Comment by gred
5 hours ago
> Practicality beats enthusiasm for 95% of car use.
About two years ago I rented an electric car for a few days. I felt like I wasted a ton of time finding a charging station, jumping through phone app hoops to get the charging process started, and then waiting for the car to charge. I've stayed away from electric rentals since, even though they're often cheaper.
Comparing renting a new type of car when you have to figure everything out for 2 days then return it, to owning a car, where you also have to figure everything out, but only for the first days, not the 600 days afterwards, is not really comparable.
Also, when you own a car you charge it at home and work, so you don't really wait for the car to charge very often.
And the next time you rent a car, it will be a bit simpler as you have done it once before. And even quicker/simpler the time after that etc.
It is 100% compatible when your basis is just finding a local gas station to fill up. 600 days later, you may know where a charging station is, but not any more convenient... yet.
You don't need a charging station for 99 per cent of your rides. You can charge daily at home and forget about recharging except when making a long trip.
If you usually make trips that are over the battery life, that's a different thing though. But most people don't have that problem.
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This is the equivalent of setting up a developer environment for charging a car. Once you have a car that's working, and you know how to connect to the app and charge it, almost all these problems go away. If you're in a place that has a lot of public chargers near your destination that you're already going to, then it's even easier, and it just becomes trivial.
That being said, I don't think I would want to rent a car that didn't have a place to charge it or a very easy-to-use fast charger nearby.
Until NACS and plug and go are uniquitous, going on a trip not in a Tesla is a gamble of having the right app on your phone, and that you will be able to reach working chargers.
I think we are still a couple of years away from other manufacturers catching up to Tesla and making road trips for most people useful.
> jumping through phone app hoops
The very idea you effectively need a mobile phone to charge your car is mind boggling. The mess of proprietary charging networks and registrations is needless complexity that puts people off hiring (and ownership) of EVs.
I have little RFID cards from 2 charging companies that I can tap to their chargers to charge.
Also, many chargers support tapping a credit card on them to charge.
The credit card tapping option should be required by law. This registering apps and fobs flow is the worst ux imaginable. And while we are at it the car should hold the payment info. Plugging it in should be enough. I know it’s all coming.
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Your comment is proving my point!
(Proprietary networks are a mess, and ordinary debit/credit card payments for EV charging are far from universal)
For rentals I get that. We own 2 EVs and a charger at home. Easiest driving experience ever. We just plug it in.
I’m terms of upgrading your daily life, never going to a petrol station is a great upgrade.
Haven’t quite made it in our house, we went once or twice last year to charge on a long trip. Didn’t go in.
Where are you based?
Here is a different narrative: https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1qh5kdg/us_pres...
I remember when /r/technology was more about technology, now it is /r/politics with a microchip hat. I ignored that sub long ago.