A brother and sister said they had to stop six times in one day to charge a Tesla they rented for a road trip because the frigid temperature caused the vehicle battery to drain quickly.
Xaviar and Alice Steavenson were curious to see what driving a Tesla would be like, so they rented a model from Hertz in late December to drive from Orlando, Florida, to Wichita, Kansas, Business Insider reported.
The brother claimed to Insider that Hertz advertised on their website that driving a Tesla would always be cheaper than using a gas-powered vehicle. However, as they traveled in the electric-powered vehicle, they quickly discovered this was not the case.
The historic winter weather from late December was causing the vehicle’s battery to drain so fast that they spent more time at charging stations than they spent on the road and were spending more money as a result.
“We ended up having to stop every one to one and a half hours to charge for an hour, then an hour and a half, then two hours,” Xavier told the outlet.
“So beyond the lost time, it also got to the point it was between $25 and $30 to recharge. Just in one day, we stopped six times to charge at that cost,” he added.
When the siblings called Hertz to complain about the issues they were experiencing, the agent told them that all their calls that day were Tesla complaints.
In a statement to Insider, Hertz acknowledged that the cold weather was possibly a contributing factor to the battery draining faster than usual.
“We have not experienced a significant increase in communication from customers about the battery of their EV rentals. However, battery range varies by vehicle manufacturer and can be influenced by multiple factors including weather and driving conditions,” a Hertz spokesperson stated.
The Steavenson siblings are not the only drivers to have experienced reliability issues with the Elon Musk-designed electric vehicles due to the cold weather resulting from the winter storm that recently swept North America, as Breitbart News has documented.
Virginia radio host, Domenick Nati, was left “stranded on Christmas Eve” when his Tesla Model S would not charge at a supercharging station because of the cold weather–which was reportedly 19°F (-7°C ) when the video was recorded.
However, according to Electrek, it appears Natis’s charging issues were a malfunction issue with his specific vehicle, as Tesla has “built in a feature that enables the battery pack to condition itself for charging ahead of time if you enter a charge point in the navigation system.”
In another instance, a Canadian Tesla owner filmed a video of herself unable to open the car’s latch door because of the accumulation of ice on her vehicle.
You can follow Ethan Letkeman on Twitter at @EthanLetkeman.
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