Gas prices are higher than ever — in Spain they’re over 2 euros/liter which is around $8/gallon taking into account the exchange into US dollars. So when Carlo and I began planning our European road trip this spring we decided to rent an electric car from Europcar. We met as climate activists and loved the idea of ditching a gas guzzler for a newer EV.I’m writing this blog to share our experience, in the hope it will both be an inspiration and a offer some tips and red flags that came up for us.

Price
Let’s start with numbers.
Car rental for 1 week – 350 euros (~ $375) through Europcar. This was about 100 euros more than economy car for the same period.
Insurance
We paid with a Capital One Venture card, which then covered the car with CDW. It was unclear to us if personal liability would be covered or if Europcar’s insurance would cover this. This is worth looking into. Thankfully we didn’t get into any accidents.
Charging Expenses
Thanks to a few free chargers, we only spent 65.45 euros on charging. This translates to around $72.
Tolls and Cleaning
We’re not sure the total here but there was a 13.35 toll to get back into Madrid and we paid 9.50 to wash and vacuum the car before returning which, which I’ve never done in the US but Europcar told us to do (but said we didn’t need to charge it!)
Doing some quick math, on a car that gets 35 miles/gallon, we would have spent $275 in gas. If we had a more efficient car, say a 50 miles/gallon one, we would have spent $192.
So we saved about $100-$200 by going electric! Woohoo!
- Wenea – I was able to set up an account with a US passport number and American credit card.
- Waylet – Carlo set up with either his Italian passport or NIE and credit card.
- Juicepass – Neither of us could get a credit card to stick.
- Easycharger – Carlo was able to set up the app with his passport or NIE but then when we tried to charge we got an error and Easycharger said it was our car, but then when we tried charging at another station, the charge worked.
- Iberdrola – I couldn’t set up as an American; Carlo didn’t try.
There were a bunch of other apps we didn’t download or try to use. It’s really important to read the Electromaps profile carefully and it helps to know some basic Spanish.
Portugal has a completely different set-up for charging that is not at all tourist-friendly. If you’re a local you can get a charging card that works at all charging stations and the expenses are tied to your utility bill. Yay for locals. But you can’t get this as a tourist since you need to sign your car up and as a renter you don’t know anything about your car until you pick it up. So you’re screwed.
We learned a little bit about charging speed. Again, we started with a false assumption — that the car would come with a fast charger. The newer Renault Zoe’s come with CCS fast chargers. But this car only had a Type 2 Mennekes charger. This meant that the max we could charge at was 22 kwh. Since the car’s battery is 52 kwh, that means it took nearly 2.5 hours to fully charge the car.
Other Tips
Read up on EVs before you go. Things we knew or quickly learned:
Even if the car has a long range, like ours said 389 kwh when fully charged, we only got a little more than half that on the highway.
- Going fast drains the battery faster. Going downhills and braking regenerates the battery.
- Turning on the heat drains the battery.
- It took one driver and one passenger planning stops to make this work. It would be difficult to do solo (not impossible, just a lot more planning).
- There are some areas of Spain and Portugal that have very limited charging stations. One our final day our first charging station didn’t work, then the second one we went to initially wouldn’t work (thankfully a phone and app reboot fixed that problem). We only had one more option to try and if it didn’t work we would have been stuck. So plan charging stops with “what if this doesn’t work” in mind.
- You may need to plan a longer driving route in order to get a viable charging station. We had to stop in Badajoz for this reason, though we could have chosen a more direct route.

Despite all the challenges we were so glad we rented an electric car and got to see so many beautiful places. The charging infrastructure is getting better every year. Be prepared and enjoy your trip!