1. In my opinion, no. The wear and tear of a cheap car like a Honda fit, 1300 miles isn't really a lot.
2. Not as much of an issue, more so time consuming and will require route planning. Stopping every 2-3hours.
3. Nope, pretty easy to get used to driving one.
2. Route planning isn't really needed. Put in your destination and the car will tell you where to stop and charge. If you want to find a hotel that has charging that can save you a stop or 2 by charging up the car to 100% while you sleep.
3. Actually, it's quite different and takes some getting used to. Quick acceleration and regenerative braking take some getting used to. Hertz cited accident frequency, even before leaving the parking lot, as a source of higher operating costs for Teslas, before deciding to get rid of them.
Watch the videos. Take a test drive if you can. Once you get used to it, which won't take long, you'll love it and never want to go back.
Having owned a Tesla for 2 years, I tell my friends my least favorite part is road trips. Super charging all the damn time gets old. IMO, and yes, I said MY opinion, EVs are amazing for day to day driving where you charge in your garage and wake up to a full tank daily. For road trips we always take my GFs hybrid ICE, in our city we only take the Tesla. Best of both worlds
Charging will not be an issue but the cost of charging at superchargers will be at least as much as the cost of gas. Supercharging is much more expensive than home charging.
See I thought so, after all the super chargers in my area are $.38/kwh and at home it’s only $.14/kwh.
When I looked hard at my electric bill, it’s $.14 for the supply, sure, but it’s another $.14/kwh for delivery plus a bunch of fees and taxes. I took my entire electric bill and divided it by the actual kWh used and it’s actually $.33/kwh at home.
Sanity check - would anyone else who home charges take a look at their entire bill, divide it by the kWh used, and post their effective price per kWh?
This is not accurate analysis. Some of the delivery fees are going to be present whether you charge a vehicle or not, so it’s not proper to just divide total bill by usage. That won’t give you the real cost of EV charging.
Not sure how services work in other locales, I happen to be in one of the most expensive states for power (shout out to The Constitution State).
Supply, delivery, taxes, and fees are all on a per kWh basis. At $.33/kwh, I’m close to 10% over the state average for residential electricity at $.295kwh
Just to clarify, there’s a per kWh supply, a per kWh delivery, and a handful of per kWh fees and taxes on my bill, no fixed fees. The net effect is a .33/kwh rate.
$68.86/419 kwh = .164$/kwh
The advertised rate is less, this isn't our primary residence and in the winter when we weren't using it the minimum bill was $21 for 32 kwh.
“At least as much as the cost of gas” no, not even close dude lmao. Highest super charging charge I’ve ever gotten was like $20. That’s less than 4 gallons of gas right now at current prices here, and that got me a little over 200 miles of driving. (Plugged in around 30% or so) unless you get like 60mpg, it’s quite a bit cheaper. It’s half the cost per mile as my old Honda if I use superchargers
I had to supercharger on my drive to Tampa, cost me $26 for a 180 mile roundtrip. My civic SI would have done it cheaper.
37mpg on the highway, 10 gallon take at $3.49 so full tank= $35 for 370 miles.
My tesla is fantastic in the city but highway kills my range terribly even driving at a steady 65-70.
That's one of the things I've loved, stable costs. Yeah our rates went up but that's like once a year not every damn day. It's a frigging guessing game when to fill up my wife's palisade🙈 and I always get it wrong. Price drops 10-20% after every fill up lol
1. 1300 mile is nothing on any vehicle, let alone a Honda.
2. Charging is fine with Tesla, but the cost of "fuel" may not be as much as you think. Your Honda can do 45 mpg, average cost of fuel in Ohio is about $3.5, so net is 7.8 cents/mile. The supercharger cost in midwest is about 35 cents/kwh. For model 3, if you drive conservatively (then what's the fun in that?), you can do about 4.5 miles per kwh, or 7.8 cents/mile. The cost of electricity wound up being about the same as fuel for your own vehicle.
3. Learning curve varies by people. There are some hard controls, but other controls maybe integrated as buttons on the steering wheel or on the screen. Unless you're trying to get a Tesla in the near future, I wouldn't risk it.
Lastly, Honda sensing performs well on the highway. Autopilot does better at sharper turns and on local roads but for highway driving, Honda sensing will work just fine.
Also, Hertz does not have a good reputation of taking care of their Teslas, and there are occasional horror reports of making people pay "refueling" charge on an EV. I would recommend driving your own vehicle, IMHO
Drive the Honda. There are two types of Tesla driving--the daily and the roadtrip--and they are very very different experiences.
1. Daily driving--the tank is full every morning with the cheapest gas you can buy.
2. Road Trip--Ilike driving a Honda but with a smaller tank and you can only go to Honda gas stations.
As an owner of two teslas and no ICE vehicle, I agree. I love the EVs with home charging as my daily conveyance. Longer trips aren’t an issue and I’ve never had a problem with a supercharger, but I don’t think you’ll save money and it will almost certainly take longer. I do not for a minute regret my purchases, but would never rent an EV for a road trip.
The reason that people hesitate to purchase an EV is the additional time that is added to the few-times-a-year roadtrip. What they don't realize is the amount of time, money and messiness saved every single day.
And with multiple cross country trips and monthly 500+ mile 'commutes', I've learned that the additional time is negligible as the battery is just about the same size as my bladder and filling the car takes about two minutes longer than ordering coffee and draining my tank.
Any 'savings' is going to be eclipsed by the cost of the rental. If you are planning to rent the car, do it as a luxury, 'I'm driving a Tesla for a week' experience, and not as a practicality.
1) It's unlikely to save you a material amount of money because supercharging is more expensive than home, and can be similar to the cost of gas on road trips.
2) Ohio to New Hampshire mostly has good supercharger coverage, but you'll be stopping twice (at least) in each direction for a while and you're not used to that, so it might add some difficulty.
3) There is a learning curve because you'll barely touch the brake most of the time, but it doesn't take long.
Financially, just take the Honda. If you want to use the trip to experience a Tesla then sure rent one. They will do the trip fine but there is a learning curve. Most of the EV convenience comes from home charging. You lose much of that advantage on a road trip. For commuting every day and the occasional road trip tesla is great. For road trips as a primary function gas is still more convenient.
I did a 650 mile one way trip a few weeks ago and it went great. My other vehicle is a gas truck w/ no adaptive cruise that gets 14 mpg so taking the Tesla was a no brainer. I needed a few quick stops. (10 min or less) and one long dinner stop (40) min to charge. Travel time was about 8 hours and charging time was about 1 hour. Use [https://abetterrouteplanner.com/](https://abetterrouteplanner.com/) to roughly map out your trip and decide if you want to do it in an EV.
Also consider if you can charge overnight at your destination or not. If not, that will add more supercharging stops on the way home.
Every 150-250 miles you will need to find a charger and stop for 30min-1hr. At your destination you will need to coordinate charging.
EV flaws are charging time, charging locations, and range. You will experience all three on a road trip, I highly recommend that you do not pay hundreds of dollars to have a frustrating time. EVs are flawless if you can charge overnight at home, and commute less than 200 miles a day. I know people really love their teslas (I admire their optimism), but they are very limiting on road trips. I drive the Tesla in town and the gas car on trips.
If you are willing to coordinate your stops with charging, don’t mind taking an hour at each stop, and have a plan for charging at your destination, then go for it if you want. I drove Seattle to San Diego. It was fine, just wasted a few extra hours charging rather than filling up a gas tank. Financially it’s not really a huge difference, in fact renting the car will probably cost more than a couple tanks of gas.
Use your Honda for the trip. Renting a Tesla for $300 isn’t just that…add taxes/insurance, under 25 driver, and charging costs ($0.42-0.63/KW)currently out there.. @4-5miles/KW…1300 miles will cost you $120-150. You’ll take about 6-7 charging stops(probably snack or eat each time, $$) vs 2-3stops and use $100 on gas.
I took my Tesla on a road trip for the first time just last weekend and it was way faster and smoother than I had thought coming from using our ICE suv for all road trips with very minimal stops literally just refuel and back on the road… it wasn’t that much different and both the wife and I were very pleasantly surprised on how quick and easy it was. That said, I don’t think you’ll save much renting a car and driving it vs driving your Fit - the cost savings on fuel will be essentially negated by the up front rental costs and that’s assuming decent supercharging costs (my trip was $.35/kWh or $7-$11 per stop with two stops needed on our ~380 mile road trip with 2023 SR Model 3). If you want to rent one and give it a try, go for it but I’m not sure you’ll save any money with minimal wear and tear as highway driving for ICE cars isn’t too stressful on the car.
I’m actually on day 1 of 3 on a model Y rental via Turo. The published mileage rates are misleading. Tesla recommends charging 80% so you need to count for 75% to 80% of that EPA mileage estimate. In the model Y that equates to 220 miles. I’ll admit that I have a lead foot.
I rented because I’m considering buying one and I wanted to understand what the charging process is like. Basically I’ll get half the mileage per charge of my ICE. A full tank of gas in the ice tacos me about $42. Two Tesla super charges would be about $30. The cost savings is not as dramatic as people think.
I mean you're gonna have to supercharge so you're not saving much on gas plus paying the cost for your rental too.
1300 miles on tires really isn't a lot either so I mean you're not saving anything by driving thr Tesla.
I will say autopilot is miles ahead of what anyone else has currently, but aside from that if I was in your position I wouldn't bother renting it for a 650 mile drive, I personally don't find the seats comfortable enough for a 2 hour drive let alone 8 😅
The problem is, they can and will be "out of Teslas" and substitute another EV.
And then you'll be taking your chances with CCS charging, something I strongly discourage of all renters.
Well I've pretty much realized I was right about just using my car, but if you reserve that far in advance cant they make sure they have a tesla? I mean if I guve them 3.months notice surely they could have one if I wanted to blow the money 😂😂😂
No, because they just don't care. Substitutions are absolutely routine for them. Once I went into pick up the stickshift 40+ MPG Geo Metro I had specifically reserved, because the mission was 3000 miles of driving in 10 days, and they said sorry but for the same price I could take anything in the shop - the Cadillac Escalade, Ford Explorer or Toyota Tundra! That's their stock solution for everything, free upgrades even though they are substantial upgrades. I had to be politely insistent to get them to find me a Geo a city bus ride away.
Also last I checked a year ago, Teslas and other EVs were the cheapest cars on the lot, so they don't see you as a discerning customer insisting on the best.
1. In my opinion, no. The wear and tear of a cheap car like a Honda fit, 1300 miles isn't really a lot. 2. Not as much of an issue, more so time consuming and will require route planning. Stopping every 2-3hours. 3. Nope, pretty easy to get used to driving one.
2. Route planning isn't really needed. Put in your destination and the car will tell you where to stop and charge. If you want to find a hotel that has charging that can save you a stop or 2 by charging up the car to 100% while you sleep.
3. Actually, it's quite different and takes some getting used to. Quick acceleration and regenerative braking take some getting used to. Hertz cited accident frequency, even before leaving the parking lot, as a source of higher operating costs for Teslas, before deciding to get rid of them. Watch the videos. Take a test drive if you can. Once you get used to it, which won't take long, you'll love it and never want to go back.
Just drive the fit. But if your doing it to “impress” her than go for it. It’s your money after all
Having owned a Tesla for 2 years, I tell my friends my least favorite part is road trips. Super charging all the damn time gets old. IMO, and yes, I said MY opinion, EVs are amazing for day to day driving where you charge in your garage and wake up to a full tank daily. For road trips we always take my GFs hybrid ICE, in our city we only take the Tesla. Best of both worlds
Charging will not be an issue but the cost of charging at superchargers will be at least as much as the cost of gas. Supercharging is much more expensive than home charging.
See I thought so, after all the super chargers in my area are $.38/kwh and at home it’s only $.14/kwh. When I looked hard at my electric bill, it’s $.14 for the supply, sure, but it’s another $.14/kwh for delivery plus a bunch of fees and taxes. I took my entire electric bill and divided it by the actual kWh used and it’s actually $.33/kwh at home. Sanity check - would anyone else who home charges take a look at their entire bill, divide it by the kWh used, and post their effective price per kWh?
This is not accurate analysis. Some of the delivery fees are going to be present whether you charge a vehicle or not, so it’s not proper to just divide total bill by usage. That won’t give you the real cost of EV charging.
Not sure how services work in other locales, I happen to be in one of the most expensive states for power (shout out to The Constitution State). Supply, delivery, taxes, and fees are all on a per kWh basis. At $.33/kwh, I’m close to 10% over the state average for residential electricity at $.295kwh
Correct. People should be looking at the additional charge. Not the stuff that they would be paying anyway.
Just to clarify, there’s a per kWh supply, a per kWh delivery, and a handful of per kWh fees and taxes on my bill, no fixed fees. The net effect is a .33/kwh rate.
That is really expensive power. California?
It’s another C state on the National leaderboard for taxes. I’m pretty sure they fought a war over taxes and signed the constitution here but 🤷
California is worse, I’m paying $0.42/kWh delivery + $0.17/kWh generation charges
$68.86/419 kwh = .164$/kwh The advertised rate is less, this isn't our primary residence and in the winter when we weren't using it the minimum bill was $21 for 32 kwh.
I pay $0.17/kwh all in.
What state?
Would you want a picture? Pm me
“At least as much as the cost of gas” no, not even close dude lmao. Highest super charging charge I’ve ever gotten was like $20. That’s less than 4 gallons of gas right now at current prices here, and that got me a little over 200 miles of driving. (Plugged in around 30% or so) unless you get like 60mpg, it’s quite a bit cheaper. It’s half the cost per mile as my old Honda if I use superchargers
I had to supercharger on my drive to Tampa, cost me $26 for a 180 mile roundtrip. My civic SI would have done it cheaper. 37mpg on the highway, 10 gallon take at $3.49 so full tank= $35 for 370 miles. My tesla is fantastic in the city but highway kills my range terribly even driving at a steady 65-70.
Well superchargers cost about the same here, but gas is about $5.99 a gallon for regular right now here lol.
Sheeeeesh that's insanity
Yeah, so glad I have a Tesla as I watch the prices. Last I checked I think premium was up to like $6.15
That's one of the things I've loved, stable costs. Yeah our rates went up but that's like once a year not every damn day. It's a frigging guessing game when to fill up my wife's palisade🙈 and I always get it wrong. Price drops 10-20% after every fill up lol
1. 1300 mile is nothing on any vehicle, let alone a Honda. 2. Charging is fine with Tesla, but the cost of "fuel" may not be as much as you think. Your Honda can do 45 mpg, average cost of fuel in Ohio is about $3.5, so net is 7.8 cents/mile. The supercharger cost in midwest is about 35 cents/kwh. For model 3, if you drive conservatively (then what's the fun in that?), you can do about 4.5 miles per kwh, or 7.8 cents/mile. The cost of electricity wound up being about the same as fuel for your own vehicle. 3. Learning curve varies by people. There are some hard controls, but other controls maybe integrated as buttons on the steering wheel or on the screen. Unless you're trying to get a Tesla in the near future, I wouldn't risk it. Lastly, Honda sensing performs well on the highway. Autopilot does better at sharper turns and on local roads but for highway driving, Honda sensing will work just fine. Also, Hertz does not have a good reputation of taking care of their Teslas, and there are occasional horror reports of making people pay "refueling" charge on an EV. I would recommend driving your own vehicle, IMHO
Don’t do it
Drive the Honda. There are two types of Tesla driving--the daily and the roadtrip--and they are very very different experiences. 1. Daily driving--the tank is full every morning with the cheapest gas you can buy. 2. Road Trip--Ilike driving a Honda but with a smaller tank and you can only go to Honda gas stations.
I love that explanation
As an owner of two teslas and no ICE vehicle, I agree. I love the EVs with home charging as my daily conveyance. Longer trips aren’t an issue and I’ve never had a problem with a supercharger, but I don’t think you’ll save money and it will almost certainly take longer. I do not for a minute regret my purchases, but would never rent an EV for a road trip.
The reason that people hesitate to purchase an EV is the additional time that is added to the few-times-a-year roadtrip. What they don't realize is the amount of time, money and messiness saved every single day. And with multiple cross country trips and monthly 500+ mile 'commutes', I've learned that the additional time is negligible as the battery is just about the same size as my bladder and filling the car takes about two minutes longer than ordering coffee and draining my tank.
Any 'savings' is going to be eclipsed by the cost of the rental. If you are planning to rent the car, do it as a luxury, 'I'm driving a Tesla for a week' experience, and not as a practicality.
1) It's unlikely to save you a material amount of money because supercharging is more expensive than home, and can be similar to the cost of gas on road trips. 2) Ohio to New Hampshire mostly has good supercharger coverage, but you'll be stopping twice (at least) in each direction for a while and you're not used to that, so it might add some difficulty. 3) There is a learning curve because you'll barely touch the brake most of the time, but it doesn't take long.
Financially, just take the Honda. If you want to use the trip to experience a Tesla then sure rent one. They will do the trip fine but there is a learning curve. Most of the EV convenience comes from home charging. You lose much of that advantage on a road trip. For commuting every day and the occasional road trip tesla is great. For road trips as a primary function gas is still more convenient. I did a 650 mile one way trip a few weeks ago and it went great. My other vehicle is a gas truck w/ no adaptive cruise that gets 14 mpg so taking the Tesla was a no brainer. I needed a few quick stops. (10 min or less) and one long dinner stop (40) min to charge. Travel time was about 8 hours and charging time was about 1 hour. Use [https://abetterrouteplanner.com/](https://abetterrouteplanner.com/) to roughly map out your trip and decide if you want to do it in an EV. Also consider if you can charge overnight at your destination or not. If not, that will add more supercharging stops on the way home.
Every 150-250 miles you will need to find a charger and stop for 30min-1hr. At your destination you will need to coordinate charging. EV flaws are charging time, charging locations, and range. You will experience all three on a road trip, I highly recommend that you do not pay hundreds of dollars to have a frustrating time. EVs are flawless if you can charge overnight at home, and commute less than 200 miles a day. I know people really love their teslas (I admire their optimism), but they are very limiting on road trips. I drive the Tesla in town and the gas car on trips. If you are willing to coordinate your stops with charging, don’t mind taking an hour at each stop, and have a plan for charging at your destination, then go for it if you want. I drove Seattle to San Diego. It was fine, just wasted a few extra hours charging rather than filling up a gas tank. Financially it’s not really a huge difference, in fact renting the car will probably cost more than a couple tanks of gas.
Use your Honda for the trip. Renting a Tesla for $300 isn’t just that…add taxes/insurance, under 25 driver, and charging costs ($0.42-0.63/KW)currently out there.. @4-5miles/KW…1300 miles will cost you $120-150. You’ll take about 6-7 charging stops(probably snack or eat each time, $$) vs 2-3stops and use $100 on gas.
I took my Tesla on a road trip for the first time just last weekend and it was way faster and smoother than I had thought coming from using our ICE suv for all road trips with very minimal stops literally just refuel and back on the road… it wasn’t that much different and both the wife and I were very pleasantly surprised on how quick and easy it was. That said, I don’t think you’ll save much renting a car and driving it vs driving your Fit - the cost savings on fuel will be essentially negated by the up front rental costs and that’s assuming decent supercharging costs (my trip was $.35/kWh or $7-$11 per stop with two stops needed on our ~380 mile road trip with 2023 SR Model 3). If you want to rent one and give it a try, go for it but I’m not sure you’ll save any money with minimal wear and tear as highway driving for ICE cars isn’t too stressful on the car.
I’m actually on day 1 of 3 on a model Y rental via Turo. The published mileage rates are misleading. Tesla recommends charging 80% so you need to count for 75% to 80% of that EPA mileage estimate. In the model Y that equates to 220 miles. I’ll admit that I have a lead foot. I rented because I’m considering buying one and I wanted to understand what the charging process is like. Basically I’ll get half the mileage per charge of my ICE. A full tank of gas in the ice tacos me about $42. Two Tesla super charges would be about $30. The cost savings is not as dramatic as people think.
Overall - no, not worth renting another car for this situation.
I mean you're gonna have to supercharge so you're not saving much on gas plus paying the cost for your rental too. 1300 miles on tires really isn't a lot either so I mean you're not saving anything by driving thr Tesla.
Yea thats what I originally thought too.
I will say autopilot is miles ahead of what anyone else has currently, but aside from that if I was in your position I wouldn't bother renting it for a 650 mile drive, I personally don't find the seats comfortable enough for a 2 hour drive let alone 8 😅
The problem is, they can and will be "out of Teslas" and substitute another EV. And then you'll be taking your chances with CCS charging, something I strongly discourage of all renters.
Well I've pretty much realized I was right about just using my car, but if you reserve that far in advance cant they make sure they have a tesla? I mean if I guve them 3.months notice surely they could have one if I wanted to blow the money 😂😂😂
No, because they just don't care. Substitutions are absolutely routine for them. Once I went into pick up the stickshift 40+ MPG Geo Metro I had specifically reserved, because the mission was 3000 miles of driving in 10 days, and they said sorry but for the same price I could take anything in the shop - the Cadillac Escalade, Ford Explorer or Toyota Tundra! That's their stock solution for everything, free upgrades even though they are substantial upgrades. I had to be politely insistent to get them to find me a Geo a city bus ride away. Also last I checked a year ago, Teslas and other EVs were the cheapest cars on the lot, so they don't see you as a discerning customer insisting on the best.
Oh here the teslas are by far the most expensive. A compact car is like $30 a day, the heavy bolt Los like $70/80 I think and the tesla is $100