I Rented an EV. Oops.

[canyonwalker]

Phoenix Getaway travelog #8
Around town · Sun, 21 Sep 2025. 7pm

Getting a rental car usually involves a spin of the proverbial roulette wheel. The past several years I've been reserving at the "full size sedan" or "intermediate SUV" categories to avoid the worst of the econo-penalty box vehicles. Alas the result is usually an uninteresting car. The most common model I've been assigned the past few years is the Toyota Camry (read my Camry review). Number two, Toyota RAV4 (read my RAV4 review). They're good cars but bo-o-oring. (Except that one time a RAV4 implausibly got me through snow and mud on a 4x4 mountain trail.) This trip I got an interesting rental car: a Hyundai Ioniq 5 electric vehicle.



Being assigned an EV this trip wasn't a surprise. I mean, I booked the EV category. 😂 But not because I particularly wanted an EV. Frankly I've avoided booking EVs as rental cars because I don't want to have to figure out how to access charger networks without a subscription for just one fill-up. This time the EV category was way cheaper than everything else, like half the cost of an econo-penalty box and one-third a traditional intermediate SUV. My innate thriftiness won out over my dislike of having to figure out charging.

Well, I haven't had to charge it yet, but I've looked up the network info the rental agency provided and— yeesh, what an f'ing mess.

To put this in terms of filling up a traditional, gas powered car, imagine that:

• There are only about a dozen filling stations you can use spread across a major metropolitan area


• You can't just swipe a credit card at the pump, you have to download an app and create an account


• And Exxon, Shell, Valero, etc. each require a different app


• And, for you, gas is $16-20/gallon. 😡

Comments

[ckd]

I've booked a rental EV exactly once; for that trip I'd already had to use Hertz instead of Avis (my usual go-to since my employer's corporate contract gives me a great leisure rate) because Avis didn't have anything for those dates at any nearby location, and Hertz had a cheap enough deal to make the EV worthwhile.

Since it only needed to get us from DCA to western Virginia (near SHD) and back, the place we were staying had a charger, and the route planner indicated that we'd only need to make one stop each way to recharge (with the likely option in the parking lot of a Walmart near several fast food places, making the stop a good break point anyway) I figured it was worth a try.

When we came to pick up the car Hertz DCA was chaotic even by the usual standards of an airport rental agency and didn't have a car for us; they simply said "you're President's Circle, go pick something from that area and go" so we wound up with a conventional Mercedes instead while paying the cheap EV rate. So I still haven't actually rented an EV.

[canyonwalker]

If there were a free charger at my hotel or a place of business I was working, choosing an EV would be a lot easier. The challenge as a person driving an EV once is that the commercial charging stations are all subscription based. You have to sign up for an account and purchase an expensive annual membership to get access to the best rates. If you own an EV, this is a no-brainer. In fact the first year or few years of the charger network subscription is often included in the purchase price. But as a person renting an EV for a few days, who wants to charge once, it's an enormous obstacle.

[some_other_dave]

Was it actually equivalent to $16/gallon, though? I did some math a few months back, and for the electric rates we were paying in Sunnyvale and published Tesla consumption, the cost was about 10-15 cents per mile. That was roughly equivalent to what a 30 MPG gas car would cost. Which surprised me, as I really thought the electricity would be cheaper!

[canyonwalker]

When I helped a friend drive a new EV 500 miles home from the dealership a few years ago I did some back-of-the-envelope calculations on fuel cost. What complicates the calculation is how much you're actually paying per unit (kwh) for electros at the pump. Charging networks operate on the basis of you signing up for a membership of a year or more, prepaid, for which you get some "unlimited"— but also very specifically limited— number of charging sessions per year. Want to charge just once, and pay with a credit card? Ha ha ha, loser. The price per kwh is much higher.