A Sixt electric rental car in Germany
Major car rental companies are now starting to rent electric cars. EV drivers and those wishing to try an EV are interested, but at present policies about how to charge the car (or not) before returning it are all over the map, as are the prices. There is a bit of a mismatch between typical rental car thinking and EVs that needs sorting out, at last at a few of the big players.
Web sites and reports reveal:
- Avis/Budget is OK if you return the car 70% full, but it’s $35 if not, and $70 if it’s below 10%.
- Enterprise does not charge fees. They rent the Leaf and Volt (a hybrid.)
- Alamo also does not charge fees.
- Europcar states vehicles are provided “full” and do not need to be recharged
- Sixt carshare includes charging, gives you a discount voucher for future rentals if you recharge the vehicle, €1 per 10% state of charge. Note this is carshare, which also includes gasoline, not rent-a-car.
- Hertz asks you to return the car with the same level of charge (or 75% if that is lower.) A fee of $35 is charged, $25 more below 10%. A European policy suggests €8 per 10% of charge low the vehicle is, plus a €25 admin fee.
- Turo requires the car be returned with the same level of charge (or gasoline) it came with (or over 80%.) The charge for 51% to 80% is $10 and 21%-50% is $20.
As renters of gasoline cars know, they are asked to return the car full (or at the level they got it) or face sometimes very hefty refill fees which can come at up to 3 times the market price for gasoline, or may be higher. Most rental companies also try to sell the driver a full tank at a reasonable price, knowing it won’t come back entirely empty. Gasoline drivers tend to rush to a station before returning the car, which may only take 10 minutes, though those in a rush to catch a flight are known to pay the fat surcharge.
EV charging is not like filling up with gasoline. Those who own EVs tend to get charging at their home or office, and just charge there while they park, which takes no time from their day — In spite of the common belief that EV owners will spend a lot of time charging, it’s actually less time than gasoline burners spend going to gas stations, because the drivers are sleeping or working.
EV renters will face several different types of charging situations:
- They are renting to drive around the local city, and there is charging at the hotel or the office they are visiting.
- There is no charging, but they only plan to drive around 40 miles (fairly common.)
- They plan a road trip, or a lot of local driving with no charging at their hotel or office.
Case one is easy — even better than a gasoline car. The good news is that more hotels and parking lots are getting charging. Case two works if the car rental company gives you 40 free miles, as it seems many will do. That’s probably under $3 of electricity for them and easy to bundle in the rental. Again, it’s easier than having to fill that gasoline car at the airport.
The problems come in case three, or for people who don’t know that there will be charging they can count on where they are staying. This leaves such drivers needing to use public charging, notably fast public charging. Though “fast” it can take 30-45 minutes to restore a fairly drained car, and that’s not something anybody wants to do when returning a car to catch a flight. Other than with advanced planning, it’s not even in the cards.
On the plus side, because there is some slop (for example, that any level above 80% is OK) for many drivers, charging to 90% or more the prior day or night will save needing to charge near the airport. (With gasoline, it’s usually also OK to “top off” a gasoline car and burn up to half a gallon while it still shows “full” but you may not know the particulars of the cars you have and how its gauge works.)
This class of renter is simply going to be highly biased against renting an EV unless they know they can resolve this situation, or the fee for having the company do the charge is reasonable.
Road Trip
Another type of renter is the road tripper. Tesla EVs can be great choices for road trips if the customer is given a good rental rate, because of the low cost of recharging them — in fact, it’s often free (included with the cost of the stay) at many hotels. Well sourced charging can be a great deal cheaper than gasoline for a mile-heavy road trip. Unfortunately many companies are charging a high premium for EV rentals that can negate those savings — you will need to do your math. EVs do cost more to buy, so it makes sense they rent for a bit more, but in some cases they are renting for a lot higher. Not always, though — there are bargains to be found. The price of charging on the road can vary a lot, depending on where you charge. The large Electrify America Network charges about 31 cents/kWh, which is about 8 cents/mile in a sedan. Gasoline in a 30mpg sedan at $3.50/gallon is around 12 cents/mile. Over a 2,000 mile road trip that means around a $72 saving, but it can be much more if you charge at a few hotels for free — you’ll save around $16 per night you do that, plus your time. If your gas car was going to be 20mpg the saving is a larger $190 over 2,000 miles which could be a big deal.
Electric cars can take road trips into the mountains, there can even be charging there
Any road tripper does have to understand and plan for charging. It’s not a great deal more work to make sure it’s done within 30 miles of the return location, fortunately. Experienced EV owners do this in their sleep, ideally literally in their sleep. But it may present a burden for people new to EVs.
What the rental company should do
Of course, those companies that are offering free recharge, allowing return with any reasonable level, have already made a great offer for their customers. In fact, allowing cars to come back empty is almost too generous, though if the car can recharge at low overnight rates it may only cost the company less than $5 per return, which is a reasonable bonus to offer to attract customers. Allowing return down no more than 40% from how it was delivered might be a pretty reasonable middle ground, costing just a few dollars and making most customers quite happy.
Because the experience is best when you charge at your hotel, car rental companies might do marketing partnerships with hotels that offer charging, though I would always advise drivers to use general apps that are not trying to sell you something to find your charging and hotels. But coupons might make customers feel better.
Indeed, those customers who have no problem charging will always be happy, but for those that can’t there can be an issue. The company might even offer a “recharging” add-on — ideally at a reasonable price, and not the vastly overpriced gasoline refill option they currently sell.
The challenge is not just the cost of electricity, but the time for recharging. The driver’s time on a trip is usually precious. For the rental company, if the car isn’t going out again for 4-8 hours, the time is unimportant — they can even have the driver plug the car in at an EV return spot and do no work. Sometimes, though, a car needs to go out again in just a few hours, and that’s a problem. Fast chargers are very expensive, and daytime electricity is more expensive. Staff to manage the charging can also cost, especially as the company may not have a fast charger on site, and need to have an employee run the car over to one.
Cheap, slow chargers can deliver up to 40 miles or range for every hour on many cars, which will do fine in almost all cases in 4 hours or more. Companies may deliver cars with less than a full (really 80-90%) charge, allowing the customer to return it with even less, and most people would be fine, though almost all the time it will be full. Occasional cars that come back under 10% will be an issue, and it’s not unreasonable to put a fee on such returns.
One solution that makes a lot of sense for car rental is the “slow fast charger.” These are DC chargers that run at 15-25kW. Ordinary fast chargers of 50kW or above are very expensive to install, it can run up to $100K. These slower ones are under $10K today and there’s no reason that in volume that price should not drop down to just a few thousand. They bypass the car’s internal charger, which is what is used with AC level-2 chargers, and are not limited by its speed. They need higher power electrical wiring, but nothing nearly as huge as typical public DC chargers.
Just a few of these medium chargers would handle most problems with quick turnaround. A 25kW charger can add 200 miles to an empty car in a 2-hour turnaround. They will set up cleaning stations to wash and vacuum while charging, as they need to do that anyway.
A nice thing is that there will be few surprises. Most EVs will transmit back to their owner how charged they are. They will know how much charge each car needs before it gets to the depot, and can plan how to do any turnaround.
That means that if the rush gets so bad that they have to turn around a lot of cars fast, they can even plan to get employees to drive them out to public or shared fast chargers than can do the job in 30 minutes. I expect airport car rental offices will keep a wall of slow chargers and a few faster ones, and some depot with faster stations might serve all the different companies at that airport. In the ideal situation, customers are told to drive the cars directly to the correct charger for them and plug in. As long as the customers can get a shuttle to the terminal, there is no reason for them to do more.
For now, though, companies may just make sure that there’s a sufficient turnaround gap most of the time. In those situations, chances are the car would be parked by the customer at a charging station. The stations would have the vacuums and other cleaning gear the cleaning crew needs to wash and inspect the car while it charges. These cars are smart and there is no need for an employee to check in the returning driver. In addition, the customers doing pickup can just go to the charging station to get their car. In fact, their car can be told to recognize the customer’s phone as a key to unlock it. The backup extra key will be left inside. That will actually be a superior pickup and return process for the renters.
