The first was a Kia from SF to Sacramento, and back a few days later, thinking this was California and it should be fine. I tried to use twelve stations and seven were broken/out of order for various reasons. I was so shocked about the sad state of affairs on this, I logged/blogged it. The problems were pretty much like the article:
1) Generally out of order message or off for some unknown reason. 2) One had a blatant electrical problem where it charged and then stopped as soon as I walked away. Thinking I was charged, but wasn't. 3) Appear to work, but the payment system was out of order. 4) One was on, but the UI was completely unresponsive. Worker at the business said, "It hasn't been working for almost a year now." 5) App didn't work. Generally, all apps in this space suck bad. Whether it's finding stations or the actual vendor, they are all slow and clunky at best with terrible UIs.
The second was a trip from Boston to central Connecticut and back last month. There was a shortage of cars in the city. Logan was out of cars and I had to go to a neighborhood rental on the outskirts. On top of the shortage was Hertz's botched EV initiative, so there was only one Chevy Volt available at 33% charge.
This experience was even worse. Again, over half the stations I encountered were broken for the same reasons. On top of that, there was essentially just one supercharging station on I-95 from Central CT to Boston, which I missed. It took me three hours because I had to preserve enough charge to make it back to Logan and take my flight out. By the time I got to the Boston Tunnel, the car went into "limited propulsion mode." I fully expected to die in the tunnel on a Friday evening and miss my flight.
The whole thing reminded me that charging stations are complex machines with a myriad of things that can go wrong. On top of that, all these companies are startups who concentrate on growth and marketshare instead of creating an actual reliable usable product. 99% of people can't name one of these companies, and being the best, most trusted charging company is not the goal.
I'm not renting an electric vehicle for a long time. The best use case would be within a city, and unless I'm purposely driving all over a city, I might as well just take public transportation or uber.