My son-in-law was given an EV on his last business trip. He was mainly driving from the airport to his hotel about 15 miles away which was adjacent to his job site. The hotel had a charger but he didn’t need it. He drives a plug in hybrid as his commute car but he said he would go all electric next time.
As an EV owner, renting sounds like a good way to try out different EVs. @GKUnion what rental company is this? (Maybe they all have EVs now, we don’t rent cars much at all.)
I think I mentioned upthread that we’ve been experimenting with being a one car (EV-only) family since September, having sent the hybrid off to college with our daughter. Our EV is a 2017 Chevy Bolt. I give the experiment a mixed review. The main problems were not relevant to this thread, being due to having only one car. We have had a couple very serious family events come up over the past few months, and we ended up borrowing a car so that my husband could take extended time out of town to deal with things.
Of more interest for this thread is that my high schooler and I used the Bolt to do a college tour, driving from NC to visit four mid-Atlantic schools (1400+ miles total). We found that we did not have to plan nearly as carefully as the last time we took a long trip in the Bolt. There are fast chargers everywhere now, they are all genuinely fast, and it’s easy to find chargers that are near the amenities I want on a road stop (which are bathrooms, caffeine, junk food, and somewhere to stretch my legs).
We also REALLY liked having the zippy, responsive little Bolt for merges and other mixed traffic flow situations. It’s so much easier to merge when you can accelerate quickly no matter what speed you’re starting from.
Twice we had minor problems with a non-functional charger; both times the solution was simply to move over a space to use the next charger over. And once we were three minutes late to a tour because we did not allot enough charge to cross the Poconos and had to make an extra charging stop.
Our overall conclusion is that we’re fine being a one car EV family (outside of the very exceptional family circumstances I mentioned above), but that we’d be happier with a level 2 EV charger at home instead of just the wall outlet we’ve been using till now. So we’ve finally gone ahead and gotten that installed.
As for long trips? Well, we are motivated EV drivers so we’re also perfectly happy with the Bolt for long trips. It’s gotten easier and easier every year. However I still would not recommend a Bolt as the sole vehicle for most people who regularly take long trips. The Bolt takes a while to charge, and you still have to be willing to do some planning as well as put up with some time loss. Would a newer EV help? It looks like a lot of the newer EVs are much quicker to charge. But I can’t personally speak to whether they are “good enough” in practice.
We run our cars to the ground so we’re not in the market for a new vehicle yet. But it might be fun to try out what’s out there next time we rent.
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I really love how fun the Bolt is to drive in city traffic. That immediate acceleration is awesome. And it’s just a “cheap” electric car!
We live in the west where there are large empty spaces between urban centers so I’m not sure I’d drive it from Portland to San Francisco or to Boise. But I haven’t mapped it out either. To Seattle, yes, no problem. To the coast or Eugene or Bend, I’d be fine. Just need to top it off somewhere before returning.
I think I mentioned a friend who has an old Leaf and drove it from Wenatchee WA to Portland and it was a nightmare. But they only have 60-80 miles of range these days!! It’s 300 miles and there is a lot of mountain driving. If I were doing it in my Bolt I would just need to find one place to charge as a backup, not every 60 miles!
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I rented from Hertz.
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We saw EVs at Budget in Honolulu and San Jose.
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Well…if you look at one of my other threads, you will see that Budget is in the doghouse of rental cars for the Thumper family.
Checking PlugShare, I’m always jealous of how much charging infrastructure has been put in place out there. Seems you’d be fine from Portland to San Francisco OR to Boise - though I definitely agree I’d want to be really REALLY sure of my options before departing, especially across the Cascades towards Boise.
Now a Leaf between Portland and Wenatchee? Wow. No way I’d do that!
I’m not sold on an EV as a rental car (wen traveling) yet, despite being all in on an EV for our next vehicle.
That said, we tried it for a trip earlier this year, using Turo to rent a Tesla Model Y in the Bay Area for most of a week. Despite it being the Bay Area and despite calling half a dozen hotels in the area we wanted to stay in advance, not one of them had charging infrastructure on-site. They were used to the question and they all just referred people to the local charging options at nearby shopping areas. We ended up having to nursemaid the car while it changed as we had no other purpose at the shopping area. So not convenient.
Moreover, on most trips I like to be picky about the best hotel that meets all our criteria. If I had to limit my options to the minority with charging tech right now, it would often mean settling for a hotel I otherwise wouldn’t have.
We did a road trip recently – 2,500 miles. Stayed in 8 hotels. By chance, the rental company offered us a free upgrade to a Volvo XC40 Recharge on the spot. I was tempted but turned it down because it was too late to factor it into our plans. But I made it a point after each hotel check-in to inquire if they had charging options on-site or walkable nearby and only 2 of 8 said they did – one on-site and one at a garage nearby. I definitely wasn’t sad that I declined the EV.
Could have written this almost word for word but we did buy a second car after a few weeks of being down to just one car. My husband found a deal on a Volt (plug in hybrid). He keeps talking about buying a second Bolt for himself though. He likes the Volt but it’s a 2012 and when those plug in hybrid Volts have trouble it’s actually a bigger pain than an EV, or at least the Bolt.
It’s kinda fun but you have to be up for a challenge. we had a Leaf for a couple of years about 7-8 years ago. EVs have come a loooooong way since then.
@stringbird you might appreciate that we took our 2012 Leaf with its 70 mile range out to Ocracoke in 2015 from the Triangle. Practically rolled onto the ferry. There was not a lot of charging infrastructure aside from car dealerships in 2015. But it was fun just to see if we could do it and we did!
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They were moving from Wenatchee so had to get the car to Portland somehow. Now that it’s here it’s fine for tooling around the city. But it’s quite a saga!
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Many EV owners do not or rarely road trip, so going to an unfamiliar area where recharging is needed is not and issue. Also, those who own an EV may be better able to figure out road trip charging or rental car charging than someone who has never before driven an EV.
But it looks like @GKUnion knows what they are doing, so will avoid the kinds of issues that first time EV drivers in rental EVs may unexpectedly encounter.
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Wow - and for other readers, this is actually a very similar situation to the empty distances you’d see in a PNW road trip. In the PWN all of the sudden you look around and there’s just nothing but nature. In the SE there are still houses and villages and stuff, but there’s no question that you’ve entered a backwater area (literally!) where there’s no charging infrastructure. Intheory we’re 100% down for stuff like that, but in reality, in a Leaf, I’d probably chicken out!
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The Bolt has a top charging speed of around 50kW in the lower half of the state-of-charge. Many newer EVs have top charging speeds of 100kW or higher in the lower half of the state-of-charge. Note that EV fast charging speed tends to go down in the higher half of the state-of-charge. But also note that the EV’s economy matters – if an EV with double the charging speed of the Bolt uses twice as much electricity as the Bolt for the same distance, then it will have the same charging stop overhead as the Bolt on a road trip.
“Good enough” for road tripping depends on range, charging speed, and economy of the EV. For fastest road tripping, charging stops at intervals about half of the total range, charging up from around 10% to 50-60%, is usually more optimal. But you have to see if the intervals between charging stops and the length of charging stops is reasonable for the humans involved (i.e. rest / toilet breaks, etc.), or if the length of charging stops would mean a lot of waiting for charging after having done whatever the humans need, or if the humans do not want or need to stop as often as that.
You can use https://abetterrouteplanner.com/ to plan EV road trip charging stops, or compare different EVs for the same road trip to see whether there is a significant difference in charging stop overhead time.
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Took careful planning but it was an adventure! That part of eastern NC is very sparsely populated. It’s the kind of place where you have to hunt for a gas station too as they are few and far between.
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Recently, mid-twenties DC was buying a car and they talked to the insurance agent to get an idea of what their premiums would be. The insurance company said no muscle cars and no electric vehicles.
Somewhere else I read/heard they EVs were expensive to fix - is that because there are not enough mechanics familiar with them? Are parts expensive?
A few years ago, we thought for a split second about an EV for spouse’s get around town car. Talked to a friend with a Leaf, who said it took some planning (charging etc) and we were out - spouse is an ADHD non-planner, so… 
The Leaf is small so maybe less juice/more planning? There are many more EVs are on the market now. I might consider a hybrid at this point.
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Better to use the insurance company’s website premium estimator and try different vehicles. Note that even the trim level can matter.
The older Leaf had a small capacity battery that used a high-degradation battery chemistry and was air cooled, so the initially small capacity tended to get smaller by a lot over time. Current EVs generally have a much larger capacity and less capacity loss over time.
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EVs don’t break down like gas vehicles. There is almost no maintenance. You don’t have to change the oil or timing belt or even do the brakes as often. There’s no transmission issues because there’s not a traditional transmission. So really almost no “fixing” to do. You just need to replace tires and wiper blades every now and again.
Insurance usually does not care if you have an EV but it might depend on your insurance company, the driver’s age, and your driving record.
Don’t compare current EVs to an old Nissan Leaf. That’s like comparing a BlackBerry to an iPhone or Android. The BlackBerry was cool when it was new but we’ve moved way beyond that now.
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I was thinking more along the lines of a car accident - less mechanics and/or more expensive parts?
I’m not sure I understand the idea of planning for a car accident and have no direct experience with repairs for our Bolt in an accident, but in the past I’ve found body work to be the most expensive part of an accident. I’m sure it’d be no cheaper in a Bolt but don’t see why it would be more expensive either.
In general it seems cars have become more computerized over the years, meaning it’s easier for car companies to lock down some of the maintenance options.
For my last car (Honda Civic hatchback) I had expenses related to oil changes, timing belt, spark plugs, etc. But in the six years we’ve had our Bolt we’ve only had to change the wipers and the tires, and refill the wiper fluid. The tires are more expensive than Civic tires, that is true for our hybrid as well. But for EVs there is no oil and no combustion engine to wear down, really close to zero other maintenance.
We brought the Bolt into the dealer once to get the tires rotated and they tried to charge us for an oil change, because oil change and tire rotation are a package in their system. When they couldn’t figure out how to remove the oil change charge they just gave the tire rotation to us for free.
It might be good for a Tesla owner to weigh in - I believe some Tesla maintenance such as tire changes cannot be done outside of the Tesla ecosystem, and I’m not sure how that works exactly.
Besides the Bolt and Tesla (and the Leaf, I guess, but I’d agree with ignoring the Leaf as an option these days), it’s probably hard to do much of a direct cost comparison because many EV models are very new, we will need to wait a couple years to see the wear and tear happen.
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