I am renting an electric car in Philadelphia.  I flew east to see family, and this electric car rental is an adventure for me.  Charging my car is usually something I do in my own garage.  Whenever we get home, we plug in and we have a full charge in the morning.  It’s less challenging than remembering to recharge my cell phone.

With this rental car, I have to charge at public charging stations.  I didn’t know how that would work out.

For me, the adventure started on the Hertz website. Hertz has been in the news recently for a program they tried and stopped. For the program, Hertz bought a bunch of electric vehicles and rented them out to Uber drivers. Uber drivers drive a lot of miles each day. The wear and tear on the cars was more than Hertz expected and they stopped the program.

That was a hassle for Hertz. For me, it was a sign that Hertz now has a bunch of electric vehicles to rent out.

They do, and some of their electric vehicles — their Chevy Bolt EUVs — are the least expensive cars to rent in Philadelphia this week. Chevy Bolts are inexpensive to buy new, so I bet Bolts will remain inexpensive to rent for a while.

When you rent a gasoline car, you are supposed to return it with a full tank. To make sure I can do that, whenever I rent, I take some time online to find the gas station near the airport where I will fill up just before returning the car. It’s the same with an electric car: I got online and found the charging station I would charge at on my way back to the airport.

Electric vehicle charging stations are getting quite common. From where I am visiting my family, online maps show that there are three gas stations within two miles, and two electric-vehicle charging stations within the same two miles. Just to make sure that everything was OK, I decided to start my trip by checking out the charging station I was going to use and making sure I could charge the car.

When I got the car at the airport, it had 225 miles on its battery. I’m only going to drive 100 miles on this trip, so I didn’t actually have to charge the car. I could have just driven it and returned it and paid $35 to have Hertz deal with the charging. But that’s no fun, so I stuck with the plan of charging before I returned the car.

I have never driven a Chevy Bolt before. If you end up in one, you should be aware that there is something quirky about them: Their shift for the automatic transmission is a collection of tabs that you pull up. You pull up the “D” tab to get into drive. You pull up the “R” tab for reverse. Pulling up “P” puts you into park. A three-point turn is crazy: pull up, drive, pull up, reverse, pull up, drive again, etc.

The Bolt engineers seem to have loved tabs. You control the speed of the cruise control with another tab on the wheel, and you turn on and adjust the heat with two tabs on the dashboard.

I arrived in Philly after sundown. Figuring the tabs out in the dark was really crazy. The cruise control and temperature tabs are not in any way lit up. So you kind of feel around until you feel a nub sticking up or out, and you push it different ways to see what happens.

Other than that, the car is like lots of other SUVs. For me, SUVs are weird, because you’re so high up. Compared to my usual car, I was about a foot higher, maybe more. It felt like driving down the highway on a lifeguard’s chair. I wanted to call out, “Hey, you kids! Knock it off!”

An important difference from gas cars is the Bolt’s electric engine, which provides a lot more acceleration, and provides it more quickly when you put your foot down. It’s nice when getting on a highway.

My flight arrived at 5:30 p.m. I didn’t get to the EV charging station until 7 p.m. It was 34 degrees out.  You may know that I’m all for electric vehicles, so I would love to tell you that all went well. It didn’t. Luckily there was another customer charging who kindly volunteered to coach me through the process. I plugged in my car. For getting gas, you give your credit card first and then put the pump in your car. For electricity, you attach the charger first and then swipe your credit card.

The charger couldn’t tell my car was plugged in. It wouldn’t continue the process because, as far as it could tell, there was no car there. My coach told me to lock my car, unplug, and try again. Still no charging. We did that about three times before he told me to call the charging company’s helpline, wished me well, and drove away. I called, and was told, “Our systems are down. We can’t help you right now”

For the next half hour, I alternated between trying things on my end and calling customer help and being told their systems were down.

After an hour in the 34-degree dark, I gave up. I thought it would be nice to wait until I could try again in the sunlight.

The next day, I drove to a different charging station a half mile from my hotel, plugged in the car and the charger again could not recognize my car. Oh great.  But it also had a new message. “Remove the charge cable, wait 10 seconds, and try again.” I did so, and, Ta Da! Charging!

The charging added about a mile of range for each minute of charging. Faster charging might be available at other stations. Rather than go for a walk, I sat and caught up on email on my phone. In general, at the charging station it seemed that every car had someone sitting in it. That seems to be the most common strategy, at least in January in Philly.

So how was the adventure? Is it great to charge at a station? Not necessarily. Charging works, but not always at the first station you try.