I'm now in the privileged position of having rented EVs from Hertz on both sides of the Atlantic: two Polestar 2 from LHR and one Tesla Model 3 at BOS. Before these rentals, I'd only driven one pure EV, a Renault Zoe provided by a local car share service here in Sweden (but I do consider myself quite well-informed about cars).

In the UK, I rented for myself based on cost, and Hertz had EVs for a lower daily rate than ICE cars. In the USA, I was required to rent an EV by my employer for business travel. (No trouble with a total of seven flights to get to Boston and back, but it had to be an EV when I got there ).

The Tesla experience was much anticipated but ultimately disappointing. While their fans call it minimalist, to me the car felt very "bare" inside and not so luxurious. It also stank of stale and badly disguised cigarette smoke, which is something I'm going to be more sensitive to when I pick up any rental in the future. As someone unfamiliar with any car I rent, the whole touchscreen thing is a nightmare. Driving through Boston in rain at night, very tired from 15hrs of travel is the worst possible moment to try and find basic controls that really should be provided with tactile buttons.

But charging was hands-down the best part of the US Tesla experience, and now I understand better why Tesla have a huge market lead in the USA because it seemed like the charging options available with a Polestar in the US would be much worse.


Tesla Model 3 @ BOS

The Polestars, however, have really impressed me. I like the look - of course it's less slippery than the Tesla but I've never chosen a car purely on aerodynamics, and the Polestar has a fantastic strong, muscular but compact look. It still turns heads. The interior is snug but sporty, and the Google Auto interface is better for me than the Tesla's OS. Enough of the vital controls are still provided with physical buttons, which makes it dramatically easier/safer to get in a car at the end of a long journey (usually at night) and then drive off. Too many things in the Tesla required me to take my eyes of the road... Musk might be dreaming of a fully autonomous car, but that's clearly decades away and until then the experience of driving a Tesla is not for me.

Both Teslas and Polestars are available in the UK, and the latter come with a Shell Recharge fob, which includes ± 20,000 public chargers across various networks. My impression is that the UK has a much denser and better quality range of chargers than the USA, partly because it's a smaller and more densely populated country. I had no difficulty getting the fob to work at fast chargers located at petrol stations, the fastest charge received was 120kW from a "150kW" charger. The only downside is the cost: £0.85/kWh, which is basically the cost of premium unleaded fuel for an ICE car. Charging at home in the UK isn't a terrible idea, since 220V mains electricity makes a small overnight top-up charge from a standard domestic socket much more useful. Since I can park off-street at my usual destinations in the UK, this has been very practical.


Polestar 2 at UK charger

Conclusions? If I rent from Hertz in the USA, I'll take a Tesla because the Supercharger network is better there. But in Europe I'll stick with Polestar, because it's simply a better car for me.