Three Rental Cars

My car was in the shop for a couple of weeks recently*. Fortunately I don’t need to drive every day, so I ended up renting just for the days I did need.

Ford Edge SUV

I needed to haul stuff around the first weekend, so I figured why not rent a bigger car? It did that quite well, but the extra height and mass meant I had to get used to it handling very differently. Extra stopping distance, feeling like I couldn’t see the road. And who came up with using a dial to change driving modes? That’s terribly inconvenient, especially when you’re making a 3-point turn.

Also, the sticker shock on filling the tank before I returned the car. I think it might have been cheaper to pay the fee to have the rental company pay for it.

Chevy Bolt EV

The second weekend I wanted something smaller and full electric. Of the three, I liked the Bolt best. It handled great, it felt familiar to drive, and I could charge it at home. It handles similarly to the Prius Prime in electric-only mode (which I should note is much more responsive than its hybrid mode). The button/lever switches felt more natural for shifting drive modes. But it’s got hardly any cargo space. You could fit maybe one suitcase in the back.

One of the things that I’m torn on is that the battery indicator doesn’t show you a percentage, it shows you the estimated number of miles it can go on the current charge. Which on one hand can be useful, because it can help you plan when you need to stop and charge! On the other hand it’s really imprecise, especially in an area with lots of hills and stop signs. It only took a mile up and down hills to bring down the distance remaining by five.

Also: I now have an appreciation for how long it takes to fully charge an electric car on regular house current. With the plug-in hybrid, I can let it charge overnight and it takes about 6 1/2 hours to fully charge it to roughly 25 (flat) miles capacity, and then I have the hybrid mode for longer trips and the equivalent of overdraft protection. A full-electric car charges at the same rate, but has a much higher capacity. 10x range = 10x time to charge. So I’d want to arrange for a 220V line in the garage if possible. Or make sure I allow extra charging time before longer trips.

Ford Mustang (2022)

I only needed a car for one day the next week, so I figured, I’ll just go for the “manager’s special” small car. They offered a 2-door Mustang. Overkill, but for $30/day plus gas? Might as well give it a try!

The problem was that all my driving was on city streets with stop signs and traffic signals every other block. This is a car that wants to move, and it jumps forward as soon as you step on the gas, and feels like it’s really pushing to get you up to speed – and then you hit a stop sign and you have to start all over again.

I think if I’d had the time to get it out on the open road, it would have been a better experience. (Sure, technically I drove it on Pacific Coast Highway, but around here, PCH is just another major city street, with all the traffic that entails.)

That said, it was tiny and uncomfortable, I kept hitting my head on the ceiling…and yet the bigger engine in front actually makes it longer than the Prius.

Computers, Am I Right?

Two things all three cars had in common:

First: They were all annoyingly insistent about things like opening the door while the car was still on so I could open (or close) the garage, or screaming about an imminent collision with…the side walls of the garage as I backed out. And I could swear one of them interpreted the building’s shadow on the driveway as a wall.

Second: I was never entirely certain I’d turned them off when I was done. They all kept large parts of the dashboard display on until I locked the doors, and I just had to assume that the fact that they let me lock the doors meant that they were sufficiently “off” that no one would be able to just hop in and drive off.