Things you need to know before renting an electric vehicle ― that the agent won't tell you

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My oldest friend, Cindy, was in town recently for her father’s birthday. Over dinner, she mentioned she’d rented a Mercedes EQS electric vehicle at the airport. Cindy liked the car’s looks and comfort, but she had questions.

Questions somebody should have answered before she left the parking lot.

“Where do I charge it?” she said. “How does it work? This car is frustrating.”

That’s the sound of a rental company dropping the ball, and an automaker paying the price.

A little help, please

"U.S. rental-car companies had a unique opportunity to start transitioning their fleets to EVs, while also educating hundreds of thousands of Americans about the new cars. 

"They almost uniformly blew it," said John Voelcker, a reporter and analyst who has covered electric vehicles for 15 years.

EVs are great in a lot of ways. They can also be maddening, frequently because car companies got too cute and reinvented features that already worked fine while they were also creating the technology that will probably eventually dominate the roads.

Some EVs have a start/stop button. Others power up and down automatically when the key fob enters and leaves the vehicle. Locking and unlocking them can be equally idiosyncratic.

The king of electric vehicles: GM reported triple-digit growth in its EVs while Tesla faced a double-digit loss

Rental companies should be prepared to demonstrate these features, and others.

I’ve spent enough time in Mercedes vehicles and other EVs to answer Cindy’s questions.

She made it through the rest of her trip to Michigan without getting stranded, but how many times has that happened to drivers whose only mistake was trusting the rental car company to tell them how to operate the vehicle?

It’s not that hard to get it right.

Here’s what you should demand from a rental agency, and a few key tips for anybody curious about EVs:

List of things to ask upfront

Before you rent:

• Ask whether the company has a downloadable quick-start checklist for the vehicle.
• Insist an attendant show you how to start the vehicle and turn it off.
• Find out where the charging port is, how to open it and how to disconnect when you’re done charging.
• Ask whether the vehicle has a CCS or NACS (Tesla-style) charging port. They’re not interchangeable. Adapters exist, but good ones are expensive, and cheap ones shouldn’t be trusted.
• Ask whether you need a phone app to find chargers, or will the navigation system do it. How do you make the nav do that?

What else you need to know to be safe on the road

Charger types: There are basically two: Level 2 charging, best for topping up the battery overnight; and DC fast charging for long drives where you’ll stop and charge en route. Both will probably cost less than using gasoline. Level 2 charging, which uses the same 240-volt current as many appliances, should cost a lot less.

When DC fast charging, it’s most efficient to stop at 80% or 90% of a full charge. Adding the last 10%-20% ― it varies depending on brand and battery technology ― takes longer.

One-pedal driving/regenerative braking: Many EVs have this feature, which maximizes the amount of energy recaptured for the battery when the vehicle slows down. You may never touch the brake pedal at all. The features increase battery range and are clever engineering, but not everybody likes them. Drivers who don’t can turn it off or select different levels of deceleration

Battery preconditioning: When the vehicle is plugged in, an app can tell it to warm the battery to its most efficient temperature before you start driving. That saves valuable battery power and increases range. Some vehicles will also precondition the battery for quicker charging before you stop at a DC fast charger on long drives. That reduces charging time and gets you get back on the road faster.

Heated seats and steering wheels are your friend: It’s a more efficient use of electricity to keep occupants comfortable by touching the seats and steering wheel than heating all the air in the cabin. Preconditioning can increase driving range significantly when temperatures fall below freezing. Air conditioning doesn’t use as much power as heating. Traditional forced-air AC is fine in hot weather.

Two good apps you'll need to find chargers: Plugshare and ABRP (A Better Route Planner) are my favorites. They’ll tell you where to find chargers, which ones are open and if any are out of service. Charging networks like EVgo have their own apps but they only direct you to their chargers. Plugshare and ABRP are universal search engines, the Chrome and Safari of EV charging.

Choose to charge overnight: Your life will be simpler if you stay somewhere with a Level 2 charger. One of the best things about EVs is starting every day with a full battery. Another is never stopping to gas up in the rain, wind or snow.

And remember this courtesy move

Never leave your vehicle parked at the charger when the battery is full. You don’t lock the bathroom door behind you as you leave, do you? Somebody needs to use it.

Are you changing your mind about renting an EV?

This may seem like a lot to think about and do, but it quickly becomes second nature.

DC fast chargers are also becoming more common, but "charging deserts" still exist. If you plan long drives in your rental, download ABRP or Plugshare before you decide an EV’s the right choice for this trip.

The rental clerk turned Cindy out into the night with a key fob and a wave, probably because nobody at HQ realized what a disservice that was to a customer.

Cindy’s a patient and forgiving soul, necessary character traits for someone who has put up with me for decades, you might say.

Rental companies shouldn’t take advantage of her, or any other customer's good nature. They need to improve their service or stop offering EVs. Until that happens, customers should ask a few extra questions before renting one.

Contact Mark Phelan: mmphelan@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @mark_phelan. Read more on autos and sign up for our autos newsletter. Become a subscriber.