Okie dokie artichoky.
End of August, I returned to the father land to start my new life. I booked a rental car so as not be a drag with needing a ride down to Freiburg, and subsequently need a ride over to my apartment. I booked through Sixt since I forgot until it was too late for a low rate to rent a car and my usual rental company of choice is Hertz. Always had good luck and their rewards system was preferable when I lived out of a suitcase for work. I heard good things about Sixt. That was the last time. Let's get started.
I land in Frankfurt early and get to the rental counter a few minutes before I need to pickup, I'm told no cars are available and to come back 30 minutes. Confused, but also exhausted from a trans-atlantic flight and not sleeping most of the way, I chose to go and to a bakery in the airport to eat up time. I come back after half an hour and was asked, "would you like to try an electric car?" I figured it wouldn't hurt to try and assumed there's enough charging locations along my route and Freiburg is hippy dippy tree hugger land. So I get the keys for an Opel Mokka-e and am told where to pick up, which I always hate this part in FRA because the parking structure is numbered and quite spread out, but I always get turned around and spend a long time finding it. I eventually get to the place and see the car. I throw my stuff in, get my phone cable and turn the car on and I'm greeted with this:
I grown but figure at this point in electric car adoption, I should be able to find a charging point nearby easily. I leave the airport and thought it was as simple and looking for signs or something on the built in GPS. No dice in my exhausted state and that typical panic of "I can't park here or here, or here, or there, where the truck do I go to get things straightened out that has cell service?" I call
@leviathan because my cell data is acting up and only Telegram works. I share my location and ask him where to find a charging station. He guides me there because I can't load navigation on my phone thanks to a strange server setting that I never finished months ago, I didn't know that at the time. So, I get to the charging station by the airport and see it's got a contactless reader on the side and the display says to plug in and tap your card. I try this, the car recognizes the charging point being plugged in and waits for the angry pixies. I try and get the touch screen to work but it won't accept finger inputs. I tap my card, no dice. I call back
@leviathan and he remotely turns in on from an app. Great, after this I feel it's best to return the car for something more conventional to avoid more problems even farther away. I'm bummed out but hey, as a novice to electric cars, I would have guessed the rental company would give a fuel card type thing and explain the process a bit. None of that happened. So I get about 50% into the battery an try to go turn off charging. No can do, I have to yet again call
@leviathan back (at this point I feel guilty bugging him early in the morning) who then remotely turns it off. I drive back in frustration. Get the return attendants attention and explain the situation. He directs me to the rental counter before closing out the ticket to avoid any issues that might arise, fine. So I get to the counter, explain the situation and I get a very defeated-annoyed look and an apology. I'm quickly handed another set of keys for a Citroen C4 diesel automatic.
So far this one is better and I'm a bit weirded out that the infotainment is identical in design, and dash layout to the Opel (Stellantis give zero fucks) and I leave the rental garage without a problem. This had a full tank of fuel too! Suddenly, 100kms away from FRA I see this:
For those that don't read German, it's telling me the car is low on AdBlue diesel fluid and if you try and start the car after 80kms, the car will not start. WONDERFUL.
An Dave for scale of the C4.
So I'm told by multiple FG folks in the telegrams to just leave the car running until you get adblue yourself or what I ended up doing is going to the local Sixt in freiburg.
@thomas went with and pitched a bitch to them to which they did not charge for the adblue, and gave a small discount while opening an internal case with Sixt corporate. Fun, I get all settled in and go back up to Frankfurt to pick up my dog, Hank after a couple days and some flight delays on Lufthansa's side, I get Hank and meet
@leviathan again so that I can return the rental car and meet up with
@thomas for the return trek to Freiburg area and get the Opel for the new transport.
But wait, theres more!
I get the return receipt from Sixt and see that they charged me seemingly way more than was reasonable for returning the citroen with not a full tank. My fault yes but it was something around the tune of 250 euromonies. That seems astronomical and I feel negated the discount that was applied. I complain and am told there's nothing they can do. Uff, ok.
Sorry, no photo of the Mokka-e, heres a google image of one:
So yeah, that was my experience with Sixt Rental of Frankfurt airport.