Electric vehicle sales are booming, and an effort is underway to blanket the country with new charging stations. But despite all that, the nation’s E.V. infrastructure is not ready for prime time.
I recently found this out the hard way.
I’ve been renting electric cars ever since Hertz started offering Teslas as an option a couple of years ago. It had always worked out great. The battery never ran too low during my drives around cities. Whenever I needed to power up, I found one of Tesla’s fast charging stations and was back on the road with a nearly full battery in less than an hour.
But when I arrived in Minneapolis for a reporting trip this summer, the Tesla I had reserved wasn’t available. Instead, the Hertz agent offered me an all-electric Volvo C40 Recharge crossover. I said yes without thinking twice, and was soon on the road.
My destination was 154 miles away: a farm near the South Dakota border, where I was researching a story on innovative farming practices. Unlike my previous E.V. rentals, this would be a bit of a road trip, the kind of long drive through sparsely populated farmland that is a hallmark of American car culture.
The Volvo promised 200 miles in range. I figured I would find a charger along the way, then charge again on the way back. Wrong.
Running on empty
After two hours of driving, the Volvo’s battery was below 50 percent, so I used the car’s built-in software to find a Blink charging station not far ahead, in Clara City, Minn.
