If I had known an EV was coming my way, I would have dutifully planned out my charging strategy ahead of time instead of sitting in a Sheetz parking lot and simmering with road rage. Plenty of Tesla Superchargers popped up on Google Maps, but none of them worked with my hapless Bolt. The next best option was so slow that after four hours of charging, the car had added a measly 70 miles to its range-roughly what a gas pump could do for a similarly sized car in well under 30 seconds. When my Chevy Bolt was just about running on empty in the Finger Lakes, the closest charger I could find was blocked by a blue Tesla loitering after a fill-up. Plugs are not only hard to find, they’re sometimes full or broken-and very often too slow for anything but overnight charging. Read: The one thing holding back electric vehicles in America Unless you luck out and have a place to charge overnight at your hotel or Airbnb, you’re stuck with America’s Wild West of public EV chargers. What makes an EV rental such a struggle is that it is a rental: The overwhelming majority of EV owners charge their cars at home, waking up to a full charge every morning. Yet the very first time that many people experience an electric car will be not at a dealership, but rather on a rental-car trip.ĮVs may work great for the business traveler who is taking their Tesla from the airport to the hotel and to a client meeting across town, but things are way more complicated for road-trippers. “If they’re out of gas cars, they’re out of gas cars, but they’ve got to eliminate the surprise thing.” The promised transition away from dirty gas cars only works if people actually want to buy EVs, as all of the government tax breaks and Will Ferrell ads make abundantly clear. “You know, it's really not smart,” Loren McDonald, an EV consultant, told me. A surprise EV rental, it turns out, is tailor-made to amplify the downsides of electric cars, especially among impressionable newbies. These are great, potentially planet-saving machines, but the ordeal made me want to wage a slash-and-burn campaign against all of them. Only 4 percent of Americans own an EV, but Hertz plans for a quarter of its fleet to be electric by the end of next year. ![]() After my disastrous weekend, I talked to three rental-car experts: All of them were familiar with the phenomenon of the surprise EV, a result of how much the industry is leaning into electric cars. Maybe the same thing will happen to you, if it hasn’t already. It was a crash course in EVs for four people who had never heard of CCS versus CHAdemo, the 80/20 rule, and Level 3 chargers. Just a few hours of highway driving would sap the battery, leaving me and my friends scrounging for public chargers in desolate parking lots, the top floors of garages, and hotels with plugs marked for guests only. With no forewarning, no experience driving an EV, and virtually no guidance, what was supposed to be a restful trip upstate was anything but. “Sorry, it’s all we have,” the man at the Hertz counter in downtown Brooklyn said as he handed over the keys. What I did not consider was an electric car. Three days earlier, I had booked Hertz’s cheapest option-in this case, the “Manager’s Special”-assuming I’d end up with a forgettable sedan. My car needs an hour of charging before it’s ready to go again. The adrenaline rush of sweet victory is immediately tempered by an emotional letdown. ![]() ![]() Thirty minutes of waiting for a charger to free up is bringing out my most Darwinian instincts: Like an eagle swooping down to nab a goat, my tiny black Chevy Bolt EUV swings into the spot before the pickup even knows what’s happening. It’s Memorial Day, and I’m in a runt of a rental car trying to outmaneuver a Ford F-150 Lightning. Internal applications, then our B2B based Bizapedia Pro API™ might be the answer for you.The best way to cap a weekend road trip, I can assure you, is not by jostling for an EV charger outside a Sheetz gas station in Scranton, Pennsylvania. If you are looking for something more than a web based search utility and need to automate company and officer searches from within your WHAT'S INCLUDED IN THE ADVANCED SEARCH FORM? Utilize our advanced search form to filter the search results by Company Name, City, State, Postal Code, Filing Jurisdiction, Entity Type, Registered Agent,įile Number, Filing Status, and Business Category. While logged in and authenticated, you will not be asked to solve any complicated Recaptcha V2 challenges. In addition, all pages on Bizapedia will be served to you completely ad freeĪnd you will be granted access to view every profile in its entirety, even if the company chooses to hide the private information on their profile from the general public. Your entire office will be able to use your search subscription.
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