Electric car on vacation?

I've taken my EV on many road trips over the past five years. But only up and down the west coast of the US where I know I can get the charging that I need. In fact, it has been super easy and a money saver. However, I agree that renting an EV in an unknown area (or even a known area where you haven't driven an EV) can be very risky. I would be tempted but I wouldn't do it.

We rented a hybrid once in Croatia. Even though my husbands reads Croatian fluently, he still couldn’t figure out how to charge the darn car or work the station. Never again, not worth the aggravation.

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/transportation/hertz-pushing-evs-in-the-us

My post from 2.5 years ago we rented an EV. I will never rent an EV again and was so turned off by the whole experience I will likely never own a full EV.

Not the first time this has been shared here.

Some countries have better charging infrastructure than others, but that's only going to improve, since EVs have just started to outsell gas vehicles in Europe. https://insideevs.com/news/785541/ev-sales-surpass-gas-cars-europe-first-time/

(I LOVE my EV, even though I live in a backwards, anti-renewable province.)

I would never recommend anyone who doesn’t own an EV to have their first experience be a rental. The learning curve is just too steep. We thought about renting an EV in Portugal, but decided it was a little too tricky. As someone said, you may have to deal with different charging apps. I love my Chevy Bolt, and my husband just got a 2023 Hyundai Ioniq5 which will be our road trip car.

Was forced to get an EV in Charleston last year, didn’t reserve one and it’s all anyone had left. Lessons learned:

-It costs about double to move the car per mile than what gas costs, when juicing at public chargers— totally unexpected.

-You will spend 45 minutes sitting in a Walmart parking lot charging up every other day. Now that’s just how I want to spend my vacation hours. At least it wasn’t July.

I'm renting an EV in Iceland and Norway in July of this year, but from everything I've read, it sounds like there are many chargers available and I shouldn't have any problem finding them.

Mardee, since we didn't rent a car in Norway in 2023, I didn't pay attention to charging stations. But, it did seem that every other car we saw on the road was a Tesla.

Mardee,

Do some research on EV charging apps that cover the areas you will be in. My favorite is PlugShare but I don't know if it covers Iceland and Norway. PlugShare gives you a map of where chargers are located and when you choose one, it gives you a reviewer rating and tells you how many chargers and how many are available at the moment. You can also use it to get directions to the site. I'll be interested to hear how it goes with the EV.

I don’t know the situation in North America, where I guess longer distances mean more reliance on the charging network. But EVs are very doable in many countries in Europe. In Norway it may well be very difficult to hire a car which isn’t an EV. In the UK it’s pretty straightforward even in the more remote parts. If you can plan a trip to stay at accommodation with either its own charging facility or one nearby then things will be very simple. They can be slow chargers as you have all night to charge.

We’re in Mallorca at the moment and should have a Polestar2 but Hertz let us down and we have a Ford Kuga hybrid. It’s a plug-in hybrid but they have failed to provide a type 2 charger so we can’t actually charge even though there is a charger opposite the villa. It’s no big deal as it only has a 40 mile range battery and the Hertz mess up means they have given us a full tank of petrol. Mallorca is perfect for an EV as the longest possible daily journey is within range of a modern EV.

gives you a map of where chargers are located and when you choose one

In order to make sense of the info, a person needs to know the terminology of what is a fast charger (required except if charging overnight) and a slow one (usually a worthless 8 hour min required to charge). It’s not intuitive from the abbreviations displayed on the app which is which.

As a NJ owner of a Chevy Bolt, I would not recommend first use of an EV in a foreign country. Availability (and working properly) are the main issues, but enrolling a foreign credit card in a charging plan seems troubling to me. In the US, every station can have a different owner and "enrollment" requirement.

It appeared to me, by casual inspection, that in Iceland, you have to bring your own cable to charge an EV at a publicly located station. So make sure you get credit for returning it (just like the safety vest in .... France?)