Last month, I needed a car for one day when at a conference in Texas. I’ve been very curious about electric vehicles, but my experience has been limited to a short test drive with a Nissan Leaf.

I wanted more! So when I walked over to the Avis office in San Antonio, and heard that they were about to return a Hyundai Ioniq5 to their airport location, I said STOP! I want it!! The manager was surprised, as they’ve had a hard time getting customers to rent EVs. Most people renting cars still have range anxiety and rather have the comfort of old gas station habits. I was willing to take the risk in order to try something new.

The thing I love about electric vehicles is that they are so responsive and instantaneous. Operating the accelerator and brake pedals are so true. No lag, no hesitation, no gear shifting. And with re-generative braking, you don’t need to use the brake pedal as much. It reminds me of driving go-karts, but in a bigger shell.

Now to what was the biggest change….charging! Since it was my first visit in San Antonio, I had no clue where the charging stations were. And to my surprise, there are a lot of them!! The concept of charging is not a big deal….it’s just like going to the gas station. The Hyundai Ioniq5 supports fast charging, so I was never hooked up more than 10-15 minutes….all while reading the news on my phone in the comfort of the car. Here’s what sucks…. there are numerous different companies who owns/runs these chargers, and they all require the use of their own phone app in order to charge. Trying to find a charger where I could just use my credit card had disappointing results.

What I ended up is I scouted a couple of charging stations in the areas where I was driving, and settled on just using two charging apps: EVgo and Electrify America. I’m not saying that those are better than others, and I’m not getting paid to mention them. I just happened to pick them because they had charging stations conveniently located near my destinations. The process of both charging stations were pretty identical. If I were to compare the two apps in terms of their GUI, I liked Electrify America slightly more.

Will I rent an EV again? Definitely!!! I loved it!

Below are some more pics from the car and the apps.