Renting an electric car for the first time? What could go wrong?

Big rental car companies may have overestimated their customers’ readiness to drive an EV for the first time.

Lydia Wu had never driven an electric vehicle before she rented a car from Avis last February. All that was available at the location in Kansas City, Kansas, was an electric Genesis GV60. Wu received no specific instructions for how to use the vehicle or how to find chargers, but she appreciated the SUV’s ornate and elegant interior. “If it was a gas vehicle, I would totally consider it as my next car,” she said. But she is now out of the market for an EV. I, on the other hand, have had a lot of experience with EVs and when I recently rented a Polestar 2 from a Hertz in San Diego there were no instructions either. No problem. But I could imagine a first-time EV driver wondering, “How do I turn this thing on?” Many would be flummoxed by a car with no “Start” button, for instance. In a Polestar, you get in and it’s on. You get out and it turns off. A lot of drivers may be baffled by that alone. “I loved the car, but my God, it was such a p*ss poor experience, it turned me off EVs entirely,” Wu said. Ironically, Wu at the time worked in human resources technology for an electric vehicle battery manufacturer but hadn’t driven an EV. While sales growth has slowed, EVs make up about 7% of overall car sales, according to Cox Automotive. Rental car companies may have overestimated their customers’ readiness for a switch, though. Hertz made a bold move in 2021, saying it would order 65,000 EVs from Polestar, 100,000 from Tesla and another 175,000 from General Motors. At the time, Hertz said that EVs might represent 25% of its fleet by 2024.