Tourists need hotels with EV charging stations. It’s the rental car company’s job to create demand by partnering with hotels to make it easier for tourists to charge than it is hunt for gas stations. Rental car companies siding with fossil fuels is the problem. Tourists demand easy transportation not maximum emissions.
I wonder if some of it is a selection bias in tourists who rent cars in the first place. People more accepting of EVs perhaps are already using public transport or bikes instead, because they don’t have an obsession with ICEs.
This article is from Iceland… The number one thing you do there is rent a car/RV.
I have known multiple people go there and none rented a vehicle
I assume a lot of visitors, like myself want a vehicle capable of going on the F roads. They would need something like Rivians for that not teslas.
Ford fiestas are fine on those roads, at least the rental ones are.
Got a petrol car for €60 for about a week. I did look up the equivalent electric. Maybe it’s an issue of supply and demand, but the for the same time it was about €200. Kind of a no brainer from the consumer point of view.
How much did you spend on gas for that week? In Europe, from what I’ve heard, you would break even at 2 or maybe 3 tanks of gas.
If you’re a tourist you also need to factor time into that. Since time is at a premium. 5 minutes at the gas station vs 20 minutes waiting to charge makes a lot more of a difference on a trip.
But we’re also talking about Europe vs. North America, where there is a good chance your destination is within a charge of wherever you’re staying, in which case just charging at or near your hotel costs basically nothing.
I rented EVs and ICEs for doing the same 1000km trip in Switzerland. Europcar offered to bring back the car empty, so one charge was included. The extra cost of the EV was offset by the fuel savings then, even when charging at expensive highway chargers. The difference was quite small tho
It’s Iceland, it’s still cold AF which affects range, very little infrastructure outside of the capital (no random rest stops with toilets, let alone charging stations), none of the hotels I stayed at had regular power ports near the parking lots let alone charge stations. Why would a tourist rent an EV in Iceland??
