As EVs Fill Rental-Car Lots, Drivers Feel Jittery
The shifting mix of cars means growing pains for travelers unaccustomed to operating electric vehicles
The electric-vehicle revolution is coming to rental-car counters, ready or not. Plenty of travelers fall into the “Or not” category.
Some report picking up EVs that aren’t properly charged, lack accessories or come with little to no operating instructions. Charging availability is also an issue on the road and at hotels.
The cars have fans who adore their designs and appreciate their energy efficiency. And if you really don’t want an EV, you can usually avoid one, at least for now. Still, some newbies are swearing off them after one rental or passing them over in the rental lot.
Anne-Marie Angelo reserved an intermediate car from Budget Rent A Car for a one-way drive from Virginia Beach, Va., to Dulles International Airport with her 79-year-old mother in January. The rental agency didn’t have her car or much else, so it assigned her a “specialty” Kia.
The Kia Niro she got is an EV, which no one at the counter mentioned, the history professor says. Despite getting charged overnight, the battery drained quickly. With at least 70 miles to go on the drive, the range flashed 30 miles. She had to hunt for a charging station so it didn’t die on I-95 in cold weather.
The first location, a gas station listed in a crowdsourced app, didn’t have one. Budget roadside assistance said they couldn’t help because they don’t have mobile charging units, she says. By the time she found one at a car dealership, she had to move their late flight to London and pay for a hotel.
“Normally I can get from home to Dulles on one tank of gas,” she says. “I don’t plan for random stops in weird places.”
Budget refunded her rental and gave her two free rental days for future use, but didn’t reimburse for expenses. A Budget spokesperson says the agency “takes every customer experience seriously and has addressed the issue raised with our employees and the location involved.”
Hertz, Avis Budget Group and other car-rental agencies acknowledge the steep learning curve for drivers in these early days of EV rentals. All have educational efforts under way on their websites and in emails to renters and loyalty-program members. Hertz hosted a free test drive at Los Angeles International Airport in July and offered one free rental day with a two-day EV rental this summer.
Hertz has made the biggest EV bet among rental agencies. It has deals to buy more than 300,000 cars from Tesla, Polestar and General Motors and a partnership with Uber to rent EVs to ride-share drivers. More than one in 10 cars in its fleet are electric, a figure the company says will jump to 25% by the end of 2024.
Failed experiment
Trey Johnson, a winery sales director from West Chicago, Ill., drives a 2011 Nissan Sentra. He booked a Tesla for a one-day February business trip to Louisville, Ky., instead of his usual midsize sedan because of its cheaper last-minute rate. Plus, he wanted to see what the hype was about.
He says he asked the Hertz agent about the refueling rules and got only vague answers. He found operating the car a struggle.
“Just getting out of the garage, it felt like I was learning to drive all over again,” he says.
He pulled over to watch a Hertz video on how to operate it. Finding a Tesla charging station was easy, he says, but he didn’t like the 20 minutes it took to charge the car before he returned it.
“There are a lot of Tesla evangelists out there,” he says. “Once you get used to it, I think it’s probably quite fun to drive. I don’t want to get used to it.”
Mark Nielson, an infrastructure development consultant in Foster City, Calif., is in the top tier of Hertz’s loyalty program. When he landed in Chicago in May, he says he found several Ford Mustang Mach-Es. He passed because he was driving to Cincinnati and logging hundreds of miles after that and didn’t want any charging hassles.
“You could see people liked the Mustang and as soon as they saw it was electric, they moved on to something else,” he says.
A Hertz spokeswoman says the agency’s policy is to make “every reasonable effort” to get customers where they need to be if their reserved vehicle class isn’t available at the confirmed time.
Change is coming
The Hertz spokeswoman says demand is strong from leisure and business travelers and ride-share drivers, but declined to provide specifics. “We believe adoption will continue to take hold,” she says.
Hertz CEO Stephen Scherr told Wall Street analysts in August that corporate demand for the rentals has picked up in the past couple of months since he pitched them to fellow CEOs as a “very real way” to meet new sustainability disclosure rules from the Securities and Exchange Commission and others.
Nicholas Cicio, a part-time Uber driver in Philadelphia, rented a Tesla from Hertz for a week this summer under the companies’ partnership. It was cheaper than other rentals and Uber pays more per ride for EVs, he says.
The car was only 50% charged when he rented it, he says. That didn’t worry him initially. But the battery drained more quickly than he expected. On the second day of the rental, the car died on a busy street when he was half a mile from a charging station.
Hertz sent a tow truck, but it couldn’t get into the garage at the first charging station. Two more stops were a bust. They drove 20 minutes outside the city to find a Tesla supercharging station, he says. The 25-year-old hasn’t rented an EV since.
Retiree Marc Froemelt, who lives in Atlanta, rented a Tesla Model 3 at New York’s LaGuardia Airport from Hertz in May to visit his mother-in-law on Long Island. They zipped down the Long Island Expressway in record time in the HOV lane without issue.
Their one issue wasn’t the EV’s fault: Model 3s have trunks in the front. Froemelt opened his and discovered a previous user’s Costco haul, including a 10-pound slab of meat emitting an overwhelming stench, he says. Hertz told him roadside assistance couldn’t help, so they traded the car for another Tesla at a local Hertz location.
Froemelt wasn’t happy with Hertz’s offer of a $50 credit, so he took it up with his credit card and got the rental refunded.
Hertz didn’t respond to requests for comment on Cicio’s or Froemelt’s experiences.
Froemelt isn’t soured on EVs, though.