Was offered an e-car during the rental app process, might do it on a lark.
I cannot find anywhere, what 'level' the car must be returned - or what the company might charge if it needs topping.
Anyone know?
Avis
I don't know about Avis, but Hertz and some others seem to want you to return it at or above 70-80%.
Frankly, all of the rental car companies have really missed the opportunities that EVs provide: Have the charging equipment installed at the airport or wherever you're renting from, let them charge during all the time they're parked, waiting to be cleaned and whatnot. Maybe have a couple of fast chargers for cases where they need to go right back out. Then, let your customers benefit from the excellent experience you're providing, rather than making it a poor experience right off the bat.
Of course, providing good experiences isn't seen as profitable at most large corporations, so that's probably why EVs landed with such a thud in the rental industry.
A cautionary tale about charging a rental EV: most of them can show you in real time what charging stations are available nearby, but won't tell you the hoops you have to go through to get the electrons to flow. Most chargers require an app with an account and a credit card on file. It is difficult to find a charger that just allows you to swipe/tap a crrdit card and plug it in.
Not a problem for a regular EV owner, but on a rental it can put you in a tight spot.
Yes! This kind of crap is the reason why everyone standardizing on Tesla chargers by the end of this year is such a big deal. For the non-Tesla chargers, it seems like there's quite a few different networks (Shell, ChargePoint, Electrify America, and many others) and each one of them has their own app and their own ways of paying for things and they all seem to work like crap. I've often spent more time getting payment set up and charging to start than I have charging at the non-Tesla chargers. Meanwhile, Tesla chargers you just drive up and plug in and the juice starts flowing. Easy peasy.
The car will DC Fast Charge faster in the evening after you've been driving than in the morning when the battery is cold. It takes a bit of driving, even with preconditioning, to warm the battery to its optimal charging temperature. You were in Vegas in the summer, and were planning to eat breakfast while it charged, so it didn't make much difference in your case. In cooler weather, when you're waiting for the charging to finish to start your driving for the day, it will make a noticeable difference.
On a road trip, charge the car, at least a bit, at the end of your driving-day so that you can drive for an hour, or more, in the morning before stopping to charge.
This isn't a big issue most of the time. When it's really cold is when this becomes problematic. Those news stories about Teslas "not charging" in Chicago during a cold snap a year or two ago were because of this. People were plugging in, not seeing the charging start due to the cold, and leaving before the battery was warm enough to charge. 100% user error. FWIW, Tesla now makes it much clearer on the screen and supposedly says something like "warming the battery, charging will start in <countdown timer>".
I own a Tesla and it's great for my use case, but I doubt I would rent one. Sounds like a bit of a PITA.
Are you kidding? I own a Tesla too and I think renting gassers is a PITA, as is driving them in general. (FWIW, I have only rented Teslas from Turo, not from the traditional rental companies.)
And I always thought it sounded kinda dumb when I heard about all the other Tesla drivers doing it, but then I was going somewhere with my wife in a rental gasser and was out of the car and 20 yards away before I remembered... And turned around and went back to the car so I could put it in park, shut it off and lock it.
When you get used to it doing everything by itself and forget how primitive other cars are in comparison, those things are no longer habits!
Yeah. We rented a Polestar in Fort Lauderdale right at 2 years ago. It was at 40% charge when we picked it up and they asked us to bring it back with an equivalent charge. We assumed it would be easy - certainly our hotel or the business park we were visiting would have a charger. Nope. So we we used the web to find local chargers and they were all in sketchy areas. We tried one, but the charge rate was glacially slow. Finally, we just decided to return the car "as is" and deal with it. They didn't charge us, so it was OK. But this was on a business trip where we probably didn't drive 20 miles in 2 days.
My afterthought was "What if we were picking up the car in Lauderdale and driving to Key West?" That would have been a horrible screw job given the car was only 40% charged, so we'd have needed to charge for hours before really getting anywhere on a trip to Key West. That would have wrecked our plans IF that had been the plan. Our takeaway was "don't rent EV's on vacation".
First of all, bad move by the company on giving you a car at 40%.
This is one of the fundamental things
@Larry in TN is getting at with educating yourself. There are three levels of chargers for EVs, known as L1, L2, and L3 (or DCFC):
L1 is 120VAC, usually at 12A continuous, and is definitely glacially slow - About 3-4 miles of range added per hour plugged in. It's easy because all you need is a plain old wall outlet, though, and though my mom drives a Tesla she plugs it in at home on L1 because she doesn't drive too many miles and it works for her.
L2 is 240VAC and usually higher amperage, 32A-48A being pretty common. It's somewhat more efficient as well, so you'll get more like 35 miles of range per hour. Also glacially slow when compared to L3 or gas, but significantly faster than L1. Most EV drivers will have an L2 charger at home, and most of the free chargers you find at various businesses will be L2.
Unless it's equipped with a Tesla/NACS connector, an EV in North America will use the J1772 connector for both L1 and L2, and many/most of the chargers are capable of either L1 or L2 depending on what they're plugged into.
L3/DCFC is DC Fast Charging and usually runs at 400VDC, sometimes higher. This is the thing that usually gets you charged back up in ~20-30 minutes. On a Tesla, it uses the same Tesla/NACS connector as L1 and L2. On other EVs that don't have the Tesla/NACS connector or adapter yet, you need to find a non-Tesla station for L3, and there are two competing standards, SAE-CCS and CHAdeMO. SAE-CCS is more common, so most non-Tesla stations are either solely SAE-CCS or half and half SAE-CCS and CHAdeMO.
The other thing that's important to know here is that, just like any other battery, it can charge faster when it's not close to full. It generally takes as much or more time to charge from 80-100% as it does to charge from 0-80%, so it's best to charge it up to 70-80% and then continue your trip. One of the more common complaints I've seen from those who aren't familiar with EVs is "It took FOREVER to charge it all the way up" when they sat and waited for it to hit 100% before continuing.
It's a lot to ask me to read the owner's manual (or even a decent slice of it) to learn an EV's systems for a 3 day trip. And the next trip, it is a different EV, so more systems to learn. Pass.
You don't need to learn a particular vehicle's "systems". And you don't need to read the owner's manual. The important things that you *do* need to know are:
1) The differences between L1/L2 and L3 charging above. If you stay at a hotel with L2 charging you can plug into overnight, great! Anything else you'll be doing with a rental, you'll probably want L3.
2) Charging to 70-80% instead of 100%.
3) If the car tells you how many miles you have remaining to an empty battery, it's lying (could be in either direction, but usually overestimating for most people IMO). This can vary quite a bit depending on HVAC usage, driving style, speed, terrain, temperature, and many other conditions.
Things you don't "need" to know that are helpful:
4) You'll go much farther if you learn to not use the brakes so you take advantage of regenerative braking as much as possible. That means that you may want to learn to get off the accelerator just a bit earlier than you're used to.
5) Watch your speed. It's easy to go WAY faster than you're expecting as a new EV driver because you no longer have the engine screaming to cue you in that you're going way too fast, and you don't have to mash on the accelerator to get going very quickly too. Be gentle.
All of the above apply to all EVs. There's not really anything extra to learn when moving between brands.
. But practically there’s traffic so 80% is pretty normal.
