I’m curious if anybody on TUG has actually rented an electric car and stayed at the Westin Kaanapali recently? For our stay in August I can get a weekly rental for $264 (Bolt or similar). About $120 cheaper than the cheapest ICE car.
I’ve owned a couple of Teslas and am no stranger to the challenges of driving an electric car, and we aren’t planning any long trips like the road to Hana. Just a couple of drives to Wailea and maybe the upcountry. I’m thinking we’d be fine just charging at the resort every day. We’ve been to Maui many times so pretty flexible about our excursions.
Terrible idea or maybe ok?
I haven't but did you read my earlier post from someone who did rent an electric vehicle on Maui?
Here it is again. It was posted May 2023.
"Just did an EV rental in
Maui and it was very stressful initially. I went to 3 different charge locations on the first full day of vacation and they were all failures - 2 were broken and one was in a hotel lot that charged exorbitant fees for non-guests.
The next day I tried again to find charging, and after 30 minutes on the phone with support I finally got the Aquatic Center fast charger working. The support person had to reset the machine 3 times! Then an aggressive local pulled up in her Nissan leaf and sort of demanded that she be given the charger. Something about she was late for work, only needed it for 10minutes, tourists taking the chargers, etc.
Next we tried a level2 charger in a random shopping center parking lot and again spent 20min on the phone with support because the requisite phone app was unable to complete my new account verification (huge eyeroll at some of the low effort EV apps). This finally worked but I only charged maybe 10% in an hour.
The next day we miraculously we found a fast charger that worked in Piilani shopping center. No broken parts, no aggressive locals, no calls to support for system reboots. I honestly felt like a weight was lifted off my shoulders as we charged up to ~80% in under an hour.
The next day we tried Maui Brew co., hearing good things about their chargers. I shouldn’t have been surprised that all 4 were broken, with 2 of them apparently down for multiple years.
The short of it is the anxiety and inconvenience was absolutely not worth it. I had heard maui has committed to EV support in the last few years but boy is it still struggling."
