Rented an EV, and got driven around in a few others.

I've just hired an ID.3 for a week, and drove it some decent distances. I thought I'd let you know what happened.

I'm in Britain at the moment. I'm meeting clients in London over a two-week period, but I took a six-day break in the middle to go up to see my parents in the North of England.

Britain has train strikes and general chaos at the moment, so I decided to drive. When you search through the global comparison sites, car rental in Britain costs around three times what it cost pre-Covid, so I searched for alternatives.

When I came to Britain in April, I used Turo, and got a Mercedes E-class for what I would have paid Avis for a Fiat 500 or Kia Picanto. But now even Turo seems to be gouging.

However, I found that Volkswagen Financial Services (VWFS) does rentals through some VW Group dealerships. I used one in North London, but if any of you find yourselves flying into Heathrow, there are branches close by, in Slough and West London.

Avis, Hertz, etc would have charged around £400 for a six-day rental on a 500 or Picanto or whatever, but VWFS was much cheaper. They had Polos and Golfs for £200-300.

But for the same price as a Polo, you could get an ID.3. Petrol in Britain is very expensive - over £2 per litre in a lot of places (around US$9.20 for a US gallon). So it seemed like a no-brainer.

We don't have ID.3s - or any electric VWs, or Skodas, or Cupras, or most Audis - in Australia yet. They're supposed to be coming next year.

First impressions was that the car was very practical. It's small - marginally bigger than a Golf - on the outside. But on the inside there was as much space as a Passat. The roof was quite high, too - not SUV high, but higher than a normal sedan or hatch. So getting in and out was easy, even when I got up North and Mum and Dad had to get in and out of the car. The boot/trunk would have been big enough for two very big suitcases, so it was fine for my one suitcase and one carry-on case. But the lack of a frunk meant that the cables were in a messy pile in the trunk.

Quality was what you'd expect from a VW these days, and not what you'd have expected from a VW five years ago. The USB-C charging bar in the centre console had fallen off (the car had done 16,000 miles). Plastics felt a bit cheap, especially on the doors. The steering wheel buttons were kind of touch sensitive and kind of not, and were in a single lump. They took some getting used to, but they were usable.

There is no volume control knob on the dashboard, and no ventilation knobs or sliders. It's all done through the screen or through a supposedly touch-sensitive (actually touch-insensitive) panel below the screen. It was stupid. The button below the screen to bring up climate control was touch-sensitive, not clicky, and was right next to the also-touch-sensitive hazard warning light button. Twice I put on my hazards when trying to turn up the fan. This was stupid and dangerous. The hazards should be a proper button requiring a positive action.

The software was glitchy. There's a stupid arrangement for the windows - only two buttons on the driver's door, and then a touch-sensitive "rear" button which you press if you want to open or close the rear windows. The "rear" and "lock" touch-sensitive buttons activated themselves and the software glitch meant they couldn't be deactivated, meaning that for the middle three days of my rental I couldn't open the windows. Then, without warning, it all started working again. Weird. I don't know why you need touch-sensitive buttons, a mad "rear" arrangement, and software to open and close windows. Buttons work.

The stereo was great.

Wireless Android auto was easy to use, which was lucky, because the built-in Nav was stupid. It was fine as navs go, but.... It would give me directions to petrol stations WHICH I DID NOT NEED BECAUSE IT'S ELECTRIC, but had no information on EV charging.

In town, the car was silent, other than the artificial noise for pedestrians. It was easy to drive very smoothly, and it dealt brilliantly with speed humps. You'd never know it was as heavy as it is, or that it has such ridiculous huge wheels. It has a tiny turning circle, so it was very easy to manoeuvre.

On the motorway, it was great. It was very quiet - a bit of tyre noise, but not much, and very little wind noise. On a good surface (a rarity in Britain), it was almost silent at 70mph.

Efficiency was what really surprised me. Whether on the motorway at 70mph or driving round town, I consistently stayed above 4 miles per kWh. A lot of the time, this was with the aircon on because of the window problem. The weather was quite EV-friendly - high 50s to low 70s Fahrenheit (see, I can speak to Americans) most of the time - but even so, this seems very good indeed. It was the 58kWh version of the ID.3, which is the mid-size battery (there's also 45kWh and 77kWh). I got from North London to Preston, which was 213 miles, and still had 40 miles of range left. I did a fast charge there for 10 minutes so that I could potter around in Lytham after I got to my parents' house. They don't have a wallbox, obviously, but plugged into a normal British socket (240V / 13A), I could fill the car overnight.

On the way back to London, traffic was chaotic and I didn't want to get into trouble, so I did a quick recharge near Birmingham.

At no point did my bladder outlast the battery. I always needed to stop to go to the toilet - somewhere with charging available - before the car needed to recharge.

All in all, I was very impressed. I'm now completely convinced of the practicality of EVs, and I will be getting one as soon as one of the ones I want comes out in Australia.

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I've got a few EV Ubers in London too.

One was a Nissan Leaf. It was a bit cramped, but it was OK. Interior design was uninspiring, but it was fine.

One was a Kia e-Niro. I think you have those in the US too. It was very comfortable and very quiet, and had decent space and a large boot.

One was an MG5. It was different to what I expected. It's a station wagon, not an SUV, but it was tall - it felt almost like an SUV to get into and out of. Rear space was decent, and the boot was enormous. It was quiet and comfortable. The plastics were no worse than those in the Nissan, but it's £1500 cheaper than the Nissan, when it's a full size bigger and has about 20 miles more official range. I was quite impressed.

 

Yes, it's surprising. Before this trip, I thought maybe it was too small for America. But it's actually reasonably big - significantly bigger than a Prius. So it can't be that.

 

This doesn't surprise me. If they can't even get the windows to work consistently, it seems unlikely that they could deal with the more complex things.

It's a shame. The fundamentals are good. It's roomy and efficient and should be just right for the job of a family car. But then they've blown it on quality - they're astonishingly far behind the Koreans and the Chinese on EVs now.