere at a specific time. If charging needed to happen, this would be the best segment to do so.
• Segment 4 — Friday Morning: We could walk to the campus tours of Schools 3 and 4 from the hotel, so the car was not required. If left charging at the hotel overnight, we would have a fully charged car waiting for us to use whenever we needed it.
• Segment 5 — Saturday Morning: We had a tour at 9:00 AM in Los Angeles, which is a 51 mile drive. Again, the car could have been charged at the hotel overnight, so there would be no need to stop between Claremont and School 5.
• Segment 6 — Saturday Afternoon through Sunday Morning: We didn’t have any plans other than to go to the beach (my daughter is a surfer) and experience LA before heading back home early Sunday morning. If we needed to charge, we had time and flexibility.

I felt good about the plan and was ready for my adventure with my daughter. The night before our trip I shared the news with my daughter about my plan to rent an EV and how there may or may not be some road bumps with the experience. Let’s just say I received a threat of severe consequences if I caused her to be late to any of her tours due to my experiment. No pressure!

The trip started off with our flight being delayed by two hours. That means we would be arriving at LAX later than we wanted, pushing our arrival at our first hotel into the late hours of the night. Not a big deal, but not ideal. After arriving at the airport, taking the shuttle to the rental car station, and waiting in a line which seemed to be stagnant, we finally met with the agent on duty. After providing him information on our reservation, he asked if I wanted another EV. I quickly declined knowing that I had reserved the model which had the longest range. After searching the system, he located the car I had reserved and went to retrieve it. 20 minutes later, he returned and handed me the card to operate the Tesla. To my dismay, the car was only charged to 54%. I was counting on a fully charged car to avoid the need for stopping to fuel up in this segment of the trip, which I now would have to do. Strike 1.

In addition to my disappointment and frustration from this turn of events, I was tired from a long day and just wanted to hit the road. This led me to make the critical mistake of forgetting to ask for a charging adapter, which would allow me to use almost any EVSE with the Tesla and not just a Tesla Supercharging station. Not until an hour into the drive did I realize this. When I started fueling at the Tesla Supercharger about halfway between LAX and San Luis Obispo, I used the time to search the whole car for the adapter and determined there was not an adapter onboard. Strike 2.

This first charge took about 50 minutes to go from about 15% to 90%. My daughter didn’t seem to mind as she was passed out and remained that way for the rest of the trip to the hotel. We arrived at our destination around midnight local time (2:00 AM in my internal clock). No charging was going to be happening at the hotel that night, so my range anxiety flared up again. I would have enough charge to get to Santa Barbara the next morning, but it would be close. So, not only was it going to be tight for the timing, but it was now going to be cutting things very close with the ability to power the car through Segment 2.

Fortunately, everything worked out for Segment 2 and I still had yet to feel the wrath of a teenage daughter. After the tour, we found a Supercharger near campus and left the car there to charge as we grabbed lunch and explored Santa Barbara. We had just completed the most inflexible portion of the trip without any major issues, so I was feeling optimistic about the rest of the trip as we left Santa Barbara with a 97% charge.

Due to the logistics of where we needed to be, there was not a need to charge the car for the rest of the trip other than to recharge for the rental car return. I took the opportunity while we were at the beach after the School 5 tour to charge up for 20 minutes to put the car around 70%, which would allow for some more driving around the city that day and a 5:00 AM drop off at the rental car depot with about the same level of charge I received the car with (54%).

I didn’t make my daughter late with my Nerd Dad experimenting. We didn’t even have to sit around waiting for a charge to complete other than our first night (which my daughter slept through). All was right with the world. Other than the rough start and the anxiety surrounding the needed deviation from my plans, everything went really well.

Since this was an experiment, here are the results:

• We traveled about 525 miles total and needed to charge the car 3 times for a total of 120 minutes (50 minutes, 50 minutes, and 20 minutes). With a fully fueled ICE Toyota Camry (or equivalent), we likely would have had to stop for gas twice on our trip and also spend much less time at each fuel stop. With that being said, having a built-in excuse to spend time with my daughter walking around and enjoying new areas while we needed to charge the car was an unanticipated benefit. Advantage — Even.
• I spent $66.96 in total charging the Tesla at the Supercharging stations. Using an average gas price of $5.56/gallon in Los Angeles, I estimate that I would have spent about $91 with a car similar to a Camry which would get about 32 miles/gallon with a majority of highway driving. This savings in money was in addition to the car being one of the cheapest options at the rental agency! Advantage — EV.
• When I travel alone, I try to keep my driving to a minimum and rarely even rent cars. Traveling with family and/or on trips that cover large distances, driving is unavoidable and I usually have guilt for contributing greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere. By renting the EV, I did not emit any tailpipe emissions! Advantage — EV.
• I have only driven an EV a handful of times and never for long distances, so I didn’t quite know what to expect. The overall experience of driving the EV was quite pleasant. The car was very quiet and relaxing. For a guy who loves gadgets, the technology was fun to play around with. There was a minimal learning curve needed to master operations of the vehicle, with the biggest change for me being using a card instead of keys or a fob to unlock the doors and allow for the starting up of the car. Even my daughter admitted that she enjoyed the experience of riding in the EV more so than a typical car rental. Advantage — EV.
• The actual administrative portion of the EV rental was somewhat chaotic and unclear. I believe that since the practice of renting EVs is relatively new with legacy agencies, the staff at the depots have not become fully accustomed to the logistics accompanying an EV. To encourage more EV rentals, agencies should aim to make the renting process as painless as possible. Some examples for areas of improvement:
• If a car is returned with low charge, the turnaround time to get the car ready for the next rental is longer. Will the car be ready? Mine was not.
• Accessories like charging adapters could make the renters’ experience much less stressful. They should be included in every EV with extras stocked at the depot, in case some are inevitably lost.
• Uncertainty on how to pay when charging needs to be explained to renters. When charging the Tesla, I never had to use a credit card at the EVSEs. Teslas track the pricing in their onboard computer when fueling. It was never made clear how I would actually pay the rental car company back for the charging fees incurred. I still have yet to find out (shhhhhh).
• Not everybody has the weird compulsion to research everything like I do. For renters who have never been in an EV before, there may be some uncertainty on many things we take for granted with an ICE rental, so a tutorial should be offered. How does the operational process of charging work? What is the range of the car between charges? Why does the car start slowing down when taking one’s foot off the accelerator? When EVs become more mainstream, the need for a tutorial will disappear, but they are still needed for many at this point in time.

Advantage — ICE (for now).

After a couple of initial road bumps, the overall experience was great. I made a cheaper, environmentally friendlier, and daughter-approved driving experience by deciding to do something different. The next time will only be better, even with a full family in tow, right?