I rented an EV in Maine for a few days in March. How’d it go?

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Last week I flew out to Maine to visit my daughter. I rented an EV for the trip because it was the cheapest option, plus I prefer driving an EV. In addition, I was curious about the whole process. I landed at Logan Airport in Boston on Tuesday afternoon and picked up the car, a brand new Chevrolet Bolt EUV, from Avis.

I was surprised that Avis did virtually nothing to prepare me to drive an EV. They didn’t even seem to know I was renting an EV (“Would you like to prepay for fuel?”) until I pointed it out. They gave me no information about how to charge (e.g., which plugs are compatible) or the battery size or range of the car. When I asked about charging, the guy at the counter vaguely referred to “an app that you can download.”

The Avis people did not show me where the charging port was or how to open it. Nor did they did point out the charging cord under the trunk bottom. When I later checked for it, it hadn’t even been unwrapped.

I also needed to ask how full the car should be when returned. Fortunately they seemed informed enough to reply with 70%. Since fast chargers slow down a lot once the battery starts getting that full, filling the EV up much more would be a nuisance. Avis’ policy is to charge no fee if the battery is at least 70% full, $35 if it is at least 10% full, and $70 if it is less than 10% full. They expect you to know how to charge, but they don’t tell you how.

Luckily I had a clue about all of this, so I soon headed out for the two hour drive to Portland, where my hotel was. I had let the front desk know ahead of time that I would be driving an EV and asked if they could provide an extension cord. I figured if the car were plugged into a standard outlet for ten hours at night, I’d get around 14 kWh, or about 50 miles. (1) That wouldn’t be enough to cover my daily driving, but it might be enough so I could fill up just once during the trip.

Alas, that would not be the case. When I got to the hotel, they had not set up an extension cord. The parking spaces were a distance from the building, and while they probably could have figured something out, they didn’t. I looked around for a place nearby where I could do a quick charge, since I needed to drive another 100 miles that night. Luckily there was a set of fast chargers less than half a mile from the hotel.

I drove there and found open spots, but I had some trouble getting the EVGo charger to take my payment. Tapping and inserting my credit card didn’t work, and using the app didn’t work either. Eventually I waved my phone in front of the charger and that did the trick. A person charging in the next spot offered to help, but by then I’d gotten it working. I appreciated her offer though!

While I was at the lot I noticed a set of slower (and cheaper) chargers next to the fast ones, so that night I came back to see if there was an empty spot so I could charge overnight. Luckily there was! I plugged in, the Chargepoint charger worked easily, and I made the quick but chilly walk back to the hotel.

You can see at this point that during the first day or so of the trip, a chunk of my time and attention was spent on vehicle charging, which is not how most people want to spend a vacation. It would have been less of an issue if the hotel provided charging. But since I found a nearby charging lot with empty spots, it wasn’t a huge deal. What if I weren’t so lucky? I can see why many people would not want to rent an EV. If you are driving a lot and don’t have reliable on-site overnight charging, there is the stress of wondering whether you will find an open charger and the inconvenience of extra walks to and from the charger.

I wasn’t sure what the towing policy was for this lot. Would they tow the car if it stayed parked after it was done charging? There were cars sitting there that seemed to have finished and were just taking up spaces. So I thought overnight would be okay. But I hedged my bets and got up at 7am to move the car back to the hotel parking lot. Then I went back to sleep. (Remember 7am there is 4am here!)

After driving about 200 miles on Tuesday, I noticed that the car was only getting about 3.6 miles per kWh, equivalent to about 121 miles per gallon. That sounds like a lot, but here in California my older Bolt gets about 4 miles per kWh with this kind of mostly highway driving. The slightly bigger vehicle and colder temperatures were hurting mileage. (2) Why did I care? The Bolt has a 66 kWh battery, which in theory should allow for about 240 miles at even the lower mileage. But Avis asked that the battery not go below 10%, and fast chargers slow down when the battery gets to 80%. So if you are dependent on fast charging, that reduces the effective battery size to 70% or in this case about 46 kWh. That is 165 miles at 3.6 miles per kWh. So I hoped to continue to be able to charge overnight to get a full battery.

The next day was no problem, driving around fine and charging overnight. The third day, same thing, with the added advantage of finding some free chargers by the L.L.Bean store. (3) That lot, like the one near my hotel, was well used. Well, half of it was well used. The fast Tesla chargers nearby stood empty.

There were complaints about this on Plugshare…

And also an explanation…

Charging cost matters! I will get to that more at the end of this post.

That third night it snowed. I charged overnight again and had an extra chilly walk the next morning to pick up my car. Perplexingly, in winter in Boston, the car came with no ice scraper. So I found a good use for one of the plug adapters in the trunk…

I ended up driving 519 miles over the course of four days. In a gas car you wouldn’t think twice about that. But in an EV I had to worry about charging. Partly that was my fault — I didn’t consider the EV when deciding where to stay. But fortunately Portland Maine is investing in public chargers and some good ones were near enough to my hotel. I did end up canceling one plan, though, to drive up to my daughter’s school on the last morning, pick up some of her friends, and drive them all back to Boston. When they learned that we would probably need to stop to charge, they opted to take the train instead. That was a shame.

What did all of this cost? I drove 519 miles and charged 142 kWh of energy at a rate of about 14 miles per dollar. That compares favorably with about 11 miles per dollar if I’d driven a gas car (assuming 35-40 mpg and gas at the Portland rate of $3.30/gallon). The EV cost 25% less than the gas car.

But that summary doesn’t tell the whole story. If you dig into those numbers, you will see that charging rates vary dramatically. The chargers at L.L.Bean were free, but you can only spend so much time there. The overnight chargers near my hotel cost $0.15/kWh, which works out to about 24 miles per dollar. That is a great deal, less than half the cost of driving a gas car. It’s the fast chargers that really rip you off. The fast charger near my hotel came in at around 6 miles per dollar, and the one where I filled up near the airport, at the ultra-chic Copley Plaza in Boston, was an insanely high 4.4 miles per dollar, two and a half times the price of gas.

It is really difficult for the average person, or even the non-average person, to understand what they are paying at these different chargers. The fast chargers both assessed a $1 “session fee” on top of very high energy prices, and those per-kWh rates are not intuitive to convert to gas prices. But people seem to know they are expensive — they are often empty!

The chargers can also be tricky to use. There were some EnelX chargers on campus that had no instructions other than a QR code, and then you had to register to use them. Did I want yet another account? In addition, one of the (free) Clipper Creek chargers at L.L.Bean didn’t work when I plugged in, saying repeatedly that it wasn’t plugged in all the way even though it was.

Finally, as I mentioned above, I had some trouble paying at one of the EVGo chargers. I find the Chargepoint chargers to be the most reliable, and they have nice graphics like the one below that show how your car charged. You can see how much power you are getting and how the charging slows down as the battery fills up.

So, after all that, would I rent an EV again? You know, I would. I am committed to reducing my emissions, and I don’t mind the opportunities to help iron out bugs during these early days. In this case, I will share my experience with both Avis and the hotel. I also learn as I go. Next time I would try to nail down a source of overnight charging if I planned to drive a lot. Or better yet, I would find a way to drive less. I would ask questions before leaving the rental place, like what adapters the car uses, what size the battery is, and whether it can fast charge.

But Avis has some work to do as well. My impression from this one rental is that Avis has little interest in making their EVs successful. They did nothing to educate me as a customer or to check what I knew. They are setting people up to fail. Someone at Avis who actually likes these vehicles and wants them to succeed should be put in charge of the rentals, or people will continue to have bad experiences. What is the point of that?

Owning an EV is much easier than renting one. You generally work out these problems once and then charging becomes an afterthought, less of a worry than filling up a gas car. But traveling in a new place with a rental is a different story. Rental companies need to up their game if they want EV rentals to succeed.

I’d love to hear your thoughts about or experiences with renting EVs.

Notes

1. The Bolt has two options for charging from a standard outlet. The default is 8 amps, which draws about a kilowatt of power, but there is an option to use 12 amps, which draws about 1.4 KW. Of course, an Avis renter wouldn’t be told about this, but using the 12 amp option gets you 50% more miles on a charge.

2. Not only were the cold temperatures impacting battery range, but for some reason this Bolt did not have the low-energy heated seating and steering wheel options that allow you to stay warm without using much power. I was surprised and disappointed about that.

3. In reality, I didn’t find these chargers the first time around. I had set my charging filters on Plugshare to find only those with at least 3 KW of power. But the free chargers at this station apparently don’t have a power rating recorded, so they did not show up. I only found them when I saw them visually when looking to take a photo of the Tesla chargers nearby.

4. Have you heard about all of the Maine residents who are adopting heat pumps? If you don’t believe it, here is some photographic evidence…

5. For those who are interested, here is how I offset my flights. I looked up the type of plane I used for each flight, in one direction an Airbus 321, and in the other a Boeing 737-9 MAX (fortunately no bolts came loose). Then I used Atmosfair to see how many emissions they generated (727 kg going there and 568 kg coming back). From there, I bought two tons of emissions offsets on the Gold Standard Marketplace, choosing a project that had valuable co-benefits. Voila, it took 5 minutes and cost an affordable amount. Offsets are no substitute for flying less, but when I do choose to fly, it’s a little thing that can help some of the people most impacted by climate change while also reducing emissions.

Current Climate Data

Global impacts (February 2024), US impacts (February 2024), CO2 metric, Climate dashboard

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