My family and I rented a Model Y from Hertz on a recent vacation to Orlando, FL. We used it for a little less than a week, mostly around the Orlando area, but we did a day trip to Fort Lauderdale. Hertz and Tesla did a very good job setting the cars up so that Tesla owners will feel right at home.
We picked up the car at the Orlando airport (MCO). We got a keycard inside a holder for initial access. This works pretty much like a normal Tesla keycard with respect to unlocking/locking and starting the car. I think the Hertz employee who helped us find the car was either new or hadn’t really been trained properly about EVs (she thought Tesla Superchargers needed to be presented with a credit card). I could envision new Tesla drivers getting confused here.
The first time we hopped in the car, there was a QR code on the display…scanning this with my phone set it up in the Tesla app and associated it with my Tesla account. It even did the phonekey pairing. At this point the car showed up in my app as just another car. The third-party Stats app on my phone also recognized the Model Y and recorded driving / charging statistics for it. It even set up my cloud profile (from my Model X) in the Y, so it transferred over some preferences, nav destinations, etc. It looked like it’s only possible to have at most one customer Tesla account associated with the car at a time (so my wife ended up having to drive on my driver profile and my settings, which fortunately aren’t too different from hers).
This was our first experience driving a Model Y (a recent long-range version). I was impressed with the build quality, subjectively better than my Model S or Model X, and quieter as well. The interior was more roomy than I expected. I did miss the instrument cluster display, and we found that adapting to Yet Another Set of Stalks and Yet Another Way of Opening the Doors took some time.
The car came configured with basic AP. Personally this suffices for a majority of my freeway driving, with the exception of having AP disengage during lane changes (“automatic lane changes” requires EAP or FSD).
When we got the car it already had the Holiday Update applied to it (well one version anyway). It had another version ready to install, which I scheduled for overnight. It turns out that a number of Superchargers have WiFi for the cars to use, so in the time we had the car, it downloaded a game update and a third version of the Holiday Update.
There was a mobile connector with the NEMA 5-15 adapter in the sub trunk. Notably there was no J1772 adapter. I’m not sure what exactly was to be expected here, but if I knew I was going to be depending on adapters, I’d have packed my own.
We used Superchargers exclusively. I believe the arrangement is for the Supercharging fees to be passed through and billed by Hertz, but I haven’t seen my wife’s copy of the paperwork yet. Supercharging for us in Florida was convenient and easy. We never had to wait for a charger, although once or twice I changed my charging plans to avoid congestion.
There were two Supercharging settings that were new to us. First were the service plazas on Florida’s Turnpike…these are huge roadside stops in the middle of the freeway with gas/diesel pumps, EV charging (usually including Tesla Superchargers), fast food, stores, etc. Using the navigation to find the Superchargers was pretty helpful because the chargers aren’t visible from every part of the service plaza.
The other new Supercharging setting was Wawa, a chain of gas station / convenience stores, a number of which have Tesla Superchargers. They reminded me of miniature versions of the travel service plazas, but in the cities. Of the 16 Superchargers we used on this trip, 6 were behind/beside Wawa locations.
(As an aside: The trip to Fort Lauderdale was to go to dinner at the Rustic Inn Crabhouse. Highly recommend their garlic crabs, and yes we made a full-day round trip just for that.)
When it came time to return the car, I wanted to see how to wipe my settings out. Fortunately there was a control on the app for “Release Access” (or some similar wording) that disassociated the car with my Tesla account. It took a few seconds for this to be reflected in the car. We could still of course use the keycard for the final drive to drop the car back off at MCO.
They told us verbally when we picked the car up to return it with at least 80% charge (it had 95%). We worked out the last charging session such that we’d be able to make it from our hotel back to the airport with some reserves, so we rolled in to MCO with 83% battery.
This rental experience worked out extremely well. I can’t comment on how this would have gone for Tesla newbies, or more specifically people renting a Tesla to try one out for the first time. But at least for us, I’d definitely consider doing this again for a similar trip.
We picked up the car at the Orlando airport (MCO). We got a keycard inside a holder for initial access. This works pretty much like a normal Tesla keycard with respect to unlocking/locking and starting the car. I think the Hertz employee who helped us find the car was either new or hadn’t really been trained properly about EVs (she thought Tesla Superchargers needed to be presented with a credit card). I could envision new Tesla drivers getting confused here.
The first time we hopped in the car, there was a QR code on the display…scanning this with my phone set it up in the Tesla app and associated it with my Tesla account. It even did the phonekey pairing. At this point the car showed up in my app as just another car. The third-party Stats app on my phone also recognized the Model Y and recorded driving / charging statistics for it. It even set up my cloud profile (from my Model X) in the Y, so it transferred over some preferences, nav destinations, etc. It looked like it’s only possible to have at most one customer Tesla account associated with the car at a time (so my wife ended up having to drive on my driver profile and my settings, which fortunately aren’t too different from hers).
This was our first experience driving a Model Y (a recent long-range version). I was impressed with the build quality, subjectively better than my Model S or Model X, and quieter as well. The interior was more roomy than I expected. I did miss the instrument cluster display, and we found that adapting to Yet Another Set of Stalks and Yet Another Way of Opening the Doors took some time.
The car came configured with basic AP. Personally this suffices for a majority of my freeway driving, with the exception of having AP disengage during lane changes (“automatic lane changes” requires EAP or FSD).
When we got the car it already had the Holiday Update applied to it (well one version anyway). It had another version ready to install, which I scheduled for overnight. It turns out that a number of Superchargers have WiFi for the cars to use, so in the time we had the car, it downloaded a game update and a third version of the Holiday Update.
There was a mobile connector with the NEMA 5-15 adapter in the sub trunk. Notably there was no J1772 adapter. I’m not sure what exactly was to be expected here, but if I knew I was going to be depending on adapters, I’d have packed my own.
We used Superchargers exclusively. I believe the arrangement is for the Supercharging fees to be passed through and billed by Hertz, but I haven’t seen my wife’s copy of the paperwork yet. Supercharging for us in Florida was convenient and easy. We never had to wait for a charger, although once or twice I changed my charging plans to avoid congestion.
There were two Supercharging settings that were new to us. First were the service plazas on Florida’s Turnpike…these are huge roadside stops in the middle of the freeway with gas/diesel pumps, EV charging (usually including Tesla Superchargers), fast food, stores, etc. Using the navigation to find the Superchargers was pretty helpful because the chargers aren’t visible from every part of the service plaza.
The other new Supercharging setting was Wawa, a chain of gas station / convenience stores, a number of which have Tesla Superchargers. They reminded me of miniature versions of the travel service plazas, but in the cities. Of the 16 Superchargers we used on this trip, 6 were behind/beside Wawa locations.
(As an aside: The trip to Fort Lauderdale was to go to dinner at the Rustic Inn Crabhouse. Highly recommend their garlic crabs, and yes we made a full-day round trip just for that.)
When it came time to return the car, I wanted to see how to wipe my settings out. Fortunately there was a control on the app for “Release Access” (or some similar wording) that disassociated the car with my Tesla account. It took a few seconds for this to be reflected in the car. We could still of course use the keycard for the final drive to drop the car back off at MCO.
They told us verbally when we picked the car up to return it with at least 80% charge (it had 95%). We worked out the last charging session such that we’d be able to make it from our hotel back to the airport with some reserves, so we rolled in to MCO with 83% battery.
This rental experience worked out extremely well. I can’t comment on how this would have gone for Tesla newbies, or more specifically people renting a Tesla to try one out for the first time. But at least for us, I’d definitely consider doing this again for a similar trip.
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