Hertz Tesla Rental Imports Your Profile, And More, But Badly
- by Forbes
- May 06, 2024
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New Drivers
The custom rental software doesn’t do much at all to help new drivers understand the different way in which Teslas operate. While it’s good that it had features to support an existing owner, most renters will be people trying out an EV for the first time. Indeed, almost all the cars in Tesla’s “pick any car” lot at Toronto airport were EVs, mostly Polestar and Tesla. For those companies, this is a great opportunity to show off their cars to potential new buyers, but instead they get a frustrating experience, because the cars are unfamiliar. They would do well to have an optional “tutorial” mode to explain how things are different, as well as a guide to planning charging.
Hertz does let you use Tesla superchargers with their simple plug and play interface, and says it will send me a bill. For road trips in rental cars, it’s a very good strategy to seek hotels which include free or reasonably priced charging for guests. Hertz and Tesla would do well to make it easier for renters to understand this and find those hotels, as well as stay away from the few hotels that charge “minibar” rates that are even higher than fast chargers or even gasoline. If you stay at hotels with charging, the EV experience is simple and easy—the car is full every morning, and it happens while you sleep, and you may never need to look for fast charging. It mirrors the home-charging experience of EV owners who have that in place.
The Hertz Tesla did include Tesla’s mobile charging cable, but only with a 120v plug, which offers very low-rate charging. It should include the 50 amp RV plug which charges quickly at rural locations that include RV power. It was also missing the CCS adapter which lets the cars charge at all the CCS stations as well as Tesla superchargers. (The experience at these can be more confusing, and the driver must pay the charging network on their own, but it’s still useful if driving outside the big cities.)
Hertz gave me this car (a free upgrade) with less than 60% charge, which meant I could return it with just 10%. If it’s more charged you need to return it with 70% or pay a $35 recharging fee. It’s not practical to recharge an EV when you are rushing to the airport the way it is to refill a gasoline car, so the former rule is actually easier to deal with. On the other hand, an EV will save you more than $35 over gasoline if your rental involves long drives and you don’t only charge at superchargers—particularly in Canada. But if Hertz wants more drivers to rent their EVs, they should reduce that $35 charge. Read my earlier article on Hertz for more.
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