Rental car advice would you choose an EV or an ICE?

[Fishindude77]

I'd choose the EV, but I have been driving EV for 5+ years. I can not stand driving ICE cars.

In your next post you talk about driving your hybrid to LA.
Hybrids have an internal combustion engine.

[MonkeyMama]

In your next post you talk about driving your hybrid to LA.
Hybrids have an internal combustion engine.

We have a hybrid. We could no longer stand driving gas cars. We bought an EV (to replace gas car).
99% of the time I just drive the hybrid on electric. (The gas mode on this or probably any hybrid is much more pleasant than driving just an ICE engine.)

We drove our EV to LA twice this year. For several reasons, we chose to drive the hybrid this trip. If your point was that we needed the ICE to get to LA... That's not it. We don't usually do three big road trips in one year and it was getting a little ridiculous. We wanted to pile up some miles on the car we never drive. I would have much preferred to just drive the EV. If we were renting a car for this trip, EV all the way.

Driving the hybrid in ICE mode for 6 hours each way did suck. I meant what I said.

[ua_guy]

With many EV ranges stretching 300-400+ miles, having an ICE is no longer a requirement for an ad-hoc road trip in most cases. We can charge from 20-80%+ in about a half hour: The perfect amount of time to stretch legs and grab a bite to eat after driving that many miles.

We have our EV with us on our winter travels here in CA. It will be driven up to LA and back from Palm Desert. No big deal.

[kork13]

WWe have our EV with us on our winter travels here in CA. It will be driven up to LA and back from Palm Desert. No big deal.

I'll admit, one of my biggest concerns about totally switching to EV (besides charger access) is the cold. After I retire, part of our plan is to return to living in the Anchorage, Alaska area. It's milder than places like Fairbanks (below -40°F), but even still, sub-zero temperatures (-10 to -20) are fairly normal for a few week-long stretches during the winter. Our garage would be heated while it's at home, but out & about, I'm afraid it'll cold-sink & stop working, leaving us stranded.

[disneysteve]

With many EV ranges stretching 300-400+ miles, having an ICE is no longer a requirement for an ad-hoc road trip in most cases. We can charge from 20-80%

I have a question about this. EV's tout their range - let's say 350 miles - but then I see so many things talking about charging to 80%. A friend of ours got an EV recently and they told her to avoid charging it over 80% to extend battery life. If that's the case, then the range isn't really 350 miles; it's 80% of that or 280 miles. And that's only if you run it until it's dead, which you obviously don't want to do. If you only run it down to 20% to avoid getting stranded, your practical range is really only 210 miles.

Is that an accurate assessment or am I reading too much into it?

[MonkeyMama]

I have a question about this. EV's tout their range - let's say 350 miles - but then I see so many things talking about charging to 80%. A friend of ours got an EV recently and they told her to avoid charging it over 80% to extend battery life. If that's the case, then the range isn't really 350 miles; it's 80% of that or 280 miles. And that's only if you run it until it's dead, which you obviously don't want to do. If you only run it down to 20% to avoid getting stranded, your practical range is really only 210 miles.

Is that an accurate assessment or am I reading too much into it?

I'd say that's not accurate. I think a lot of people say this. & it could depend on the car? I know with our cars that's already factored. When the car says the battery is charged 100%, it's not really charged 100%. It may only be charged 90%. (Re: the true size of the battery). I don't know how other make/models work. There is always great debate about this even with our car model. (Which is probably how I know that the buffer is already built in. I belong to some car forums.) I know a lot of people believe that they shouldn't charge their car to 100% or are just more cautious.

I'd say that it also wouldn't make any sense to not use the last 20%. If you ran the car to empty, there's still some buffer factored into that. Realistically, you'd leave 5% if you want to be conservative. That's what we do. I'd say we are being extraordinarily conservative. (But we do the same long drives over and over, re: family that lives 100 or 300 miles away. I'd be more conservative on a new drive, re: the rest of my comment.)

I do think a lot of this just depends on various factors. Going down hills regens energy. Sitting in stop-and-go traffic regens energy. So while most cars advertised mpgs are sketchy, our experience is the complete opposite with the EV. Our car generally gets 250 miles of range on the open freeway (which is the advertised range), but it can easily get 400 miles of range if we just stick to the city streets. Or if you get stuck in traffic, then there's no reason for range anxiety. If you are driving in a cold climate or like to drive very fast, things will go the other way. Then you will lose range.

[LivingAlmostLarge]

Don't buy ev in cold weather. My in-laws have a Tesla and turned around twice trying to cross the Rockies. Once the snow was bad. Other time traffic from snow was bad and they weren't sure they were going to make it between towns in the Rockies. This was first week of december. Also they were renting in Airbnb in the cold city and no at home charging in a condo. So they had to charge like every other day somewhere because sitting in the cold outside the car kept turning on to warm the battery.

They kinda lived somewhere like anchorage. Although it does hit -40 below but -20 mostly I think. All I know is when I snows 9-10 months out of the year it sucks. And yes they do not get anywhere close to 300+ miles out of a charge. More like 200 but usually they never leave the city so it's not a big deal.

That 300+ is not for people who live in Canada, and certainly not really cold places in Canada. Maybe Vancouver. And there isn't much charging outside the cities. And even in the other cities there isn't as many. My fil was like huh Vancouver lots of chargers and lots of Tesla. Where they came from almost none.

[ua_guy]

I have a question about this. EV's tout their range - let's say 350 miles - but then I see so many things talking about charging to 80%. A friend of ours got an EV recently and they told her to avoid charging it over 80% to extend battery life. If that's the case, then the range isn't really 350 miles; it's 80% of that or 280 miles. And that's only if you run it until it's dead, which you obviously don't want to do. If you only run it down to 20% to avoid getting stranded, your practical range is really only 210 miles.

Is that an accurate assessment or am I reading too much into it?

For current battery-electric vehicles, that is true**

With lithium-ion based batteries you generally want to follow the 80/20 rule. For normal daily driving, where there may be many days between charges, keep the battery between 20-80%. If you go on a longer trip and need all of your range in one day, or more more than once in a day, you can safely charge to 100% and also deplete to less than 20%. This is physically harder on the battery, but is well within its intended use and design. What you really want to avoid is constant short trip/recharge between 80-100%, and also leaving the battery drained for long periods of time below 20%. Long road trips generally avoid those things successfully as you are using and recharging the battery. If you own a newer laptop with a lithium ion battery, you will notice the charging profile does the same thing with the laptop battery.

We just completed an 800+ mile round trip in our BMW iX - in freezing weather - with mountain passes, and high speed highway driving in the flats. We recharged once on the first leg (350 miles) and to go from 15% back to 100% we were just over 30 minutes charge time. We charged twice while in town at our destination: Once to fill the car after the journey there, and again to refill after all the driving around town so we had a full battery when we left. Both of those smaller charges were much less than 30 minutes and both occurred while we shopped.

[ua_guy]

Don't buy ev in cold weather. My in-laws have a Tesla and turned around twice trying to cross the Rockies. Once the snow was bad. Other time traffic from snow was bad and they weren't sure they were going to make it between towns in the Rockies. This was first week of december. Also they were renting in Airbnb in the cold city and no at home charging in a condo. So they had to charge like every other day somewhere because sitting in the cold outside the car kept turning on to warm the battery.

They kinda lived somewhere like anchorage. Although it does hit -40 below but -20 mostly I think. All I know is when I snows 9-10 months out of the year it sucks. And yes they do not get anywhere close to 300+ miles out of a charge. More like 200 but usually they never leave the city so it's not a big deal.

That 300+ is not for people who live in Canada, and certainly not really cold places in Canada. Maybe Vancouver. And there isn't much charging outside the cities. And even in the other cities there isn't as many. My fil was like huh Vancouver lots of chargers and lots of Tesla. Where they came from almost none.

It's interesting you say that because while I would agree in a place like Alaska where towns are small and generally remote, an EV may have more limitations, there is a huge cohort of people who own EV's in the frigid region of the US including the Northeast, Midwest, and Mountain West states who do just fine.

The people who own EV's in cold states generally have home-based charging, and are smart enough to not go driving 300 miles into the frozen tundra without planning their charges. We certainly did not have to charge our EV every day in temperatures as low as 18 degrees in Northern Idaho, however, it was nice to come out to a warm and fully defrosted vehicle ready to go. We can tell the car to condition itself from the app, and we need not be in remote key fob range to do it.

[LivingAlmostLarge]

https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=372874

This explains a little about the cold weather issue with EV. It is ideal at 250 kwh/mile. But the guy in winter is driving 450 kwh, so his range is affected. I finally get it. But it probably also depends on age of EV. the 2018 EV is a lot less range and efficiency than a 2023 or 2024

Also my in-laws had to turn around because it wasn't 300 miles but it was the sitting and leaving the car running in -20 to - 30 average temp, where they were was -50 this weekend. Sort of like alaska. Yeah 18 is warm for them.

[disneysteve]

I thought of this thread recently when I saw that Hertz was selling off about 1/3 of its EV fleet, about 20,000 cars. Sounds like they overestimated demand for them as rentals.

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/01/14/hertz-makes-agile-decision-to-shift-strategy-and-sell-evs-teslas.html

[ua_guy]

Yes and no. The actual reason given by the Hertz CEO was extremely high collision repair costs. It's true...if you have a moderate accident in an EV it's likely going to be a total loss, and it's making insurance on EV's comparatively expensive to an ICV. Repairable vehicles are usually have a high repair bill when replacing damaged batteries or expensive equipment like inverters. I wouldn't doubt a secondary reason or even the primary reason being demand though.

I'm not saying anyone in this thread is, but the anti-EV trolls are thrilled at this announcement by Hertz as well as a couple of news articles about EV's not being able to be charged during the frigid weather in the Northern US this last week. It all points to inexperienced and unprepared EV owners who tried to charge at busy Tesla stations, but the headline comes out as basically, EV's don't work in cold weather. haha! Not nearly as popular is the story about gas pumps freezing in Calgary and ICV owners not being able to fill up. But it did happen.

[disneysteve]

Yes and no. The actual reason given by the Hertz CEO was extremely high collision repair costs. It's true...if you have a moderate accident in an EV it's likely going to be a total loss, and it's making insurance on EV's comparatively expensive to an ICV. Repairable vehicles are usually have a high repair bill when replacing damaged batteries or expensive equipment like inverters. I wouldn't doubt a secondary reason or even the primary reason being demand though.

The article in the link I posted quotes the CEO and doesn't mention anything about repair costs. In the article, he said the move was “responding to the reality, which is we’re trying to bring supply in line with demand." and "“The reality of EVs and Tesla’s being the best-selling car will, at some point, render them the best rental car,” Scherr said. “It’s not yet, so we may have been ahead of ourselves in the context of how quickly that will happen, but that will happen.”

The article also says, "Part of Hertz’s original thesis into investing in EVs is that customers would be eager to rent them for a variety of reasons, such as trying one for the first time, avoiding high gas prices or choosing a more environmentally friendly rental car.

Scherr said that sort of experimentation was happening, but “not happening at a level of demand that justifies us maintaining a fleet of this size at this moment in time.”

[ua_guy]

The article in the link I posted quotes the CEO and doesn't mention anything about repair costs. In the article, he said the move was “responding to the reality, which is we’re trying to bring supply in line with demand." and "“The reality of EVs and Tesla’s being the best-selling car will, at some point, render them the best rental car,” Scherr said. “It’s not yet, so we may have been ahead of ourselves in the context of how quickly that will happen, but that will happen.”

The article also says, "Part of Hertz’s original thesis into investing in EVs is that customers would be eager to rent them for a variety of reasons, such as trying one for the first time, avoiding high gas prices or choosing a more environmentally friendly rental car.

Scherr said that sort of experimentation was happening, but “not happening at a level of demand that justifies us maintaining a fleet of this size at this moment in time.”

When the news was announced a few days ago, repair cost was cited as a driving reason. Perhaps Scherr commented more in subsequent interviews? I wouldn't be surprised either way and I also believe both things are probably true.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/26/hertz-pulls-back-on-ev-plans-citing-tesla-price-cuts-repair-costs.html

[disneysteve]

When the news was announced a few days ago, repair cost was cited as a driving reason. Perhaps Scherr commented more in subsequent interviews? I wouldn't be surprised either way and I also believe both things are probably true.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/26/hert...air-costs.html

Over-supply relative to demand, higher repair costs, and shrinking resale value due to price cuts are all good reasons to change strategy.