The battery charges much faster when low on charge and slower when close to full charge.
I imagine the op was at 80% or more within 10 minutes or less.
My comment to people about teslas is that they will be disappointed if they try to drive it like an ICE car. It’s a different driving experience (e.g., you almost never want or need a “full tank”), and the good parts of EVs won’t be as noticeable if one doesn’t integrate those differences.
>It’s a different driving experience (e.g., you almost never want or need a “full tank”)
What does this even mean? I both want and need as much range as possible when I'm driving my rental car. I don't care about long-term battery degredation.
> I both want and need as much range as possible when I'm driving my rental car.
Do you really? If so, that’s either due to where you live or work (few charging stations) or you’re a relatively rare “cannonball run” type of driver.
On my model y, I can charge up to 60% or so, and I can drive for 2 hours to the next charging station (for long trips). After that, I want to stretch, take a short bio break, and get some food or something to drink. I will be back up to 60% or more by the time I’m done, and I am usually fast with my “pit stops”.
If you mostly drive short range local stuff, then it is very easy to charge when you do almost anything else — go out to eat, get coffee, shop for whatever. If you’re renting for business, then your hotel almost certainly has a charger that will charge you enough to get you around all day.
You pretty much have to construct a very unique set of circumstances to make it such that “always charging to full” is an important necessity.
> I don't care about long-term battery degredation.
As I said before, this is a time issue, not a battery degredation issue. Charging to full during the day (while you are waiting) is almost never necessary. Full charge overnight is fine — it costs you no time.
If your situation is so different, please tell me what your typical day is with regards to driving and refueling, and I will tell you what it could look like with a model y. It really won’t be a big difference in terms of time.
> My comment to people about teslas is that they will be disappointed if they try to drive it like an ICE car.
Why would renters drive it any differently to any other rental car?
> It’s a different driving experience
The only experience car renters want is reliable transport now. The car is not the primary objective, their destination is. Anything that degrades the journey to the destination is a turn off.
> Anything that degrades the journey to the destination is a turn off.
I didn’t say it is a degraded experience. It’s just different.
If someone feels like that’s a degraded experience, that’s an issue with them and their expectations rather than the car.
As a simple example, some folks hate the Tesla controls, especially the touch screen. That’s fine. I love those same controls. Most common actions can be handled by the stems, most of the others by voice, and a few others require touch screen. If these things get a person bent out of shape, then a Tesla isn’t for them, and that’s ok. It works perfectly for me and my tastes. It’s a matter of expectations.
> If someone feels like that’s a degraded experience, that’s an issue with them and their expectations rather than the car.
The renter's expectation is that they just get in and drive to their destination. I don't think that that is an unreasonable expectation to have when renting a car.
OTOH, it is unreasonable to tell paying customers "you have to put in more effort and pay more if you want to be a customer"; the customers are just going to go elsewhere, where the business is being snobbish and using the "You're holding it wrong" response.
> I didn’t say it is a degraded experience. It’s just different.
Not for you, maybe, but adding extra steps to a task is a degradation for many people.
For most people, the extra 30m involved in renting a Tesla from Hertz vs a regular ICE car is an objective degradation in experience!
Hertz could have reduced the degradation by ensuring that all the Teslas left their lot fully charged. They could have allowed returns to be 50% charged.
They could have done lots of things to make the experience similar to an ICE car. They didn't.
> My comment to people about teslas is that they will be disappointed if they try to drive it like an ICE car
That kinda...tells the story of the article doesn't it? It's a pretty terrible rental experience if people will be disappointed if they try to drive it like the cars they're used to.
For charging speed you are right, the last 10% is at reduced rate. But, if I understand correctly, battery health is not depreciated with a 100% charge limit on Teslas with the newer battery composition that started sale in late 2022.
That's not universally true, both battery chemistries are in use and still being sold new (I believe the smaller batteries are using the new "100% safe" chemistry, while the long range variants are using the "keep the charge around 70-80%" chemistry.)
The car will alert you if it's not safe to charge frequently to 100% when you set the charge limit.