[NA]Returning electric rental cars "full"?

[Salty]

You also have to deal with the maintenance for both an electric drivetrain and an ICE.

If I owned an EV I'd take care of the range anxiety with a 2-4 kW inverter generator in the trunk. Enough to get me going and put a few miles of charge in the battery if I'm trully stuck.

You’d get about one mile per hour from a gen of that size. Hope you have lots of gas cans.

 

[Velocity173]

You also have to deal with the maintenance for both an electric drivetrain and an ICE.

If I owned an EV I'd take care of the range anxiety with a 2-4 kW inverter generator in the trunk. Enough to get me going and put a few miles of charge in the battery if I'm trully stuck.

Scheduled maintenance will be more but their reliability is better than both EV and ICE. I should’ve stayed with Subaru. If they made an attractive EV I’d buy it.

Who Makes the Most Reliable New Cars? - Consumer Reports

Consumer Reports' latest car reliability survey ranks the brands, reveals how regions compare, and who makes the most reliable new cars.

www.consumerreports.org

 

[Larry in TN]

Cost to charge with electricity in a public charging station is all over the map. Locally, I see rates between 45 cents per kwh and $1.5 per kwh.

Wow! $1.50/kWh? That's crazy. What network/location was that.

The Supercharger closest to my house, which I'd have no reason to use, had time-of-day pricing. 8am-10pm is 41¢, 10pm-4am is 28¢, and 4am-8am is 26¢. The next closest is 32¢, 28¢, 27¢ for the same time periods. Another in town is 29¢ all day.

I hadn't compared the prices of nearby chargers before. It's interesting how much variability there is.

Back to rentals...

Hertz doesn't list prices, just three charging plans. On the one equivalent to "return empty" for an ICE car, their example show a cost of $30 for a rental in California with pickup at 80% and return at 15%. That's close enough to what the charging session would have cost so I'd go with that plan and save the time.

Avis says that the car will be rented out with at least 70% SoC so, if it's less, they didn't follow their own procedures. On return, you must have a 70% SoC to avoid a fee. If returned under 70%, but more than 10%, the charge is $35. If returned below 10% then the fee doubles to $70. That seems reasonable to me and I'd only recharge enough to return above 10%. A Model 3 could be charged from 2% to 15% in no more than 3 minutes so the 10% minimum would be easy to make.

 

[Larry in TN]

If I owned an EV I'd take care of the range anxiety with a 2-4 kW inverter generator in the trunk. Enough to get me going and put a few miles of charge in the battery if I'm trully stuck.

I think, after a few months, you'd feel quite comfortable leaving the generator at home.

 

[AV8R_87]

You’d get about one mile per hour from a gen of that size. Hope you have lots of gas cans.

Six miles per hour, at 16A/120V. The gallon of fuel in the generator would give you about 15 miles of range.

I think, after a few months, you'd feel quite comfortable leaving the generator at home.

Most likely.

 

[Salty]

Six miles per hour, at 16A/120V. The gallon of fuel in the generator would give you about 15 miles of range.

Most likely.

actually, my bad. I’m the one that screwed up the math.

Enjoy waiting an hour to get 15 miles. I’m not going to carry a generator for that. I’d rather call a tow truck.

 

[Notrub]

Cant wait to see a mini honda generator strapped to an ev…one day.

 

[Salty]

Cant wait to see a mini honda generator strapped to an ev…one day.

But I prefer the classics:

 

[AV8R_87]

I think you should re-check your math. 2-4 kw is 2-4kw regardless of amps.

L1 charger at 16A/120V, 1920W. Typical EV usage is 300 Wh/mile. Actually, a model 3 is 240 Wh/mile, but that's not what I get when I drive one. 1920/300=6.4 miles of charge/hr.
Typical generator is rated at 9h at quarter load with 1 gal, so let's say 2.4h at full load. 2.4h×6.4mi/h=15.36 mi.
Sooo... where is my math wrong?

Cant wait to see a mini honda generator strapped to an ev…one day.

 

[Salty]

L1 charger at 16A/120V, 1920W. Typical EV usage is 300 Wh/mile. Actually, a model 3 is 240 Wh/mile, but that's not what I get when I drive one. 1920/300=6.4 miles of charge/hr.
Typical generator is rated at 9h at quarter load with 1 gal, so let's say 2.4h at full load. 2.4h×6.4mi/h=15.36 mi.
Sooo... where is my math wrong?

I have since fixed my post

actually, my bad. I’m the one that screwed up the math.

Enjoy waiting an hour to get 15 miles. I’m not going to carry a generator for that. I’d rather call a tow truck.

 

[Larry in TN]

Here's a video of a Canadian deep freezing (-25F/-32C) his Model 3 then Supercharging it at -13F/-25C with about a 15-17 minute precondition on the drive to the Supercharger.

I don't don't think I'll visit Saskatoon in the wintertime.

 

[NoBShere]

Here's a video of a Canadian deep freezing (-25F/-32C) his Model 3 then Supercharging it at -13F/-25C with about a 15-17 minute precondition on the drive to the Supercharger.

I don't don't think I'll visit Saskatoon in the wintertime.

fake news, because this one time in chicago. Temps like that, charge at home while sipping a nice bourbon.

 

[Larry in TN]

I should add that the video, in post 171, also shows the process of navigating to a Supercharge and how you connect and start charging.

Narrating the experience to your GoPro is optional.

 

[tspear]

Wow! $1.50/kWh? That's crazy. What network/location was that.

evGo at a hotel near Boston Logan. Per business acquaintance, stay at the hotel, it is cheap; however for the general public the price is crazy high.
My guess, hotel got some sort of grant which requires public access but did not require same rate for those staying at the hotel versus general public. Therefore, the hotel is trying to discourage public use since it is a limited number of spots and wanted to keep the spots for hotel guests.

Tim

 

[AV8R_87]

Wow! $1.50/kWh? That's crazy. What network/location was that.

The Supercharger closest to my house, which I'd have no reason to use, had time-of-day pricing. 8am-10pm is 41¢, 10pm-4am is 28¢, and 4am-8am is 26¢. The next closest is 32¢, 28¢, 27¢ for the same time periods. Another in town is 29¢ all day.

I guess I shouldn't complain about Electrify America charging me 30-something cents /kWh. I thought that was expensive.

 

[asicer]

Enjoy waiting an hour to get 15 miles. I’m not going to carry a generator for that. I’d rather call a tow truck.

But you wouldn't have to wait. You could drive home soon after plugging in... at 15mph

 

[AV8R_87]

But you wouldn't have to wait. You could drive home soon after plugging in... at 15mph

Too bad all EVs (to my knowledge) won't let you drive unless the charging plug is removed.

 

[asicer]

Too bad all EVs (to my knowledge) won't let you drive unless the charging plug is removed.

A couple lines of firmware and you'll be good to go.

 

[flyingcheesehead]

Most of my EV driving is in mountains; often in bad weather. Rain, snow, sleet... I rarely get to drive in nice weather for some reason.
Anyways, there is nominally a finite amount of friction which can be used to change the vector the car. Which can used to fight drag (accelerate), deaccelerate, or turn the vehicle.
Single pedal driving makes it significantly more difficult to determine what the car is actually doing in contact with the road. It reduces the natural feedback you get from knowing what the powertrain is doing.
Yes, I know I can look at the screen and figure it out, but try doing that on a windy mountain road at night in the rain and monitor the screen which is usually not in the straight ahead field of view. Versus, knowing very simply how much I have pressed the brake pedal. I could ignore the screen with single pedal, but that requires knowing current speed and foot position and doing a mental calculation on the relative difference at the moment...
So when driving, and there are variable road conditions, I like the ability to know what I can and cannot do without trying to figure out calculus, and bet that the engineers have not made a change since the last update.

Wow - You're the first person who has described driving the way I think about it. Vectors, forces, etc... Probably from a combination of engineering school and growing up in the snowy north.

I will tell you that I do exactly as you describe with single pedal in the Tesla. I think once you're used to how the (any) car responds on a dry road you'll have the intuitive feel for it and you'll be able to feel the road conditions just fine without having to resort to using the brake pedal.

Now, stuck in traffic I get the beauty of single pedal driving. But I prefer a good adaptive cruise control for that.

Autopilot changed my life when it came to commuting. Instead of getting home tired and angry from fighting with drivers I didn't have the patience to be behind, I just got in the correct lane as soon as I got on the freeway, turned on Autopilot and let it take me home and I'd get there happy and relaxed and ready to greet my family.

Strangely, Hybrids have the highest rate of vehicle fires, higher than ICE car. I have no idea why. Not high enough to worry about, of course, but it is puzzling.

Not really. They have all the same ignition and fuel sources as ICE vehicles, PLUS all the new ignition and fuel sources that EVs have. That's one way in which they have the worst of both worlds.

Huh?
My GM provided charger certainly has both a 5-15 and 14-50 plug.

Interesting... That's new. Glad to hear they're getting with the program.

The funniest thing is they even offer a kit with a TT30 plug which tells the charger to offer 24A... Which all GM vehicles ignore and still use 12A.

Face. Palm.

This is why EVs haven’t caught on with rental agencies. They haven’t missed the boat. They’re just not making as much money off of them vs ICE.

...because they haven't made the necessary changes to their business to make renting an EV a good experience, and they're selling them off too early.

They could absolutely make more money if they wanted to, but they're so stuck in the ICE mindset that they have completely botched the whole experiment.

I have a plug in hybrid range rover, and love it. Best of both worlds. I drive mostly electric, plugging in at home. But when the battery gets low, or I forget to plug-in, I can get 350 miles in 5 minutes at a Chevron charging station ;-). Just the very small amount of electrical anxiety I get from my hybrid, I don’t think I’m ready for a fully electric car.

How do you get "electrical anxiety" from a hybrid???

Scheduled maintenance will be more but their reliability is better than both EV and ICE.

Huh? I mean, if you get stuck you have a "spare" drivetrain to get to safety and maintenance if necessary and if the vehicle supports doing such things, but reliability can't be better when you have more parts to break.

I should’ve stayed with Subaru. If they made an attractive EV I’d buy it.

This is one of the big disappointments with Subaru. They market themselves as an environmentally friendly company, yet they've only had one hybrid model (Crosstrek) for a while, and one EV model (Solterra) that is just a thing they co-developed with another EV laggard, Toyota. And the Toyota BZ4X/Subaru Solterra is quite a disappointment in terms of EV tech. 100kW "fast" charging? YGBSM. Weak. Range is disappointing as well.

evGo at a hotel near Boston Logan.

So in reality you're paying $1.49/kWh for parking and $0.01/kWh for the electricity.

 

[Salty]

A couple lines of firmware and you'll be good to go.

Wouldn’t it be easier to trick the door sensor?

 

[Bob Noel]

Wouldn’t it be easier to trick the door sensor?

might not be easier, but sometimes the challenge is part of the fun.