> Why would I pay for a car and then have to rent another car?

I had a miser of an uncle that did lots of long road trips, but always rented cars for them, once impressionably do a back of an envelope costs breakdown of putting long road trip mileage on a personal vehicle versus per-trip rentals. Even assuming both cars got equivalent mileage (my uncle was doing math with comparable ICE sedans two decades ago or so), the maintenance subsidy of dipping into a rental fleet was much cheaper than the long term maintenance cost on a personal vehicle.

Even if you think my uncle's math was off one way or the other, I feel like it should be pointed out that "rent a car for long trips" isn't a new attitude unique to electric vehicle owners, and people have advocated it for a long time.

Similarly, my current employer and at least one of my past employers highly discourages using personal vehicles for long work trips, and beyond just the obvious liability issues, such employers have made sure to point out very similar logic to my uncle's that the increased miles on your vehicle is rarely worth the long term maintenance costs when rental companies have cheaper maintenance costs, because they scale maintenance across a fleet rather than a single vehicle charged "retail" costs.

I know multiple people that own a car and will rent something for long trips. A lot of that is for peace of mind and being able to rent exactly what they need. Peace of mind is they don't worry the car will break down. And they can rent a car that is large enough or small enough for that particular trip. One trip it's them for a weekend. Other trip it's them and four other people for a week.

I've noticed that people that do this tend not to be 'car people'

Yes, but loaded in the rental car cost besides a profit margin is a wide range of other costs not borne by a private vehicle owner. I understand the broad concept but focusing on maintenance costs seems a bit odd when you are footing the bill for sales, marketing, rent etc. Whether these outweigh the cost efficiencies of fleet maintenance is an interesting question, though.

One of the differentiators between personal and business use is that when I worked for a big corporation they had excellent negotiated rates that always included unlimited mileage and full insurance.

If you rent a car personally, and want to have that same peace of mind, the extras will cost almost as much as the rental itself.

I routinely take day trips on the weekends that are in the 150 to 250 mile round-trip range, often two in a weekend. Doing that routinely in most electric cars I've seen wouldn't be feasible. Trying to rent a car for these trips would be a headache as well, and expensive. I think I've had one weekend in the last two months where I haven't made at least one of these trips. Until electric cars can make these kinds of trips commonplace, I won't be getting one.

I don't live in a city, I live in the country where everything is far away from everything else.

Congratulations on being in the very long tail of car users.

For what little it is worth presuming you are exploring more than just excuses: Tesla Model 3 can do 325 miles on a single charge. Even assuming there is not a single way to charge on that day trip, it is do-able with current technology, and maybe even two of them if they are both closer to the 150 side of your range possibility. Tesla superchargers add more possibilities, but so can even just any old outdoor outlet at a destination or interesting stop along the way.

Maybe I am in the long tail of car users, but so is everyone else where I live. Driving longer distances is the norm here.

EVs are getting closer and I've been waiting for them to get to where I can use them. I only have one vehicle, and don't want to buy another one just to drive around town. But getting stuck somewhere in the middle of the forest because I misjudged the range is not something I want to have happen.

Where do you live?

That's largely what I meant by "long tail". You clearly aren't an outlier, there are lots of folks in the long tail as is the nature of most long tail distributions. I may have been a bit flippant because there are lots of people in the long tail and almost every thread very easily devolves into (obviously valid and personally meaningful) anecdotal discussions of lives out in the long tail. I certainly sympathize, I learned to drive while living in a rural American house that was 30-70 miles from practically anywhere at all.

But the article here makes a good point that to some extent no other transportation system in history has been so subservient to the long tail, and no other transportation transition so completely weighed down in every discussion with anecdata from heavy users and/or nostalgic fondness for high-sigma deviations from personal mean trips.

So my apologies for being curt in my previous reply, as I didn't perceive your argument from anecdote a useful addition to the discussion. Which isn't to say that I don't understand your point, but that it's one of many that comes out of the woodwork all the time in these discussions (you aren't an outlier, you are one of many in the long tail).

My real point was, "What are you planning to do about it?" You have related your status quo. You have provided enough evidence that changing that status quo is a step change that will require good consideration and possibly plenty of effort. That status quo is your "normal", certainly, but it's also not the "way it has always been" that it feels to be. What would someone's ancestors in that region have done before the invention of the car? Before gas stations were dependable/reliable infrastructure in that region? That wasn't as long ago as it seems (especially when cultural long term memory elides "short term problems" like the 70s oil crisis; the current "reliability" of ICE vehicles is a fascinating blip in history).

Are you bringing up your dependency on ICE vehicles to lament a status quo you don't think you have the power to change (in which case, why bring it up at all?) or to figure out what that step transition might entail in personal trade-offs versus your current dependencies?

(It's not entirely unfair to compare modern America's dependency/addiction to ICE vehicles versus it's long and many, recurring dependency/addiction cycles to nicotine smoking. So far you have told us, you only own one vehicle and don't believe you can go "cold turkey" on gas. Do you really feel that you need to quit or are you happy with your addiction? Or can you find middle ground that isn't just "cold turkey"?)

Apologies for such a lengthy digression into what may feel to you to perhaps be rhetorical questions. My curiosity here is genuine now that I'm over the initial anger that you immediately went to argument by anecdote, and my suggestion was very genuine in the immediately previous post that there are ways to "get better" if you came into the discussion in good faith looking for solutions today rather than just complaining about some status quo you don't think you can change.

If you will excuse answering an anecdote with another anecdote: I had a really cool conversation once with someone that does roadside assistance in rural Idaho/Montana. They were telling me about a guy that had them on speed dial because he loved his Tesla and his favorite drive to visit friends and family he drove two or three times a year obviously didn't have enough superchargers along the way. This guy decided it was cheaper to pay for a tow at the end of the range of his car to the next nearest charge spot than to reroute. He was doing it often enough that he would often call ahead by a week or two and the tow truck would just be there waiting in his usual spot. He was doing it often enough that the roadside assistance folks were even looking into ways to do some sort of mobile charging for the guy as just another assistance service they could provide not just to that particular Tesla owner but maybe even for other future users, as that would presumably be a growing mini-industry in rural Idaho/Montana.

There are stories if you look for them of the same sorts of "early adopters" needing tows between gas stations in those same exact areas. It isn't a "new" phenomenon with electric cars, and there are all sorts of industry solutions if we work together to solve such things.

I live in a larger North American city and short-term rentals via companies like Car2Go are much more cost-effective than owning a car for me.

Given, I'm childless in a city and rent so I could understand why a parent would potentially want one where I live.

I have a hybrid (2013 Volvo V60 D6), and I really like the car itself with it's three modes, Pure, Hybrid and Power (Pure feels like a BEV with a tiny 40km battery; Hybrid is mostly like my previous car, just 15 years younger; Power is pretty pointless for daily driving, but it's quite fun to "feel" the combined 285hp).

BUT: Every single time I drive on Diesel, I feel like I should have gone with a pure electric car: Driving on battery just has a much better feel to it. That's with a 70hp electric engine (not much for a 2t car) and a really well behaved 215hp diesel engine (it only "roars" when it delivers a lot of power, but during normal driving it's calm).

The point is: Don't go with the Q5 Hybrid if you can avoid it ;-) If you can afford it, maybe lease a cheap/nice car for a year (or two) and see what the BEV market has to offer then. You won't regret it (and worst case: Save some money by buying a Q5 as leasing return).

some diesels can be quite nice. I had a golf tdi for a while. the engine was basically silent at highway speeds, and it was honestly a bit better for city driving than my hot hatch. too bad it turned out to be illegal.

I agree with you on the Q5 though, but only because it's too big.

It would be nice to wait for the Audi EV offerings. I might have 12 months to wait but with a baby on the way I need a reliable car. Our 2004 Corolla is on its way out.

> Why would I pay for a car and then have to rent another car?

Because it makes sense to do it this way financially. I live very close to work, and commute about 10 miles a day. Once or twice a year I want to drive a few hundred miles, so it makes much more sense to rent a long range car for this than buy one.

I don't think GP was criticising you - it makes perfect sense. 'Most people' just wouldn't consider it, or would do something that makes less sense anyway.

Most car owners have no problem renting a vehicle on a trip, at least when they fly out somewhere. Trips almost 100% renting (hotel room, chef services [restaurants], seat on the plane, car, limo to/from airport). Once in that mindset, it is much easier to rent a car for shorter trips.

> Why would I pay for a car and then have to rent another car?

In my case (and as said in the article): because electric cars (at least mine which was second-hand) are cheap and maintenance free.