2. You still need a very specific payment source, even if it's not physically on you at the time of purchase. If you're a foreigner, this may be literally impossible for you. Many places only work by linking with your local bank account. Tourists do not have local bank accounts.
Teslas work fine with 3rd party chargers. It's just that (as you noticed with your Polestar rental) 3rd party chargers are inconvenient and tend to be poorly maintained.
Basing your expectations on past experiences makes sense, but it also makes sense to update those expectations based on the reports of people who have been there and done that, so to speak.
But it always astounds me how reliably Tesla owners attempt to convince me that water isn't wet. It really feels like you're trying to sell me on renting a Tesla from Hertz. But Hertz has written down their Teslas and they're replacing them with ICE vehicles. So why are you trying to convince me that renting a Tesla from Hertz is a good experience, when I can't even do that today? If it's such a good experience, what is this article about? What do you know that the finance wonks at Hertz don't know?
Sell to me. Why do I want to rent a car that's renowned for its big-screen touch interface, drunk&stoned UX decisions like the yoke, hitting parked emergency vehicles, and uploading livefeeds from the cabin for Tesla employees' amusement? What's the actual valprop over a Yaris, which has never tried to steer me into oncoming traffic? (message between the lines: attempt to entice me with FSD, or autopilot, and you will only undermine your case)
Because right now you're trying to move me from "charging a rental in a foreign country isn't stress I need in my life" to "this guy on the internet thinks that charging a Tesla is almost as easy as gassing up a Yaris." And that's still a million miles from sold.
I’ve never driven a Jeep. I don’t particularly care for Jeeps. But if someone says to me that they own a Jeep and it can do X, I’ll give that some credence. Sure they may be a Jeep fan, but they also have lots of experience with Jeeps. I definitely wouldn’t say, “That's cool, but I'm not a Jeep owner and I don't live in your country. I hope you understand that I'm going to base my expectations on past experiences, and not the best-case story of a Jeep owner in a country I actively avoid traveling to.” That would be rude and unproductive.
If the Jeep owner ignored the insult and said, “Actually Jeeps in other countries are quite similar and can also do X.”, I definitely would not reply by talking about how Jeep fans always try to convince me that Jeeps are great, yet they refuse to acknowledge Jeep’s poor reliability, lack of curtain airbags, rollover propensity, etcetera. To a neutral reader, that might come off like someone who is incapable of changing their mind.
That's just not true of the UK market. Most fast chargers accept credit cards using a contactless reader - indeed, by law, they will soon all have to. Of the main charging networks app based payments:
Shell - charges to your credit card, BP Pulse - credit account topped by by credit card, PodPoint - credit account topped up by credit card, VendElectric - credit account topped up by credit card, Fuuse/evpoint - charges to your credit card, Mer - charges to your credit card, ChargePoint - credit account topped up by credit card
In Scotland, many chargers only accepted some specialty charging card that foreigners can't buy.
Many stations claimed they do accept credit cards, but when I got there, card payments were conveniently "disabled at this time".
Apps that did take credit card _all_ refused to work with non-British billing addresses. The only app I got to work was ChargePoint, and I only succeeded in that after many trails and errors, looking for ways to trick it into thinking I was British and getting it to successfully charge my card (which eventually I did). And they do not charge your card per session, they randomly bill your card based on usage predictions. They still haven't returned me the 75 pounds they stole from me on the last day of my rental, because they figured I was surely going to need them soon.
And again, no receipts anywhere.
All in all, it was an awful experience.
EDIT: I only now notice that I wrote _most_ stations only link with your credit card. That's most probably an exaggeration, I suppose that was just the impression I ended with. All in all, I wasted exorbitant amounts of time on that trip purely on charging. Quite a few stations also failed on me, now that I'm ranting. In Northern Ireland, chargers often could not be used because there was no cell reception so I couldn't use the app, and cards were not accepted. One charger abruptly terminated my session mid-charge and made a scary noise and refused to work again. Turns out the charger stopped because _it itself_ lost Internet connection.
Charge Place Scotland continued to be run by the Scottish Government.
> non-British billing addresses
I can feel your pain there.
>And they do not charge your card per session, they randomly bill your card based on usage predictions.
ChargePoint has an auto-topup mechanism when your balance drops below a defined amount. The trick is to set the top up amount to be small.
> And again, no receipts anywhere.
In the app go to "Account" then "Monthly Statement". Select the month you care about, then share it using your email client. A PDF will be attached.
> All in all, it was an awful experience.
The big issue we've had has been with broken chargers and, at least in the past, a proliferation of charge networks. There's more roaming coming now, partly mandated by law, but the reliability issue still remains.
And yes, renting an EV in a market you're not familiar with is a pain. I've had that landed on me when visiting the USA, too.
> I only now notice that I wrote _most_ stations only link with your credit card.
Right - that's what I was disagreeing with.
The infrastructure for a tesla is significantly better, and you don't have to install an app - everything is right there built into the car. It will add charging stops as part of navigation if you want. The superchargers are plentiful, have lots of stalls (rarely full) and are very fast. There is no fumbling with apps, credit cards or payment authorization, you just plug in.
This depends a lot on where you are. I rented >10 times from Hertz in the UK last year, got an EV every time (mostly Polestar), and drove thousands of miles. Chargers are, now days, pretty much everywhere that you need them to be. Absolutely no issues with chargers (aside from the extortionate cost of a few of them, perhaps!).
UK law requires that all new chargers support "ad-hoc" payment with a credit/debit card, which makes everything very easy and convenient (although often you can get a discounted rate by using membership-based apps).
With my own car, in my home town, it isn't a problem. My garage has a lvl1 charger for grocery getting; I know a few account-free fast chargers around town, and that's all I need. A multi-day trip, or a rental company putting the onus on me to return it full, just isn't worthwhile.