EV1 for a Day

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On December 31, 1999 EV Rental opened its third location at the Budget Car Rentals in Beverly Hills. Pictured left, the Mayor of Beverly Hills cuts the ribbon officially opening the site.

Jeff Pink, standing to the left of the Mayor, founded EV Rental in 1997. They opened their first location at LAX in December 1998. In August 1999 they added a second location at the Sacramento Airport. They also plan to open at other local airports such as Burbank and Ontario.

They will offer a choice of the Gen II Ev1 and the Toyota RAV4 EV. In addition, Beverly Hills will be the only place where you will be able to rent a Nissan Altra EV.

On Thursday December 30, 1999 I received an Email message from Terry O’Day of EV Rental.

They were having their grand opening in Beverly Hills the following day and he asked if I would like to take part in the opening festivities and be their first renter. I got Terry on the phone and arranged to be at the opening ceremonies by 10am.

Jeff Pink founded EV Rental in 1997. They opened their first location in December 1998 using Budget car rental’s facilities at LAX. In August 1999 they added a second location in Conjunction with the Budget Car Rental at Sacramento Airport. Beverly Hills is their third site and they plan to open at other airports in the Los Angeles area.

The next morning, I walked to the Beverly Hills Budget Car Rental office, arriving promptly at 10am. It was cool and overcast with just a hint of rain in the air. I found Terry O’Day to let him know I had arrived, then mingled with the other guests. Then Terry gave a sort speech introducing the Mayor of Beverly Hills, who cut a ribbon, officially opening the site and it was time to start my day with an electric car.

After taking care of the rental agreement, Joe Borges of EV Rental took me out to a sparkling Green EV1 so new that it still didn’t have license plates. Joe spent about twenty minutes going over the features of the car. He showed me how to charge the car, how to start the car, and how to shut the car off. He also gave me some tips on driving an electric vehicle to maximize range. Finally he went over the trip planner that EV Rental provides. This is a thick three-ring binder, which includes directions to the hundreds of electric vehicle charging stations throughout Southern California.

The first thing to note about the EV1 is that it doesn’t use a key. You open the door by entering a five-digit code on a keypad above the driver’s side door. To start the car, also known as booting, you enter the same code using another keypad on the instrument console. GM does provide a key that can be used to open the doors and the trunk, but most drivers don’t bother to carry it. I wrote down the number so that I wouldn’t forget it, but after starting the car a couple of times the code was committed to memory.

The car was connected to a charger that indicated that it would take almost an hour to reach full charge. When the car was booted, the instrument panel told me that I could expect a range of about 85 miles on the current level of charge. This would be more than enough for my day with the EV1 so I unplugged it from the charger and drove off to pick up my wife Aggie. As I drove along Santa Monica Boulevard I noticed that the range seemed to drop rather quickly and by the time I had traveled the one mile to my home the indicator was reading only 81 miles.

From home, our initial stop was to visit my wife’s sister who lives just a few blocks away. One of the first things that most people notice about an EV is how quiet they are. At low speeds, the EV1 makes no noise at all but when you accelerate it makes a low-pitched whine. The EV1 has a feature called ‘coast down’ which engages the regenerative braking. When you take your foot of the accelerator to slow down, the electric motor becomes a generator so instead of heat being generated at the brakes the energy is returned to the batteries. Regenerative braking also makes a noticeable whine at a slightly lower pitch than the one when accelerating. As we drove in traffic I would have to accelerate then brake then accelerate again. Aggie remarked that the noise this produced reminded her of a police siren.

When we arrived, everyone came down to see the car. Scott, our Niece’s boyfriend was there and wanted to know if I could give him a ride around the block. My wife decided to stay at her sisters while I took Scott with me on an errand in Hollywood.

The drive to Hollywood and back took about twenty minutes. I must have been getting used to the car as the range no longer dropped quickly. As I got into heavy traffic along Sunset I noticed that the range actually went up at one point as the regenerative braking slowed the drain on the batteries. The range is calculated by the EV1 based on your driving technique. The more conservatively you drive the better range you can expect.

Rain had begun to fall. The first rain we had seen in months. Yes, you can drive an electric vehicle in the rain. The rain was light and the roads soon became slick. The EV1 handled the slippery conditions surprisingly well. If I tried to accelerate hard the wheels would spin but that would be true of almost any car in those conditions. The slippery road surface is caused because oil that has leaked from cars floats to the surface when it rains. It is the cause of numerous accidents here in Southern California. Eventually this oil will wash into the storm drains and out to the ocean. As the EV1 does not need oil, it does not add to this problem. Just one more way electric vehicles help the environment.

The EV1, which seats two people, has adequate trunk space for groceries or luggage for a weekend trip. Its teardrop shape gives it a drag coefficient of only 1.88, which makes it the most aerodynamic production automobile you can buy. The car was originally released in December of 1996. The generation one vehicle came with a lead acid battery that provided it with a real world range of about 40 miles. GM sold about 600 of these mostly in California and Arizona. The second generation EV1, like the one I was driving, started shipping in November of 1999. This car came with two battery options, an improved lead acid battery, which gives a range of about 60 to 80 miles, and a Nickel Metal Hydride battery that will provide a range of 120 to 130 miles. The car comes equipped with air conditioning based on a highly efficient heat pump that has little impact on the car’s range. It also has a CD player.

Getting back to Beverly Hills, I dropped off Scott, picked up Aggie and drove to Westside Pavilion. When we arrived, the electric vehicle charging station was free so I glided silently into the parking space. The trip meter said 15.4 miles and the range meter said 70 miles so the range estimate had been pretty accurate. Although I didn’t need to charge the batteries, as no other electric vehicles were around I decided to take this opportunity to add a little charge.

The EV1 uses ‘inductive charging’, using a flat paddle about the size of a table tennis bat connected to an external charger. You simply push the paddle into a slot in the front of the vehicle and charging starts automatically. There are no direct contacts between the charger and the vehicle, which makes charging very safe, even in the rain. The charger told me that I was at 66% of charge but the time to complete charging was blank. Aggie and I went into the Mall for Lunch.

After a quick meal Nordstom’s restaurant, I took a walked around the mall while Aggie did some shopping. I met her forty minutes latter outside Robinsons May. As we returned to the car I found myself searching my pockets for the car key. It’s funny how we become so conditioned to using keys to start our vehicles. When we got back to the car, the charger was flashing that I had charged to 81%. I removed the paddle and booted up the EV1. It indicated a range of 89 miles. Extrapolating to 100% would indicate that the car has a range of 110 miles on a complete charge. I had been warned that because the batteries are fairly new, I should not expect to see maximum mileage until the batteries have been discharged and charged several times. By the time the car has been driven about 2500 miles, the range should increase to between 120 and 130 miles.

As we left Westside Pavilion, the rain began to fall once again. By the time we made a quick stop at a Rite-aid Drug Store, where we couldn’t find what we are looking for, the rain was coming down hard. I drove down National to Bundy and then turned onto the 10 freeway. The EV1 accelerated smartly up to 65 and we easily kept up with traffic all the way to the La Cienga off-ramp. Then I encountered the only problem I had with the EV1 that day. The windows began to mist up. I turned on the heater but that only seemed to make matters worse. As soon as I wiped off the windshield it misted over again. I turned into the parking lot of another Right-aid and parked. I tried fiddling with the heater and the vents but I couldn’t seem to get the windows to de-mist. Finally, we went into Right-aid to wait for the rain to stop. I am told that the EV1 has a de-ice button that can be used to prevent misting on the windshield. If I had known about it I could have prevented the misting problem. The good news is we found the items that we had not been able to find in the previous store.

We waited until the rain slowed to drizzle before we got back into the car to return home. By the time we got back to Beverly Hills the rain had stopped, and so had the misting. We parked and went in for a cup of coffee. I found a message on our answering machine from work about a problem with the mainframe computer. The problem didn’t sound too serious but with Y2K just around the next bend I didn’t want to take any chances so I took some paper towels, wiped off the windows, and drove the EV1 to my office in Santa Monica.

Sure enough the problem was only minor and nothing to do with Y2K so I pointed the car west for a cruise to the beach. When I got to the Ocean I was treated to a spectacular sunset. I still had one more errand to run so I turned the car back up Olympic Boulevard to Ralph’s Supermarket. The parking lot was very busy but the two spaces reserved for electric vehicles were both available. I pulled into the first of these spaces conveniently located right in front of the store. I didn’t need a charge and I was only going to be in the shop a few minutes but I connected the charger anyway, just for the practice. I picked up some bread and milk then headed back to Beverly Hills, it was time to drop off the car.

When I pulled into the parking lot at Budget an attendant took the car and directed me into the main office. Although this was the first day they had been renting EVs, the attendants seemed to know how to handle the EV1. I had done 45 miles in the car and the remaining range showed 57 miles. The range seemed to be surprisingly accurate. The clerk in the office checked the mileage, totaled up my bill, and I was off on my walk back home.

Driving the EV1 had been a thoroughly enjoyable experience even though it rained most of the day. The only thing I don’t understand is why more people don’t drive them. A recent survey conducted by the NY times showed that the average daily commute is 22 miles round trip. An EV1 with a range of 100 miles would be able to handle this easily. I Certainly would have no problem with my commute of 7 miles each way.

One of the biggest factors stopping people from driving Electric vehicles is the perception that they are slow and extremely limited in range. By renting an EV1 from EV Rentals I found that this car performed as well as many with internal combustion engines, it had more than enough range for my needs and was fun to drive. With no need to visit the gas station and very little service required it would make the perfect second car for commuting and running errands around town.