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nikhileneryg

Member
Joined
May 23, 2021
Messages
5
Hi group,

I am a fellow EV owner. Whenever I travel I feel like I have to fall back to an IC rental and I just do not enjoy the experience. Had a similar problem even when my car got damaged. I am curious to know if anyone has gone through this experience of trying to find an EV rental and how they fared. In particular, I am trying to do some customer research here about why people want to rent EVs(trying to be careful not to self-project). If anyone here would be open to a 15-30 min zoom call with me, I would really appreciate it.

Ground rules of the session: I do not want to sell anything here. My intention is just to understand why you want to rent EVs and how you currently work around this problem, if at all it is one.

If you would be open to talking to me, please setup anytime that works for you at - https://calendly.com/nikhil-eneryg/30min .. Thanks for reading this far..

Thanks,
-Nikhil
 
In early Jan 2019, it was impossible to rent a Chevy Bolt from any of the major car rental companies as a try before I buy experience as I was in the market for a new '19 Bolt. I wanted to make sure the seats and any other aspects weren't deal breakers.

I ended up finding a couple '17 Bolts on Turo in my area and was able to rent 1 for a day. I wanted an '18+ as the lousy seats were supposedly improved w/beginning w/model year '18 (https://insideevs.com/news/339196/update-2019-chevy-bolt-may-have-better-seats-improved-suspension/). But, Turo only had '17.

Unfortunately, the handoff and return were w/o any interaction w/the owner (that's the way he wanted it), so I had to take a TON of pictures before and after (esp. since there was a fair amount of damage to the car, in particular to the roof w/the car having hit a security gate before). Since I had to take the pics then and there w/geo-tags at all, I think I spent nearly an hour taking pics (uploading from Turo's app took awhile) at pickup.

I wanted to be super careful since a co-worker was burned when renting a Model 3. Owner of 3 tried to claim all sorts of damage but there weren't sufficient photos (w/closeups of the areas in question) from my co-worker before pickup and at dropoff to prove one way or another.

When traveling, I've never bothered to even attempt to rent an EV. In many cases, I had limited time and often was going into areas w/not much charging infrastructure.
 
Thats a good question - What do I mean by *why*? I guess its not just why an EV rental but a bunch of different Whys along the process. Hope that helps..

Let me answer that for you myself so you see what I mean.

Why do I want to rent an EV? I like the ease of use of my EV vehicle(Tesla) much more than any ICE vehicle on the market. For a long drive, it is much easier to drive. When I am travelling to say a national park, it gives me the (momentary) flexibility of looking around and enjoying the environment.

Why not Turo? Echoing the post above - worried about the insurance implications and the inconsistent/risky picky standards of a peer to peer transaction.

Why not a conventional car rental agency? TBH - I haven't found any serving EVs. Even then, I do not really like the time consuming experience and having to talk to people when on a tight timeline.
 
Turo is probably the only decent option, but you'll have a harder time finding LEAFs, mostly Telsa's. I would guess most people who rent a Tesla on Turo are prospective buyers who want to try before they buy.
 
If you know where you want to rent an EV you might get lucky and find someone here who has local information but other than Turo (itself a YMMV) pickings are slim. So far as I know, the national rental agencies are yet to offer EVs to any significant degree. Perhaps CA is different.
 
Great discussion - curious though. Has anyone here gone actively gone searching for EVs to rent? If so, why?

What about the ICE usual rental isnt good enough that you went hunting for the EV option?
 
nikhileneryg said:
Has anyone here gone actively gone searching for EVs to rent? If so, why?
What about the ICE usual rental isnt good enough that you went hunting for the EV option?
I've decided you are here under false pretenses.
 
nikhileneryg said:
Great discussion - curious though. Has anyone here gone actively gone searching for EVs to rent? If so, why?

What about the ICE usual rental isnt good enough that you went hunting for the EV option?

Why? First time was because I wanted to buy an EV, and the LEAF was hard to see much of. Rented for a week so we could get a fair checkout.

Second time was because the first LEAF had a unfortunate end. As the other driver's insurance was paying, I wanted the same car I had been driving. And I bought my second LEAF before turning it back in.

Drive an EV for a while. Driving an ICE after that is like going back to a horse and buggy.
 
nikhileneryg said:
Great discussion - curious though. Has anyone here gone actively gone searching for EVs to rent? If so, why?

What about the ICE usual rental isnt good enough that you went hunting for the EV option?
What great discussion? I don't see it.

Who are you working for? A little more disclosure is needed.
 
Just in case the new user isn't trolling, a Leaf rental is necessary if your own Leaf is getting some kind of warranty work and you can't drive it for a day (or more). My wife had some work done on her Leaf (she had the heater coil issue on her 2013 and was getting it replaced under warranty), so they "rented" her a brand new 2015 Leaf to drive until they could get it fixed.
 
Thank you @knightmb - I am curious and here to learn. Not a troll in the least. Please read on and hope that helps you understand where I am coming from.

To all of those who are questioning my intent -

Who do I work for? Myself :) The difficulty in renting an EV while traveling and when my personal car got totaled, sent me down a road of trying to figure out alternatives. Didnt find any that fit my particular use(yes I know turo exists, it doesnt work for me!).
Figured I'd look around to see if I was the only person with this problem. Decided that if an EV rental service was missing in the marketplace, it was something I was passionate about and wanted to build/solve.

As I started my research on how to build a solution to this problem, I realised I had to go back to step 1 - Learn the real problems of my potential customers and figure out how many people like me exist who think it is a genuine problem. Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer_development .

In a nutshell, I am a builder/problem solver who is in the early phases of learning about this problem space and being an engineer by training is not helping me write well enough to win you over. That is about all. Want to learn more? I've already put out my details into the thread for us to have a face to face conversation or voice call. Pasting it here, if that helps - https://calendly.com/nikhil-eneryg/30min

Why did I start this thread?
Like I've said before, I am a fellow EV owner. I've owned a Model 3 that got totaled a few months back. Recently got myself a Model Y, but had also considered the Nissan Leaf. To @WetEVs point, going back to an ICE car has felt like going back 20 years each time when I rented a car and so I want to solve the problem of short term EV availability(potentially rentals). If I wanted to invest a lot of time into doing this, I wanted to be sure that I was not self-projecting too heavily. The best way to solve that is to speak to like minded individuals(like all of you on this forum) and understand their problems with securing EV rentals.

Happy to answer any more questions about why I am doing this.
 
nikhileneryg said:
Thank you @knightmb - I am curious and here to learn. Not a troll in the least. Please read on and hope that helps you understand where I am coming from.
The dealership also had an in-house car rental, so they gave her the rental for free, basically was a new 2015 Leaf (work was done in 2015), we already had an L2 charger at home and the QC networks setup on our phones, etc. No need to switch to a gas vehicle then.

Unfortunately, from what I gather recently talking to them, the dealerships (in my area) don't do that anymore. :(
 
^^
That is a believable story. Start there in the future.
And please tell us that you have never been involved with a company that starts with 'F' and ends with 'x'

Have you considered buying a cheap LEAF just to rent out on Turo ? It would let you gauge a local market.
 
SageBrush said:
^^
That is a believable story. Start there in the future.
And please tell us that you have never been involved with a company that starts with 'F' and ends with 'x'

Have you considered buying a cheap LEAF just to rent out on Turo ? It would let you gauge a local market.

Noted @SageBrush on setting up context.

And yes, I solemnly attest that I have never been involved with a company that starts with F and ends with X, but now I am curious which one that would be :)

About renting out a LEAF, yes, I have in fact considered that. Figured that would be step 2 after first talking to folks online.
 
nikhileneryg said:
Figured that would be step 2 after first talking to folks online.
People can be quick to raise their hand on the internet but often disappear when it comes time to pay. I remember this most vividly in the year or two before the GM Volt came to market. GM was impressed by the large number of people that signed an internet petition requesting that GM take the Volt from prototype to market, and they decided that it meant 60k sales a year, and optimistically up to 200k sales a year then or soon afterwards. The reality turned out to be a small fraction of those lofty numbers and the Volt only lasted one upgrade cycle before it was killed off.

So reading that people would *love* to rent an EV is all well and good, but talk is cheap. And I suspect that the car people end up renting fills the following priorities first:

Convenient
Completes the use case without drama
Is not much more expensive than a non EV alternative

Rental for EV tyre kicking or rental while a car is in for repair are I suspect a minority of the rental market.
 
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