I recently rented a car from Hertz. I knew I wouldn’t need more than a single full tank of gas for my trip (and if I underestimated I could just stop at a gas station). I wasn’t sure what might happen with the (cheaper!) Tesla. So I opted for the ICE vehicle.
(Where could I charge it? The hotel? Do I need to find a super charger? Etc. Just more headache than I wanted on a vacation).
This seems to be an extension of the biggest problem with EVs: The edge cases.
Even if the edge case is only 1% of your travel, do you want to buy a car that can't do it?
It can be anything. You're living in Minnesota and your dad in Chicago had a heart attack. An ICE can get you there in about ~7 hours. An EV... you're going to need 1 supercharging station at a minimum, probably 2. Or, you just decide you want a road trip from Minnesota to Texas. You pull over to the nearest supercharger in Arkansas to discover you're forced to hang out in a town where you really don't feel safe for an hour or two. That's great.
EVs make far more sense in Europe than America, with the current range they can offer, combined with general proximity of relatives. I'm not saying they don't have a future in America, I just won't be surprised if we are the slowest adopters.
Sounds like a transformation issue. In the beginning (I assume) before widespread filling station networks getting gas was an issue. Now it's not. That's not a quality of gas vs EV, it's a quality of ubiquity.
True, and this is why sales for EVs basically automatically increase as infrastructure is built out in a particular area. Once consumers understand the capability and what is their, their buying patterns are fairly rational.
In my experience, most people outside of the EV bubble underestimate how much infrastructure is already there.
At least for Tesla. For CCS cars in the US, it isn't so great.
It is a transformation issue. However EV's are being promoted as a viable alternative to ICE vehicles generally speaking. The reality is that this is far from true.
For many people/families, an EV could be viable. For an even larger percentage of people or families with 2+ vehicles an EV could be very viable. Still, in most scenarios the ICE vehicle is the safe choice, with the pros and cons well understood.
IMO some of the EV pushback is from people (like me) who have nothing against EVs, but feel they are still a solid decade away from being a no-brainer choice, with much of the holdup being infrastructure related.
I'm all for saving the planet (note: I don't believe that EVs overall are as net environmentally positive as they are portrayed), but I'm not going to do it while stranded at a charging station.
That still wouldn't be true for a used Tesla. Most used sales are Model 3 or Y. Both charge really well. Even older used Model S or X are more like 30 minutes than 2 hours, especially if the location is bad and you'd rather get to the next one.
You might be if you need to return the car at 100%, the last few percent of battery takes forever to charge due to chemistry. I don't know what Hertz requires, but returning it at 100% is stupid. It's hard on the battery and takes forever. Charging to 80% takes a lot less time and is easier on the battery, so hopefully that's all that Hertz requires.
Edit: a different commenter says you need to return at 75%. That's reasonable.
Yeah, and tbh, I'm hearing that their return fees are actually pretty reasonable. If you can return at less than 75% for only $25, just do that. Supercharging isn't particularly cheap anyway, so you can't save that much money with a long wait.
I consider my probable edge case, driving to the capital for example airport there, 160km+something nearly all of it motorway so slightly worse range if I drive at legal limit. So I would like to get there in one go as being 2 hours early anyway is big time sink. And then when I'm coming back I just want to get to home not stop in middle to charge...
Or I might want to do same with some client or relative there.
Train station is very near, but not that near... And it still means connection to get to actual airport...
And new EVs are pretty expensive, compared already paid car...
> And new EVs are pretty expensive, compared already paid car...
My family has neighbors that just buy and repair older cars and sell them pretty low cost. The quality of their work has been considered very good by third-party mechanics. My parents recently bought a 2005 Pontiac with a V6 from them for about ~$4K with 135K miles. One accident (deer sideswipe), only body.
Do you know what a 2013 Tesla Model S with 135K miles goes for around here? About $17K. If we're lucky, we could maybe negotiate it to $15K-$14K; but that's still almost four times the cost. And sure, the Tesla is eight years newer, but I make a similar comparison because it was very much a 1st-gen product... My money is on the Pontiac lasting longer.
As an European, no they don't. Europeans often use their cars for long travels cross borders for work, vacation or visiting relatives where public trasnportation doesn't serve them, and the lack or underdevelopment of charging infrastructre makes them viable only for people with their own house, garage and charger at home or for businesses which do short trips around town like deliveries or realtors. Everyone else has ICEs.
Literally made the same decision last night for a rental. I had no idea how to charge an electric car and did not want to have to deal with figuring it out on top of everything else.
They charge you $25 if you return it not fully charged, which is bananas, because why couldn’t they just plug it in while they’re cleaning the car? It’s not like gas where they have to drive the car to a gas station.
Is that a $25 recharging fee, or $25 for the electricity? A full tank of electrons is around $25 equivalent in the UK. (I realise it's cheaper in most of the US.)
You're likely going to spend more than $25 to put gasoline in your rental before returning it, and $25 is the approximate cost for a supercharger, so that charge seems very reasonable. You could have just taken the electric car and returned it empty.
The last time I rented a car (2 months ago?) if you returned it less than whatever you receive it at, you get charged for an entire tank of gas with the $3-4/gal markup. So receive it full and return it at 15/16ths and you're looking at a $80-100 bill easily on the larger vehicles.
It's likely similar where if you receive it at 100% and return it at 98% you're getting charged the full $25. It's just another revenue source for the company.
The refill charge is nuts anyway even for ICE vehicles. Put an 1 m³ construction site tank+pump for diesel and one for regular gas on the site and that's it - these things cost about 1000€ [1].
From the start, refill charges have been an utter scam.
That may well be the case. But I’m not driving far, it’s just while my car is in shop. Gas is $2.90 here, and the rentals was a Chevy bolt — so not a Supercharger right, some non Tesla connector I have to track down?
I think it was $25 flat if not as same level, so I can fill it to the level I received it and hope they kept accurate records (ie knew it wasn’t full).
I think if I had ample time during all this an EV would be interesting but I just don’t want to make a mistake and make this repair even more expensive.
Their webpage suggests you have to return it at the same level of charge as you got it at, or pay a $25/$35 (depending on membership level) convenience fee to return it at any charge level.
I recall a similar rule the last time I hired a gas car, but feels like for EVs it could use a tweak or two.
I've never driven an EV before. I don't want to learn about them when I am renting a vehicle...my relationship with rental cars is pure utility: get me from A to B
By the same token I would never rent a diesel or a manual transmission vehicle...I don't want to learn about them via the rental experience
I haven't driven a gasoline car in over 5 years, so similarly I don't want to have to try to remember how to work one, and I'd rather just rent an EV for familiarity.
As more and more people have electric cars, it makes sense for the rental companies to transition to them, so that renting doesn't feel like you're being offered a horse and buggy.
FYI, you appear to be shadowbanned, I had to vouch your comment to make it not dead. And most of your comments are dead when I look at your profile. I couldn’t find ground zero for what caused your comments to become shadowbanned, but you can reach out to dang to find out why and ask if he’ll consider unbanning you.
I had to learn how to use an automatic when I rented a vehicle in Texas. That was the first time I’d ever driven on the wrong side of the road which was also interesting.
I recently rented a tesla from hertz - I had made sure my hotel had charging in it's parking lot. I arrive at the hotel to find that the tesla was missing it's j1772 adapter, which is what the hotel charger required. I had to hunt down a supercharger and hang out there for an hour. Pretty lame. When I returned the car I complained and was told that there is no guarantee from hertz that the adapter will be included. Without the guarantee renting an a tesla is a scary prospect - I probably won't do it again.
this from someone who has a model y at home as my daily driver and I love it.
Recently rented an EV (Nissan Leaf) from Enterprise - they were happy to upgrade me from my economy, but one catch - it was at 20% battery. Luckily the hotel we were staying at did have a charger (called ahead) free.
Amusingly the rental place told me as we were returning the car that it had been sold in the interim.
It's amazing to me how little effort these companies take to resolve the charging questions - there wasn't even a charger at the rental place.
Some have Tesla superchargers, but not necessarily Chademo for a leaf. It would take hours to charge on their L2 and they probably have fewer L2s than EVs.
It is pretty easy for them to fall behind on charging vehicles during peak periods, especially something like the Leaf.
love the time I rented from Avis and got assigned a Kia Niro EV with, not shitting you, EXACTLY ONE PERCENT capacity left! I wasn't sure if I could get it off the lot! I exchanged it for a Bolt that fared better. Love that car.
We recently went on vacation to Germany and rented a Polestar 2 from Hertz.
The car was good but charging was infuriating. Had to download a new app for each charging spot and they didn't include a home-charging cable so we couldn't charge at family home we were visiting. Overall wouldn't recommend which is a huge shame. At home we drive a Tesla M3, charge at home from solar and supercharger network is flawless when doing road trips.
Very puzzling that Hertz + Tesla hasn't streamlined the charging process for rental vehicles.
EV owner 6 years here, rented an EV in Portugal and was a disaster.
Nearly stranded at a rest stop, spent 2 hours trying to charge, apps wouldn't accept payment, apps wouldn't activate Ionity charger, spent an hour on long distance cellphone call to Ionity call center where they manually activated a charge for me after great difficulty.
The other thing for people who think they can plan around it is that remember with typical rental agency you have no idea exactly which EV model they are going to give you at check in.
So could be the one with 220/240/280mi highway range. And then they might hand it to you with the battery at 80% full.
Your plans to safely get to your destination on 100% of the 280mi battery may be quickly spoiled by getting a a 240mi EV at 80% full and being -90mi short.
I really enjoy Tesla vehicles, but I had a bad experience renting one from Budget. The cars require a Tesla account with a credit card attached in order to use Super Charging stations, which is managed by Budget and then they add the charging costs on to your bill at the end. Half way through the rental period the card they had attached expired, and I was locked out of using Super Chargers. I spent a long time on the phone with customer support, and they said because the cars are provisioned by a third-party company, there was nothing they could do other than offer me a replacement vehicle. It wasn't convenient to swap the vehicles because I wasn't close to Budget, so I had to use much slower chargers at a mall parking lot to get around. I complained to Budget when I returned the vehicle and they discounted me 50% of the bill for the inconvenience.
> The cars require a Tesla account with a credit card attached in order to use Super Charging stations, which is managed by Budget and then they add the charging costs on to your bill at the end.
Hertz did it correctly, they use their account and just charge your credit card after your rental period is over. Just like they do with parking tickets or tolls.
Slightly OT, but used Teslas are dirt cheap these days (relatively) thanks to all the fleet sales. You can find a ~3 year old Model S off lease now for under $30k.
I’m surprised to hear that people have had some anxiety about charging when renting Teslas from Hertz. My experience was quite the opposite. Just use any supercharger and it bills to Hertz who bills to you. The hotel valet had EV charging and charged the battery up all the way every night. The only confusing part was figuring out what charge level I needed to return the car at (I think it was 75%).
Otherwise it was great and I would love to rent a Tesla from Hertz again.
Yeah, it really varies. If you have a hotel with good ev charging, an EV can be a convenience. I've had the experience of renting a gas vehicle, and then realizing my hotel had EV charging and would have actually been more convenient. :)
I second this. I've rented Teslas from Hertz about 5 or 6 times now for long trips across California and the experience was flawless. I couldn't believe how well everything just worked. The integration resulted in a seemingly Tesla-controlled experience where there was little friction reminding you the car belonged to Hertz.
Over Christmas I flew to another city and rented a car for week. Hertz had great deals on EVs but not so great for ICE so I specifically avoided hertz and went with Avis instead.
I like EVs and have a charger at home for my own car, but maybe due to that I also understand the difficulty of finding a reliable charging situation in a new place. On top of that I was visiting and parking at my parents house, and they don’t have a charger installed.
> On top of that I was visiting and parking at my parents house, and they don’t have a charger installed.
Yeah, and hertz doesn't tend to give you a mobile charger. I can't blame them, they are a separate cost and they tend to "get lost" with rentals, but it makes the EV option a lot less practical.
I’ve owned several EVs (though not at this particular moment) and generally think they’re terrific. But I agree with several other posters - the typical scenario where I’m renting a car is exactly the one where EVs’ current shortcomings are most prominent.
Plus I can really only think of two types of vehicles that I’d ever want to rent - either an econobox to get me from point A to B to C in an area underserved by Uber/Lyft where I could not care less about what I’m temporarily driving, or a convertible. I guess maybe also an SUV - but in any event, those three categories are (as far as I am aware) just not yet well matched by any EVs on the market.
I imagine if you're operating on the scale of Hertz it's cheaper to self-insure. Anecdotally it seems like Teslas have higher damage in a collision (eg more expensive and fragile electronics in the bumper) and are more expensive to repair. The last body shop I went to even had a separate hourly rate for Teslas
Isn't that just pure gouging? If a Tesla is harder to repair it'll take longer and be more expensive for that reason, no increased hourly rate necessary.
Or... you need a person who is specialized in working on EVs. EVs are still not the majority, so anything different from the norm will need different training, and thusly higher hourly rates to work on them.
When Ford started making putting aluminum bodies on their F150s, they had special training programs for doing bodywork and repair on them. I guarantee that cost was passed down to you.
It may not even take longer to do the repairs, it might take the same amount of time once you learn how to work on them. That said, I guarantee the shops and insurance companies are recuperating the costs of that extra training.
When Ford makes a new car they write a large book on how to repair every body panel on it. For hidden parts how much damage was acceptable before you had to do something. All dealer body shops are required to have book before the dealer can on sell the fist car (along with books and training on other repairs). I believe most body shops don't buy this book, but at the time I worked for a company that made tools and those books were used to decide what special tools we needed to design/make next. I left before Tesla was a thing (2 years before the roadster), so I don't know what Tesla does, but I suspect this is one of those details they didn't realize was important.
This is pretty common among more expensive brands from what I understand. When I had work done on my Tesla it was the first time I had encounter it, but the couple of repair shops I was referred to by Tesla also had individual hourly rates for BMW, Porsche, Land Rover, etc.
A lot of that is those vehicles require special tools that are expensive. Nearly every car needs a 10mm socket to work on it, so every mechanic has a few and in turn they are cheap. Only VW and BMW need a triple square socket, so they are not common and more expensive, and you only work on a few cars that need that so you have to charge more. Mercedes requires all mechanics have a 4 wheel dynamiter and some repairs require the car be on that for calibration making those repairs more expensive. (Note that I haven't been in the business for 15 years so the above is probably out of date)
Loss of use is is a huge cost for a rental company.
If you rent a vehicle out for $75 per day, and it needs a $1000 repair, and a repair takes 2 weeks, the loss of use is more expensive than the entire repair!
Repair times have been getting longer across the entire automotive industry, as parts availability hasn't been great, but Tesla vehicles are notorious for long wait times for parts availability and availability of the specialized labor sometimes required.
Insurance rates will be dictated by the other 3 factors you listed. Insurance doesn't care about physical damage, only what it costs to repair said damage. Whether the car is cut in half, or only a sensor that is broken, only the cost matters to them. So you're left with frequency of damage, and cost of damage per incident.
Actually that's a good point. People that aren't used to electric cars maybe can't be trusted with the absurd acceleration.
Even my parents Leaf leaps like a fish when you start it, I can only imagine how many people get into fender benders when driving a Tesla for the first time without really having a chance to get used to the feel.
So Hertz is continuing their narrative to blame EV's for their own executive mistakes.
If you dig deeper you'll find that:
- most of their EV's were rented to Uber drivers.
- All Uber rentals, gas and EV, have higher milage, higher maintenance costs and lower resale values.
In other words this state of affairs was highly predictable. That it wasn't taken into account is the fault of Hertz executives. They're trying to shift blame off of their own shoulders.
From what I read, they were mostly only able to rent them to existing ev owners, after which, they rented them to Uber drivers to try to at least get some revenue from them.
But hey, they hired Tom Brady (who also got paid to shill for FTX) to do their EV-focused commercials. Surely it's a good business when their commercials don't, you know, extol the benefits of their company and products, but instead hire a celebrity in a pretty low-brow disgusting way to try to sell a product: by pandering to the people with "hey, this famous person is in our commercial and for money he says our product is cool, so that means you should like it too, if you want to be cool like Tom Brady". Surely their fundamentals are rock solid.
Yes, that sounds likely to be good business. The purpose of a commercial isn't to provide a thorough and unbiased technical brief, it's to cause more people to buy a product.
Car rental companies regularly rotate through their fleet. I suspect these are cars that are supposed to go up for resell anyway and they are just not replacing them with equivalents.
EVs are already not a good fit for rental cars - I don't think travelers on vacation want to figure deal with a charging plan. It's also really hard to sell even a luxury sedan as an upgrade when everyone wants an SUV. I'd be curious to know if something like the Rivian would fare better as a premium option.
> It's also really hard to sell even a luxury sedan as an upgrade when everyone wants an SUV
I don't want an SUV. I get angry at rental companies when they try to give me one.
I increasingly don't recognize this country I grew up in with the car culture. In the early 90s nobody wanted SUVs either. The truck and SUV craze was apparently sparked by an emissions regulatory loophole, where larger vehicles were excempt because they were meant for work.
Unfortunately people who like small cars are a minority. Most people want whatever is the current fad, and small cars are out. I do not know how to change this. (come to think of it, even though I prefer small cars I drive a large truck because once in a while I need a truck and I don't drive enough to justify two vehicles)
> Most people want whatever is the current fad, and small cars are out. I do not know how to change this.
The only thing I can think of is to emphasize their superior fuel economy and get people to appreciate the superior handling.
Make people drive an obstacle avoidance course in both a small car and a huge SUV. Maybe some people would accept that the safer car doesn't have to be the bigger car, but the one with enough agility and stability to avoid it completely.
I would guess that for the most part safety is more of a function of attention and driving safely and predictably rather than relying on the superior handling to get out of scrapes.
Many times people that prize handling of the car end up pushing the limits and driving dangerously aggressively accelerating and braking, following closely, aggressively lane swerving.
Yep. When I get upgraded to an SUV I exchange it for something along the lines of the car I had originally reserved. I've asked them to put something in my file saying "don't upgrade to SUV" but it appears beyond the capabilities of their system.
My own car is a compact, and I would rent a SUV or other large vehicle for that exact reason. Sometimes, rarely, I need a big car, I don't have one, that's what rental is for.
When travelling, I tend to prefer public transport, except when in a group or when I need to carry a lot of stuff, and again, for that I need a big car.
And not an EV. EVs are ideal when you can charge at home. When renting a car, it usually means I don't have a "home", and planning for charging points in a place you are not familiar with is a hassle. And EVs are not ideal for road trips where each leg typically exceeds the maximum range.
So yeah, I understand why rentals would be dominated by large gas cars and trucks.
A nice "feature" for rental EVs would be hot-swap - driving around and your rented Model 3 is a bit low on charge? Bring it by any of the rental locations and be off in another one fully charged in minutes.
SUVs are popular because of the death of car culture.
Car enthusiasts still like small sedans with handling and looks and etc. But the average person just wants the biggest, most comfortable car they can get for the money.
I had a millenial co-worker ask me why selling a 2-door car was even legal these days.
> But the average person just wants the biggest, most comfortable car
They want the biggest, because it makes them feel comfortable, despite objective data and car parts that SUVs are more dangerous and less comfortable.
One theory is that millennials have been taught that higher and bigger is better because of age related vision deterioration by their parents and it has now caught on.
Anecdotally, I asked this line of questioning recently of family that had the choice of a 20 hour road trip - 2 people in (solid rear axle) Cadillac Escalade versus a similar year Mercedes Mid Size SUV. The reasoning given was comfort. But objectively, the mid size has independent rear suspension, more responsive steering, quicker pickup, lower weight (and better center of gravity), lower miles, fewer maintenance issues, fits in more parking spaces, is not as tall to get into comfortably, better fuel economy, and more comfortable seating. The conclusion that the extra large SUV is more comfortable perplexes me.
1) bad drivers like being seated high and this helps when overloaded with information; and bad as beginner, constantly bad or just age-related
2) cargo cult culture in literally everything these days, including what some less-than-bright footballer buys for a car (or some famous dev or company uses for building their products), so these 'suv' are seen as luxury, and not garbage dump of companies making real cars (TM) like BMW.
Severe rolling risk, slow reaction times and generally just a bad drive thanx to basic physics, high consumption and overall maintenance... not that great a choice for many
Well, the simple truth is that the best, most versatile car on the road is a minivan. But no one wants to admit that so everyone pretends they like SUVs despite being worse in almost every way for daily driving.
Really? I dislike the feel of driving an SUV, but I find minivans to be lumbering beasts. Granted, I haven't had the displeasure of driving a minivan in many years (whereas I have had the displeasure of driving SUVs recently), so maybe they've gotten better.
They are not particularly fast, but for just ride comfort they are superb. Both the Sienna and the Pacifica have very comfortable seats and very good noise dampening.
But because their profile is much more aerodynamic and they are lower to the ground, they just drive very smoothly. Especially when covering long distances on the freeway.
It's also amazing to be able to open every door and control every feature with a physical button on the dash and be able to haul full sheets of plywood in the back.
My personal cars have all been sporty little manual hatchbacks, but if I just wanted all out comfort it's really hard to beat a well equipped mini-van.
It's the long wheelbase and bigger wheels that have more impact on comfort than IRS vs. solid rear axles. A big vehicle just doesn't jiggle around as much which is surprisingly tiring when you are travelling.
I dunno if I agree with that; I drive back and forth from the bay area to Tahoe area several times a year, mostly in winter months. In the past, I would rent a 4WD SUV for the trip (variety of makes and models). A year and a half ago I bought a Mercedes sedan (with 4WD) and that drive is way more comfortable and stable now.
Maybe I just had bad luck with the rentals I chose?
I guess when I say car culture, I don't mean enthusiasts and tinkerers. I mean that general American culture is car-dependent. People think their car is very important and part of their identity. I see on social media all the time people say that lack of a car is a sign of struggle, that you haven't made it, that you can't be trusted. That sort of thing.
I don't necessarily love it as a characterization because Americans also have a love of huge refrigerators and couches and washing machines but no one says we have a refrigerator culture (even though it may be true). When you think about the number of boring base-level Corollas that get sold, it's hard to think of it as an identity thing.
I think a fairer description would be that American culture values space, personal property ownership, and independence. Car ownership is a means to an end.
I think the larger size of appliances and furniture in the US isn't because of any particular love of larger sizes for those things, just that suburbia tends to give people more room. I'm not sure of the direction of causation: do Americans value space and personal property ownership and independence on first principles, and then spread out in large house on large plots of land because of that? Or did those values grow out of the incidental ability to have lots of house space?
Our fridge/freezer is on the larger size, but is also usually pretty full, so we definitely get good use out of it. Our washing machine is reasonably large, but, frankly, not large enough, as I can't fit our king-size bed's comforter in it, and have to use a laundry service to get it washed. Our couch is a pretty good size, but my partner and I want to be able to stretch out on it (at opposite ends) simultaneously, which doesn't seem like a wild or unreasonable thing to want to do.
And I prefer a smaller car! I refuse to purchase an SUV, despite my need to drive in snowy mountains several months out of the year (I of course found a sedan with a 4WD option). I hate driving SUVs; they feel bulky, unwieldy, and unstable to me. Before I bought my current car, I would rent a 4WD SUV when I needed to drive in the snow, and I hated the experience every time.
Car ownership is not really independence. Eg. It isn't very independent to sit in traffic with a crowd of other car owners, waiting for them to move so you can also move. Then you are also dependent on fueling stations and other infrastructure.
The term "SUV" has changed tremendously, when I was younger an SUV was a Suburban or maybe the smaller Bronco - barely would apply to a Jeep.
Modern "compact" or "crossover" SUVs are just hatchback cars. Some are quite small, they're just named differently to make people buy them.
The real loser has been minivans, station wagons, and actual hatchbacks. There's no reason to buy a sedan when on the same footprint you can get an SUV with more room.
> There's no reason to buy a sedan when on the same footprint you can get an SUV with more room.
This is a popular opinion, but there are still advantages to a sedan. e.g. driving dynamics, weight and aerodynamics and therefore fuel economy, price, etc.
It's just that many buyers don't prioritize these things.
It baffles me... When I'm driving in an unfamiliar place, the last thing I want to be driving is a lumbering beast that is longer and wider than what I'm used to.
The emission loophole is part of the reason but the main one, I believe, is that the US vehicle manufacturers have used a boat load of advertising and other methods to convince people, over the last 60 years, to buy trucks and then SUVs due to the 25% "Chicken Tax"[1] that was imposed on truck imports starting in 1964. Trucks were some much more profitable because they did not need to compete with imports. Ford recently has stopped selling all cars but the Mustang in the US.
This tax remains in effect to this day with that trade war a distant memory.
The last time I needed to rent a car, I seriously considered renting an EV. I find them more pleasant to drive, my usage could have been accomplished on a single charge, and Hertz doesn’t penalize you for returning a discharged EV like they do for returning a gas car on an empty tank, so it would have saved me having to find a gas station near the airport on my way out of town.
But they wanted more than twice as much for a model 3 than any other compact sedan, so I ended up with a gas powered Kia instead.
My favorite rental car in recent history was a Fiat 500 we nicknamed "The Little Brown Toot" [1]. A 2 door with 4 seats, but we had to fold down the back seats in order to fit our suitcases. For my wife and I having a long weekend in upstate Mass for a friends wedding? It was perfect, we didn't need anything else. And it was a hell of a lot less stressful to get around and find parking in Boston at the end of our trip.
I don't think I've ever rented an SUV in my adult life. Other than the one time I needed a vehicle to go to the snow (and in that case, we ended up with an AWD equipped minivan anyways).
I would much prefer a Tesla Model 3 to most SUV options. Granted I have an EV so it doesn't scare me, but that's not everyone. A rental fleet should be diverse. Just because I don't want an SUV doesn't mean others don't. Different people, different wants and needs.
> EVs are already not a good fit for rental cars - I don't think travelers on vacation want to figure deal with a charging plan.
Agreed. Travel already involves enough work of having to figure out how to operate in a different location. Gas stations are everywhere and the time to fill is predictable across all ICE cars; I don't want to have to plan EV charging into my trip as well.
I tried renting an EV from Hertz a couple months ago. I reserved a Model Y. They waited until the morning of to call me and tell me they didn't have one for me. Said they might have a model 3 (but not the model Y I reserved) 3-4 hours passed my reserved pickup time. I waited an hour or two, then found a model y on Turo that got the job done. Then Hertz tried to charged me for cancelling... they did fix that but I was furious when I saw it going pending on my card.
I'm going to avoid Hertz from here on out as much as possible. Especially if I want an EV. Perhaps the problem isn't Tesla, but Hertz. At least based on my experience, that's what it was.
Rental agencies don't actually "rent specific cars" - they sell rentals at specific price points and fill those obligations with whatever they have laying around at the time.
Which is why it's almost best to just rent the lowest, cheapest thing, because they'll give you whatever they have.
This stops working when you need a particular aspect of whatever it is, especially if it's an aspect nobody really "cares" about - like whether it is EV.
Most people care it has enough seats, and enough luggage room. So a larger SUV works as well as a car for them.
My wife and I went to Kauai and specifically rented a Jeep so we could take it on some moderate trails to see waterfalls and whatnot. We were somewhat dismayed when we arrived and found we had been "upgraded" to a BMW X5 and there were no actual off-road vehicles available from the company. It was a nice car, for sure, but not what we had wanted.
I've never tried to take a rental truly off-road but I've definitely had them on very unpaved roads they probably shouldn't have been on. You can get true off-road vehicles in locales like Death Valley but they're very pricey compared to a standard rental.
I've definitely had a number of minor scrapes etc. over decades and I've never once had an issue--though I've almost exclusively dealt with the larger companies for whom minor scrapes etc. are presumably considered normal.
... and sometimes they have no viable plan for having something close to what they've promised.
Not so long ago Ireserved a car, from a large national company, to go on a backpacking trip. I picked an early pickup window, so I would have time to drive a substantial distance, hike, and get to my desired stopping point before nightfall. I arrive at the rental place at 8a, and find that they're fully staffed but had only a a single large van available for rent. If I waited around until mid afternoon, I was told, _maybe_ something would show up. One of the staff told me that the prior week corporate had decided to open up that site even though there were no cars.
I'm surprised that Turo/Getaround/etc don't message more aggressively about "you'll actually get the car you want, when you want, which somehow most car rental companies think is unachievable."
Generally that's true, but Hertz specifically does have a few classes of vehicle that only contain one model, and they advertise those as something like "guaranteed make/model" / "reserve this exact car".
And while they do run out, most of the time you will receive what you booked, and at larger airport locations they'll typically substitute something close in size and nature to what you booked if they do run out of your specific class.
They never seem to have enough small cars in Europe. I'm fed up of being 'upgraded' to a crossover/SUV. I think it's worse with eg Enterprise because their fleet tends to reflect what people own, because they do so much crash/repairs business. But it happens with most of them
Which country? Had no issues getting small cars in France. Got a Fiat500 last time in France on Hertz. I suspect French rental cos like to "upgrade" the 1-way rentals to get rid of them due to unpopularity. Only time I got upgraded to an SUV (2-lane wide Jeep Compass) in France was on a 1-way.
Car rental companies generally don't guarantee specific models. Even if you select like a convertible Mustang, odds are they won't actually have it. They'll give you something that "meets or exceeds your reservation", like a chevy suburban.
Turo is much better if you need a specific vehicle. In Alaska, Hawaii, and Utah I've rented 4WD vehicles when I needed 4WD. They almost all still say in the contract that you're not allowed to take it off road. I always contact the renter ahead of time to make sure it's okay if I go on dirt mountain roads that need 4WD and I've always found someone who approves. I'd guess you can get what you want on Turo.
While that's true, a guarantee like that is only as good as the penalties. There is no penalty for Hertz not giving you a specific model AFAIK. In reality with Hertz it means slighter-above-normal chance of getting that model.
Now if it were "exact model or your rental is free", that would be something to behold
At least they called you. I traveled a lot this last fall and pretty much always reserved a hybrid with Avis because I was going to drive long distances. What I actually got at the counter most of the time was "let me see if we have any hybrids available" followed by receiving some random car that was not, in fact, a hybrid (and often as far as you can get from a fuel-efficient hybrid, a regular gas SUV).
> I'm going to avoid Hertz from here on out as much as possible.
This is good advice for everyone. Hertz is the company who likes to lose track of their cars and then call the police and report the car stolen by the person renting it. They're a truly shitty company, not worth the hassle.
This is due to high body damage repair costs and has nothing to do with repairing an electric powertrain:
>Let me share a bit more context on the damage equation. First, while conventional maintenance on electric vehicles remained lower relative to comparable ICE vehicles in Q3, higher collision and damage repairs on EVs continue to weigh on our results and negatively impacted EBITDA. For context, collision and damage repairs on an EV can often run about twice that associated with a comparable combustion engine vehicle. Second, where a car is salvaged, we must crystallize at once any difference between our carrying value and the market value of that car. The MSRP declines in EVs over the course of 2023, driven primarily by Tesla have driven the fair market value of our EVs lower as compared to last year, such that a salvage creates a larger loss and, therefore, greater burden.
If a brand popped up and offered a gasoline ICE with old toyota-level reliability and longevity, and without electronics (save for maybe bluetooth for some music) I'd pay a sizeable premium for it.
I'd be fine ditching bluetooth. I'd be fine with an AUX cable. Most people have their phone on some charging mount anyways, so there's already a cable running to the location so wireless isn't much of an advantage here
Yep I can confirm this works quite well since it's what I used for over a decade until I got a new car a couple years ago. Bluetooth can be annoyingly flaky in many cars but plugging in a cable literally just works. My old sound system and traditional controls worked great and I have considered replacing the more modern system that came with my current car with something more like the old one.
My pet peeve about BT in cars is that it can interrupt phone calls when your spouse starts the car or arrives home. I guess it's nice that cars have good BT range, but it would be nice if it could sense whether the phone is in the car, or perhaps 30 feet away, in my bedroom (and I'm on a call!).
so far I'm really happy with my 21 tacoma... it's got just enough tech but lots of physical buttons. I just use android auto with a wireless dongle. the only issue with that is it takes about 12-20 seconds to pair on car start. The stereo is just a 2 din box as well with minimal car interactions, just a forward back/up down volume button on the wheel. which reminds me the volume is left right not up down, which is crazy.
it's a very nice mix so far of just truck and modern.
I was looking at used compact cars but the market was insane. Even with a COVID markup on the new Rio, the price was competitive with used Corollas/Civics that were 10 years old and had 75K+ miles. This is my 6th or 7th Hyundai/Kia and they've all been fantastic.
Edit: I forgot but I have some bad news, Kia is probably killing the Rio so you might be out of luck. Makes sense as the dealerships heavily promote the Forte and barely stock any Rios. The salespeople were a little surprised we loved the Rio so much, I think it's just too small for most Americans.
Yeah, looks like '23 was the last year. I'm also reading that it's a bit underpowered. I like small calls, but I don't like struggling to get a up hill. Though, I have driven a few Hyundai-labeled hatchbacks (can't remember the name) from around '15, and they were quite good. I don't know much about their operation. Is Kia the same underlying tech?
Hertz doesn't care about customer complaints, other than as a KPI that they A) still have customers and B) aren't "wasting" money on such luxury things as making sure the customer's rental is actually available when they contracted for it.
Agreed. Got a Polestar for a surprisingly cheap price on Hertz recently and I was really impressed with it. If I were in the market I think I’d take it over a Tesla.
Ooof. I own a Model 3 and was really looking forward to my Polestar 2 rental in NZ over the holidays. It felt like a massive downgrade in pretty much every way to me. The biggest thing was the responsiveness, it was on par with a standard ICE vehicle in terms of how sluggish it was. I was incredibly disappointed given that I would love to look elsewhere (from Tesla) for my next vehicle.
Yeah, I rented a Polestar from Hertz and this was my takeaway too: less fun to drive than my 3, clunkier control surface and not particularly better in any noticeable way.
I rented a Tesla from Hertz recently. The throttle response was incredible. Everything else about the car was truly awful. Opaque touch UI. Fiddly steering wheel buttons with unclear functionality. Dangerously unpredictable self-driving. Insistent seat memory that constantly tried to crush me on entry. Had to install an app to unlock the car. Really a terrible vehicle.
A friend of mine rented a Kia Nero EV and it was excellent. It’s just a car that happens to be electric. I didn’t even realize it was an EV until the third day.
I do tend to agree that a lot of peculiarities of Teslas are unnecessary and/or bad, but for what it's worth most of the ones you listed are less of an issue for a vehicle that you own. Unlocking with the phone is convenient, you tie seat memory to the user, and you learn the button functions. (Some aspects are still definitely stupid, like the intermittent wiper function, the auto high beams, and autopilot on anything but clearly marked highways. And of course the lack of stalks on the new ones.)
Anyway, they're a terrible choice for a rental fleet. You want rental vehicles to behave as much as possible like the average vehicle, so there's a minimal learning curve. Next to manual transmission vehicles in North America, Teslas have to be about the worst choice for that.
Yeah but the Tesla implementations of these features still suck. "You get used to it" is a shitty sales pitch. Basically any other car with these features has a better implementation. Tesla does it different but not better. It isn't a matter of familiarity, these designs are just bad.
My 15 year old BMW:
Has seat memory tied to the key. I don't have to fiddle with a menu to save the setting. It just... remembers.
Has steering wheel buttons with labels. Using steering wheel buttons and three fingertip-reachable and physically distinct stalks I can run my (intermittent rain sensing!) wipers, cruise control, blinkers, headlights, radio, and phone (which can stay in my pocket!).
Has an iDrive knob that controls all non-driving-critical features but can still be safely operated when driving. This includes the navigation system but also things like car settings.
Keyless entry where I just grab the handle and pull (this is one operation, not two) and the car unlocks. This works on the front doors and the trunk. It also works to start the car. No phone interaction required. The key fob stays in my pocket. In 8 years of ownership I have changed the fob battery once. There's a physical lock cylinder in the door if my key fob or the car battery die. I can lock the car with a touch as well.
Has physical buttons for almost everything (except car settings and nav). Seats (including heaters), mirrors, windows, blinkers (including hazards), head lights, cruise control, radio (volume, tuner, track, presets), dual zone climate control, hill descent, etc.
Oy, I wouldn't hold up a 2008 BMW as a paragon of usability. That early iDrive system was awful. Three different ways to differently manage climate temperature? Navigation straight out of the Macbook Wheel[1]? I could go on. The auto wipers were definitely better than the Tesla though.
I do largely agree with you re the Tesla, although the steering wheel controls I could argue both sides. They're multi-function, which allows you to customize their operation and do a lot more than you can with dedicated controls.
Edit: though I guess it's 2024 now. IIRC the 2009s had slightly less bad idrive.
I have had nothing but good experiences with iDrive in my car. Certainly better than a touch screen. It is a 2010 LCI E90, maybe the iDrive was improved?
They really don't suck. The Tesla UI is the best I've ever used in why car. They're unfamiliar to you.
The seat memory does remember. Not just for the physical key, but for your phone. You do nothing. If my wife gets in the car, it sets up the car for her. If I do, it sets it up for me. Neither of us touch anything, it's automatic depending on where our phones are.
The steering buttons aren't labeled for a reason! Because you can remap them. Which is awesome, because I can set them up exactly how I like them. I can put all the functionality you mentioned on the steering buttons.
It doesn't need an idrive button. It has voice. I don't look at the car to navigate. I tell it what I want. Same with other non critical functions.
It needs zero phone interactions. I walk to the car and open the door. That's it. I don't look at the phone. Don't wait. It just works. For every door and the trunk. You just never think about it.
The Tesla does all the things you listed vastly better. You just haven't learned to set them up and use them.
Every car has voice, it just does not work well in the US because street and establishment names are often not real words in English, people don't know how they are pronounced and, even if they do, the car itself has different ideas about pronunciation. iDrive guarantees that you can get to the "Manet st" and not the "Monet st".
>The Tesla does all the things you listed vastly better.
Don't you need to get into menus to change the A/C air direction/temperature/pressure in a Tesla? How is it better than operating a physical dial/lever for example? Especially for the people on the rear seat? Also, the glove box latch is in the menu too, is not it?
>I never have trouble telling it what street I'm going to.
Well, good for you, perhaps you are the person the voice models had been trained on.
>And no. I never go into the menus for the AC. I do it though voice.
What about the passengers on the rear seat? And how is it "vastly better" to change the AC direction through voice than just to pull the lever until it's blowing in the right direction?
Is this why I have to ask my Uber driver to turn the rear seat heater on? How do I even interact with the voice control as a passenger? Am I supposed to say "Hey Elon, warm my ass"?
Hey! There's plenty to be critical about. It just isn't the BS being brought up in this thread so far from people who just don't know how to use the car.
But you're spot on! The fact that people in the rear have no amenities is one of the big downsides of Tesla. And that rear seat heater? You need to pay extra to unlock it! I hope they choke on their $200
That is mostly just your opinion, not facts. I returned my car because of problems like these (and the awful build quality). Not everyone agrees with what Tesla do, and that is fine.
There are plenty of things to complain about. But the ones you mentioned are literally not problems. You just didn't know how to use the car if you needed phone interactions to open the car, or didn't have seat memory working, or didn't set up your steering buttons. That's not a matter of opinion, those are facts.
BMW is well known for their poor longevity with electrical systems. I wonder how this will play out in their EV lines, or if because they've removed the ICE related electronics and things such as engine bay heat if matters will improve.
Actually in the EV world BMW is known for the longevity of its batteries. BMW had EVs in the market already in 2013-2014, the BMW i3. And the reported degradation of those batteries has been minimal.
BMW is currently having all excellent EV cars, and that’s even with shared architecture with their ICE counterparts. Specially their electrical motors are above everyone else’s, due to the lack of permanent magnets, which allows for finer control of their power and instant disconnection. I am expecting to BMW to beat Tesla completely when they finally offer their dedicated EV platform in 2025-2026.
Okay, you're welcome to buy a golf cart or something. You're also welcome to drive a Tesla and turn the driving mode to "chill" or "comfort". In a Polestar you don't have a choice -- their "sport" mode just turns off traction control. An electric car being incapable of responsive driving is objectively bad.
Rented a Polestar from Hertz last year. It died in the driveway at 80% battery and wouldn't come on. Hertz had to have it towed 350km to the nearest Polestar service centre. Hertz refused to deliver a replacement car and just refunded the rental. Did not make me love Hertz or Polestar
I had a mostly great experience with Hertz Polestar in Switzerland. Easy to drive, did well on the road.
The most painful part of the experience was attempting to charge it before returning it. Finding a compatible, working L3 charger was very difficult, even in Zurich and the experience of downloading an app to start the charging process was terrible. It of course, didn't accept my non-Swiss credit card and I had a get a local friend to help with the payment part.
> It of course, didn't accept my non-Swiss credit card
If I can't use the vehicle without needing to carry a working cellular-connected computer running a specific operating system in my pocket and/or having a specific category of bank card, that's a hard 'no' for me. Either have the car negotiate payment with the charging network or give me the option of handing currency to a person at a register. Otherwise I insist on a dino car.
Charging Teslas with Tesla Superchargers is as streamlined as possible: just plug in. Charging non-Teslas at SCs is almost as good, you just need to tell the app which unit you're plugged into.
It's third-party chargers that are an endless source of frustration.
> Charging non-Teslas at SCs is almost as good, you just need to tell the app which unit you're plugged into.
That's not the "just need to" that works for me. For privacy reasons I don't carry a device that constantly reports my personal information to Apple or Google. Can I install this app from F-Droid? Strike one.
Now supposing I decide I'm cool with being tracked by Apple or Google all the time and use a device I can get the app on. Do I need to register an account with the app? With my personal information? So the fact that I am driving a specific Tesla vehicle along with my location can be tracked by Tesla? Strike two.
Now supposing I decide I'm cool with being tracked by Apple or Google and Tesla, do I need to register a Visa or Mastercard with the app so I can also be tracked by the payment provider, who will sell my transactions to random third-party eReceipt brokers who will dutifully add my travel habits to the profile they keep on me? Strike three.
Nope. Not playing any of these games. Gas car, cash. Thank you very much.
my Polestar experience was great, except for the fact that for a car that has the dimensions of an SUV, the tiny windscreen and windows made it feel a bit claustrophobic, like being in a sports sedan
where a car is salvaged, we must crystallize at once any difference between our carrying value and the market value of that car
Hang on though, this part has nothing to do with repair costs. This just sounds like an accounting issue, right? If anything I would expect this to benefit Hertz since they could write off the higher loss in their taxes immediately, instead of waiting until future years to write the value off via depreciation.
On the other hand, I can see how this would make their numbers look worse at a glance since it shows up as though they lost money, but in fact no actual assets have been lost; they have the same car, it was repaired, and the repair was paid for by insurance, but now it looks like they took a loss because an arbitrary accounting rule forces them to adjust their balance sheet in a different way than they would otherwise.
Not sure if I'm understanding this right but it sure sounds like Hertz is flat-out admitting that they're making sub-optimal business decisions to make their numbers look better. Wouldn't that be a blatant violation of their fiduciary duties?
One of the reasons large rental companies self insure is so that they can do repairs in house without listing cars as salvaged. They make it back on resale I think I read this from car dealership guy.
That's (yet) another reason why I don't buy the insurance that covers incidents of my own fault for my beater. A crushed bumper will deem it salvage and the insurer will take it away but I could still drive it (and from a relative's experience, at much lower cost than the insurer would pay).
But on a newer vehicle, it takes a lot of damage to get branded salvage.
Also makes sense for Hertz to do it in-house as they'll have a somewhat standardized fleet. Can "borrow" a rear bumper from a vehicle in for more serious heavier-duty front-end repair to get at least 1 back in the fleet.
Right but the part of the argument I quoted had nothing to do with repair costs: they were making the point that changes in FMV due to EV prices going down in general were forcing them to recognize bigger losses in salvage situations, since they have to re-value the car post-salvage based on current market prices.
So in this case they are basically writing off more value “for free”, because the loss is coming from a genuine loss in value of the asset, but since the asset is a car that may still provide the same amount of value back to Hertz and still last the same amount of time, it’s sort of a weird corner case where you could argue they haven’t really lost anything.
Of course that loss is offset by lower depreciation losses in the future, so it’s not like it’s coming out of nowhere.
even if it were true, aren't they exacerbating the issue by "crystallizing" the loss on every single EV rather than just the ones that are salvaged? hardly seems like a reason to sell-all.
When a car is salvaged (i.e., declared a total loss), that means that the insurance company has taken possession of the vehicle, offering the insured the market value of the car for their loss (where market value is the value of the car in its salvaged state). The car that was worth $X on their books is now $Y in cash, and $Y is usually significantly less than $X, because salvaged cars are usually worth way less than a normal used car (though sometimes the car is worth more as spare parts, for uncommon vehicles or for models no longer in production).
This obviously decreases their margins since the insurance premiums go up. And if they self insure as the other guy claims, then the repair costs come straight out of their wallet.
Right, that’s true on the “higher repair costs” side of the original post, but I’m talking about the “market prices have gone down so we have to recognize bigger losses on salvage” aspect later in the post, which is caused by changes in fair market value and doesn’t have to do with the cost of repairs.
Insurance is not free money. Hypothetically say I was losing a car once per month… then my premiums would reflect that. The purpose of insurance in that hypothetical would be to insure against losing 2 cars per month but I would be paying for that first lost car in full because at that point, it’s not a risk… it’s a consistent monthly cost.
This stuff tends to be very complex. Writing off losses early doesn’t always help you. This is why depreciation rules are flexible and losses can be carried forwards.
For a public company with steady growth I imagine you generally want to amortize losses over a fairly long window. Also if you already had losses this year, and think you’ll grow more in future years, you really don’t want to book more losses now! Hertz has been getting hammered recently. Especially problematic if these are lumpy losses which will make profits less predictable. You’d rather smooth those out and hit your earnings forecast. (At least, that’s the CFO’s mandate.)
It gets even more complex when you consider the interplay with windfalls and rapid growth, but you can probably assume here that they are optimizing for short-to-medium term stock price (1-5 yr). Most CEOs don’t invest in 10yr bets. You might get fired for lackluster growth before that pays off!
More generally, “fiduciary duties” is generally construed pretty loosely. Delaware corporate law defers quite strongly to the corporation; if they can make a coherent argument for why they are benefitting shareholders they tend to get the benefit of the doubt.
Gigapress mono frames don’t like damage. Even light damage. The whole car is totaled when a comparable ICE build process can be repaired for modest costs. More of a Tesla problem than an ev problem.
The Model S has a fair amount of aluminum in the body (about 400 pounds or so, IIRC). The Model 3 is much more biased towards steel for most of the body, due to cost.
To an extent, for banging into shapes, but it's challenging to add more material to it if needed. None of the options are especially good compared to welding, though that's just my opinion (compared to fasteners - size, brazing - high temperature but maybe).
Other materials have their own issues, but if you cast large pieces of anything you also make it super expensive to replace parts that can't be repaired onsite.
A lot of guys are telling you it's because it the workability of aluminium which is purified bullshit. Panelbeaters rarely work panels nowadays, they replace them. The problem with Tesla is that they're gaping assholes when it comes to supplying parts to third party repairers. Repairing Teslas is expensive because that's how Tesla wants it to be.
Plus, they’ve spent years prioritizing production and sales, not service. As a result their cars aren’t designed with repairability in mind and their service centers are backlogged, and even when they can work on your car they may not get parts, because they go to new cars.
Tesla uses Giga Presses to build the body of some of their models. While lighter and stronger than a body build of smaller parts, it also makes impossible to repair damages by replacing some of the smaller parts.
Don't know if the Tesla cars owned by Hertz are built using a Giga Press.
Getting replacement parts from Tesla has been consistently reported as time consuming. Even if the repair is the same cost, there's more loss of use if you can't get parts in a timely fashion.
It’s got nothing to do with being an EV and everything to do with Tesla requiring monopolized first party repairs where they dictate prices and refuse to sell parts to third party shops.
Someone told me if butterfly door gets jammed (and it would in rainy weather), it costs $20 to fix just one door! This person has sweared that he will never ever buy another Tesla again. l How did Tesla didn’t got this right?
Being able to "charge onsite" is a minor advantage, if any at all. They get to charge for cars brought back not full, and either they're active enough that they have on-site refueling (delivered by a gas truck) or they're inactive enough that sending the new guy over to the gas station isn't a major issue.
The years of these vehicles (2021) is about the same as all the other vehicles they're selling (though there are some older ones which I suspect might be trade ins?).
The only thing really of note is that they're not buying more of them, selling off cars that are 2 years (or about 30k miles) or so old is standard rental car policy. Sell it whilst they can recover much of the capital outlay.
This is exactly the point.
This is really a non-reup on Tesla as a rental fleet option.
It’s important to note that they have been renting half this fleet to Uber drivers at approximately 1/2 their consumer rental rate, according to TheVerge:
> Hertz is scaling back its EV ambitions because its Teslas keep getting damaged / Also, Uber drivers, who are using about half of Hertz’s Teslas, are damaging their cars more than Hertz expected.
And:
> repair costs are about double what the company spends on gas car fixes, Hertz CEO Stephen Scherr told Bloomberg.
Apparently they tried to pull more vehicles into the leisure category (aka consumer rentals not Uber driver rentals) to mitigate repair costs, but it didn’t work.
Also, the price cuts Tesla has been making are turning the company off on renewing:
> Price cuts have taken another toll on Hertz. “The MSRP [manufacturer suggested retail price] declines in EVs over the course of 2023, driven primarily by Tesla, have driven the fair market value of our EVs lower as compared to last year, such that a salvage creates a larger loss and, therefore, greater burden,” Scherr said.
It's a cascade of issues, but it really comes down to "people didn't want EVs when offered". For want of renters, the Uber was used. For want of Uber gentleness, the repairs mounted, etc.
I honestly can't fault them, they tried a thing and they ran into real issues.
I suspect that Tesla themselves could manage a (smaller) rental EV fleet for those who wanted them, and do decently well (they could rent out used cars they've prepped for sale).
This is interesting. Last summer my family had a trip to LA and rented a car through Hertz.
I'm a Gold member through Delta status (which is 1000% better than trying to use Hertz without the status), so they had an upgrade for me - a Tesla Model 3, which was by far the cheapest option.
I live in Utah, drive a (hybrid) F-150, and had never driven a Tesla. It was fun and novel but a PITA to figure out charging (at Disneyland no less).
When returning the car I was a little surprised to see what seemed like hundreds of Teslas on the lot.
We have another SoCal vacation this summer, and I expected to see a Tesla at the top of the list again, but I was surprised to see that it wasn't even an option, and the other EV (I think a Bolt) was 50% more to rent than the standard Jetta. So we got the Jetta /shrug
It's the people who wanted to "rent a car" and ended up with a Tesla without understanding the difference and got annoyed/angry that will really sling the deal.
Even if 10% of the customers would be fine with it (I'd love to rent one to see what it was like) it's not worth bifurcating the fleet.
A rental Tesla has to be one of the worst ideas, people crash rentals way more often than their daily driver. Teslas have a high cost to repair and long down time...
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[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 462 ms ] thread(Where could I charge it? The hotel? Do I need to find a super charger? Etc. Just more headache than I wanted on a vacation).
Even if the edge case is only 1% of your travel, do you want to buy a car that can't do it?
It can be anything. You're living in Minnesota and your dad in Chicago had a heart attack. An ICE can get you there in about ~7 hours. An EV... you're going to need 1 supercharging station at a minimum, probably 2. Or, you just decide you want a road trip from Minnesota to Texas. You pull over to the nearest supercharger in Arkansas to discover you're forced to hang out in a town where you really don't feel safe for an hour or two. That's great.
EVs make far more sense in Europe than America, with the current range they can offer, combined with general proximity of relatives. I'm not saying they don't have a future in America, I just won't be surprised if we are the slowest adopters.
In my experience, most people outside of the EV bubble underestimate how much infrastructure is already there.
At least for Tesla. For CCS cars in the US, it isn't so great.
Yeah, if you spend 4.5 minutes goofing off.
I had to rent a 3-row SUV one time and refilling that thing was torturous, thankfully I only had to do it once.
For many people/families, an EV could be viable. For an even larger percentage of people or families with 2+ vehicles an EV could be very viable. Still, in most scenarios the ICE vehicle is the safe choice, with the pros and cons well understood.
IMO some of the EV pushback is from people (like me) who have nothing against EVs, but feel they are still a solid decade away from being a no-brainer choice, with much of the holdup being infrastructure related.
I'm all for saving the planet (note: I don't believe that EVs overall are as net environmentally positive as they are portrayed), but I'm not going to do it while stranded at a charging station.
But not everyone can afford a new EV. If you buy almost any EV on the used market, such as a used Tesla...
Edit: a different commenter says you need to return at 75%. That's reasonable.
Or I might want to do same with some client or relative there.
Train station is very near, but not that near... And it still means connection to get to actual airport...
And new EVs are pretty expensive, compared already paid car...
My family has neighbors that just buy and repair older cars and sell them pretty low cost. The quality of their work has been considered very good by third-party mechanics. My parents recently bought a 2005 Pontiac with a V6 from them for about ~$4K with 135K miles. One accident (deer sideswipe), only body.
Do you know what a 2013 Tesla Model S with 135K miles goes for around here? About $17K. If we're lucky, we could maybe negotiate it to $15K-$14K; but that's still almost four times the cost. And sure, the Tesla is eight years newer, but I make a similar comparison because it was very much a 1st-gen product... My money is on the Pontiac lasting longer.
Why not? If my car covers 99% of my needs, that seems fine. I can rent a vehicle for the other 1%.
As an European, no they don't. Europeans often use their cars for long travels cross borders for work, vacation or visiting relatives where public trasnportation doesn't serve them, and the lack or underdevelopment of charging infrastructre makes them viable only for people with their own house, garage and charger at home or for businesses which do short trips around town like deliveries or realtors. Everyone else has ICEs.
They charge you $25 if you return it not fully charged, which is bananas, because why couldn’t they just plug it in while they’re cleaning the car? It’s not like gas where they have to drive the car to a gas station.
It's likely similar where if you receive it at 100% and return it at 98% you're getting charged the full $25. It's just another revenue source for the company.
From the start, refill charges have been an utter scam.
[1] https://www.geratech-tankanlagen.de/tankanlagen-diesel-adblu...
I think it was $25 flat if not as same level, so I can fill it to the level I received it and hope they kept accurate records (ie knew it wasn’t full).
I think if I had ample time during all this an EV would be interesting but I just don’t want to make a mistake and make this repair even more expensive.
I recall a similar rule the last time I hired a gas car, but feels like for EVs it could use a tweak or two.
By the same token I would never rent a diesel or a manual transmission vehicle...I don't want to learn about them via the rental experience
As more and more people have electric cars, it makes sense for the rental companies to transition to them, so that renting doesn't feel like you're being offered a horse and buggy.
this from someone who has a model y at home as my daily driver and I love it.
Amusingly the rental place told me as we were returning the car that it had been sold in the interim.
It's amazing to me how little effort these companies take to resolve the charging questions - there wasn't even a charger at the rental place.
It is pretty easy for them to fall behind on charging vehicles during peak periods, especially something like the Leaf.
Very puzzling that Hertz + Tesla hasn't streamlined the charging process for rental vehicles.
The Hertz charging fob is quite expensive though, cheaper to signup to something like EnBW, which you can use for almost all charging stations [0].
Supercharger in Germany are almost all open to third-party cars as well, though not as cheap as EnBW.
[0]: https://www.enbw.com/elektromobilitaet/produkte/ladetarife
Nearly stranded at a rest stop, spent 2 hours trying to charge, apps wouldn't accept payment, apps wouldn't activate Ionity charger, spent an hour on long distance cellphone call to Ionity call center where they manually activated a charge for me after great difficulty.
The other thing for people who think they can plan around it is that remember with typical rental agency you have no idea exactly which EV model they are going to give you at check in.
So could be the one with 220/240/280mi highway range. And then they might hand it to you with the battery at 80% full.
Your plans to safely get to your destination on 100% of the 280mi battery may be quickly spoiled by getting a a 240mi EV at 80% full and being -90mi short.
But the rental companies overshot a bit. They didn't keep their processes and infrastructure up to pace with the number that they brought on.
It isn't shocking that caused some issues.
This seems like a very basic process that should have been put in place for troubleshooting.
Hertz did it correctly, they use their account and just charge your credit card after your rental period is over. Just like they do with parking tickets or tolls.
Things that increase the riskiness - unfamiliar area, unfamiliar car, non Tesla, not knowing EVs.
So rental non-Tesla while on a vacation is probably the worst possible scenario.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/11/business/hertz-tesla-selling/...
https://techcrunch.com/2024/01/11/hertz-sell-evs-tesla-fleet...
(from other threads we've merged hither)
Otherwise it was great and I would love to rent a Tesla from Hertz again.
But plenty of hotels still don't have that.
I like EVs and have a charger at home for my own car, but maybe due to that I also understand the difficulty of finding a reliable charging situation in a new place. On top of that I was visiting and parking at my parents house, and they don’t have a charger installed.
Yeah, and hertz doesn't tend to give you a mobile charger. I can't blame them, they are a separate cost and they tend to "get lost" with rentals, but it makes the EV option a lot less practical.
Interestingly, they seem to be selling off more of the 3 than the Y too.
Plus I can really only think of two types of vehicles that I’d ever want to rent - either an econobox to get me from point A to B to C in an area underserved by Uber/Lyft where I could not care less about what I’m temporarily driving, or a convertible. I guess maybe also an SUV - but in any event, those three categories are (as far as I am aware) just not yet well matched by any EVs on the market.
Too much uncertainty in a new area to rent one when on business travel with strict deadlines.
Hertz apparently doesn’t use standard classifications and it was actually a sub compact suv - the Chevy bolt euv.
Their counter person was strangely gleeful in explaining how I would not be able to find a charger for it.
I get the feeling hertz and car companies just hate electric vehicles
I wonder if that means insurance, frequency of collisions, average damage in a collision, or cost to repair disparity
When Ford started making putting aluminum bodies on their F150s, they had special training programs for doing bodywork and repair on them. I guarantee that cost was passed down to you.
It may not even take longer to do the repairs, it might take the same amount of time once you learn how to work on them. That said, I guarantee the shops and insurance companies are recuperating the costs of that extra training.
If you rent a vehicle out for $75 per day, and it needs a $1000 repair, and a repair takes 2 weeks, the loss of use is more expensive than the entire repair!
Repair times have been getting longer across the entire automotive industry, as parts availability hasn't been great, but Tesla vehicles are notorious for long wait times for parts availability and availability of the specialized labor sometimes required.
Rental cars get dinged up all of the time and you can get a new fender on a Malibu in under a day.
Is that because Chevy makes the more available or because they're much easier to find at a part reseller?
Even my parents Leaf leaps like a fish when you start it, I can only imagine how many people get into fender benders when driving a Tesla for the first time without really having a chance to get used to the feel.
If you dig deeper you'll find that:
- most of their EV's were rented to Uber drivers. - All Uber rentals, gas and EV, have higher milage, higher maintenance costs and lower resale values.
In other words this state of affairs was highly predictable. That it wasn't taken into account is the fault of Hertz executives. They're trying to shift blame off of their own shoulders.
Wait, what?
Hertz was basically bankrupt, and suddenly was a "good business" when it bought a bunch of Teslas. It was always a stretch.
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a38052601/hertz-buying-100...
EVs are already not a good fit for rental cars - I don't think travelers on vacation want to figure deal with a charging plan. It's also really hard to sell even a luxury sedan as an upgrade when everyone wants an SUV. I'd be curious to know if something like the Rivian would fare better as a premium option.
I don't want an SUV. I get angry at rental companies when they try to give me one.
I increasingly don't recognize this country I grew up in with the car culture. In the early 90s nobody wanted SUVs either. The truck and SUV craze was apparently sparked by an emissions regulatory loophole, where larger vehicles were excempt because they were meant for work.
The only thing I can think of is to emphasize their superior fuel economy and get people to appreciate the superior handling.
Make people drive an obstacle avoidance course in both a small car and a huge SUV. Maybe some people would accept that the safer car doesn't have to be the bigger car, but the one with enough agility and stability to avoid it completely.
Many times people that prize handling of the car end up pushing the limits and driving dangerously aggressively accelerating and braking, following closely, aggressively lane swerving.
When travelling, I tend to prefer public transport, except when in a group or when I need to carry a lot of stuff, and again, for that I need a big car.
And not an EV. EVs are ideal when you can charge at home. When renting a car, it usually means I don't have a "home", and planning for charging points in a place you are not familiar with is a hassle. And EVs are not ideal for road trips where each leg typically exceeds the maximum range.
So yeah, I understand why rentals would be dominated by large gas cars and trucks.
Car enthusiasts still like small sedans with handling and looks and etc. But the average person just wants the biggest, most comfortable car they can get for the money.
I had a millenial co-worker ask me why selling a 2-door car was even legal these days.
They want the biggest, because it makes them feel comfortable, despite objective data and car parts that SUVs are more dangerous and less comfortable.
One theory is that millennials have been taught that higher and bigger is better because of age related vision deterioration by their parents and it has now caught on.
Anecdotally, I asked this line of questioning recently of family that had the choice of a 20 hour road trip - 2 people in (solid rear axle) Cadillac Escalade versus a similar year Mercedes Mid Size SUV. The reasoning given was comfort. But objectively, the mid size has independent rear suspension, more responsive steering, quicker pickup, lower weight (and better center of gravity), lower miles, fewer maintenance issues, fits in more parking spaces, is not as tall to get into comfortably, better fuel economy, and more comfortable seating. The conclusion that the extra large SUV is more comfortable perplexes me.
2) cargo cult culture in literally everything these days, including what some less-than-bright footballer buys for a car (or some famous dev or company uses for building their products), so these 'suv' are seen as luxury, and not garbage dump of companies making real cars (TM) like BMW.
Severe rolling risk, slow reaction times and generally just a bad drive thanx to basic physics, high consumption and overall maintenance... not that great a choice for many
But because their profile is much more aerodynamic and they are lower to the ground, they just drive very smoothly. Especially when covering long distances on the freeway.
It's also amazing to be able to open every door and control every feature with a physical button on the dash and be able to haul full sheets of plywood in the back.
My personal cars have all been sporty little manual hatchbacks, but if I just wanted all out comfort it's really hard to beat a well equipped mini-van.
Maybe I just had bad luck with the rentals I chose?
I think a fairer description would be that American culture values space, personal property ownership, and independence. Car ownership is a means to an end.
Our fridge/freezer is on the larger size, but is also usually pretty full, so we definitely get good use out of it. Our washing machine is reasonably large, but, frankly, not large enough, as I can't fit our king-size bed's comforter in it, and have to use a laundry service to get it washed. Our couch is a pretty good size, but my partner and I want to be able to stretch out on it (at opposite ends) simultaneously, which doesn't seem like a wild or unreasonable thing to want to do.
And I prefer a smaller car! I refuse to purchase an SUV, despite my need to drive in snowy mountains several months out of the year (I of course found a sedan with a 4WD option). I hate driving SUVs; they feel bulky, unwieldy, and unstable to me. Before I bought my current car, I would rent a 4WD SUV when I needed to drive in the snow, and I hated the experience every time.
Modern "compact" or "crossover" SUVs are just hatchback cars. Some are quite small, they're just named differently to make people buy them.
The real loser has been minivans, station wagons, and actual hatchbacks. There's no reason to buy a sedan when on the same footprint you can get an SUV with more room.
Tesla Model 3 length: 185.8″
Volkswagen Taos length: 175.8″
This is a popular opinion, but there are still advantages to a sedan. e.g. driving dynamics, weight and aerodynamics and therefore fuel economy, price, etc.
It's just that many buyers don't prioritize these things.
Most buyers only really compare efficiency after narrowing down other things they deem "irreplaceable".
USED buyers, of course, are much more flexible because the main thing they care about is price. But nobody builds used vehicles, only new ones.
Sure there is, fuel efficiency being one.
Also I just do not at all like driving SUVs. I like to be closer to the road, and sedans just feel more stable to me.
The proliferation of SUVs is so profoundly disappointing.
This tax remains in effect to this day with that trade war a distant memory.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax
Same, but I think the GP is correct to say that most people do want an SUV, in the US, at least.
But they wanted more than twice as much for a model 3 than any other compact sedan, so I ended up with a gas powered Kia instead.
depending on the branch they absolutely do. Many now have requirements you have to return it charged to a certain % or be charged just like gas.
I mean, they were only going to charge twice as much for a car that costs 3x as much.
bollocks. they absolutely do, and I've been dinged on it before. last time I rent an EV
I don't think I've ever rented an SUV in my adult life. Other than the one time I needed a vehicle to go to the snow (and in that case, we ended up with an AWD equipped minivan anyways).
I would much prefer a Tesla Model 3 to most SUV options. Granted I have an EV so it doesn't scare me, but that's not everyone. A rental fleet should be diverse. Just because I don't want an SUV doesn't mean others don't. Different people, different wants and needs.
[1] https://imgur.com/a/khw5Lx5
Agreed. Travel already involves enough work of having to figure out how to operate in a different location. Gas stations are everywhere and the time to fill is predictable across all ICE cars; I don't want to have to plan EV charging into my trip as well.
I'm going to avoid Hertz from here on out as much as possible. Especially if I want an EV. Perhaps the problem isn't Tesla, but Hertz. At least based on my experience, that's what it was.
Which is why it's almost best to just rent the lowest, cheapest thing, because they'll give you whatever they have.
This stops working when you need a particular aspect of whatever it is, especially if it's an aspect nobody really "cares" about - like whether it is EV.
Most people care it has enough seats, and enough luggage room. So a larger SUV works as well as a car for them.
Nitpick: unless I just popped into an alternate timeline, Kauai is American [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kauai
A lot of the "don't do this" rules on a rental are just so they can stick your insurance with the cost if you break it.
In reality, if the damage is very slight and the person checking them in doesn't want to do the paperwork, it's going to slide.
If you do drive off-road in a rental, wash it before returning it.
Not so long ago Ireserved a car, from a large national company, to go on a backpacking trip. I picked an early pickup window, so I would have time to drive a substantial distance, hike, and get to my desired stopping point before nightfall. I arrive at the rental place at 8a, and find that they're fully staffed but had only a a single large van available for rent. If I waited around until mid afternoon, I was told, _maybe_ something would show up. One of the staff told me that the prior week corporate had decided to open up that site even though there were no cars.
I'm surprised that Turo/Getaround/etc don't message more aggressively about "you'll actually get the car you want, when you want, which somehow most car rental companies think is unachievable."
And while they do run out, most of the time you will receive what you booked, and at larger airport locations they'll typically substitute something close in size and nature to what you booked if they do run out of your specific class.
See:
https://www.hertz.com/rentacar/vehicleguide/index.jsp?target...
Turo is much better if you need a specific vehicle. In Alaska, Hawaii, and Utah I've rented 4WD vehicles when I needed 4WD. They almost all still say in the contract that you're not allowed to take it off road. I always contact the renter ahead of time to make sure it's okay if I go on dirt mountain roads that need 4WD and I've always found someone who approves. I'd guess you can get what you want on Turo.
Now if it were "exact model or your rental is free", that would be something to behold
Hertz having a history of unrepentantly reporting their customers as having stolen returned rental cars is another reason to avoid them.
The fact that CostcoTravel.com does not have Hertz as an option also tells me that Hertz is not a good business.
https://www.abcactionnews.com/news/local-news/i-team-investi...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/11/us/herbert-alford-hertz-l...
https://www.foxbusiness.com/lifestyle/hertz-false-arrest-cla...
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2022/03/02/rental-car-h...
This is good advice for everyone. Hertz is the company who likes to lose track of their cars and then call the police and report the car stolen by the person renting it. They're a truly shitty company, not worth the hassle.
>Let me share a bit more context on the damage equation. First, while conventional maintenance on electric vehicles remained lower relative to comparable ICE vehicles in Q3, higher collision and damage repairs on EVs continue to weigh on our results and negatively impacted EBITDA. For context, collision and damage repairs on an EV can often run about twice that associated with a comparable combustion engine vehicle. Second, where a car is salvaged, we must crystallize at once any difference between our carrying value and the market value of that car. The MSRP declines in EVs over the course of 2023, driven primarily by Tesla have driven the fair market value of our EVs lower as compared to last year, such that a salvage creates a larger loss and, therefore, greater burden.
https://ir.hertz.com/static-files/75a583c0-90e0-496a-8b45-9f...
Update: Bad experiences renting electric cars from Hertz https://adrianco.medium.com/experiences-renting-electric-car...
I guess you can rent a $20k Kia and avoid all the new tech.
For now, I stick to wired USB...
it's a very nice mix so far of just truck and modern.
Bought that car last year for about 20K - Kia Rio 5 door. Wonderful little car.
No complaints on the Kia Carnival I got.
Edit: I forgot but I have some bad news, Kia is probably killing the Rio so you might be out of luck. Makes sense as the dealerships heavily promote the Forte and barely stock any Rios. The salespeople were a little surprised we loved the Rio so much, I think it's just too small for most Americans.
You missed a very important bit: 'old toyota-level reliability and longevity' ;)
The trim was basic, but the suspension was superior to a Tesla, especially on Italian roads.
Road noise was average at highway speeds with the cheaper trim.
A friend of mine rented a Kia Nero EV and it was excellent. It’s just a car that happens to be electric. I didn’t even realize it was an EV until the third day.
Anyway, they're a terrible choice for a rental fleet. You want rental vehicles to behave as much as possible like the average vehicle, so there's a minimal learning curve. Next to manual transmission vehicles in North America, Teslas have to be about the worst choice for that.
My 15 year old BMW:
Has seat memory tied to the key. I don't have to fiddle with a menu to save the setting. It just... remembers.
Has steering wheel buttons with labels. Using steering wheel buttons and three fingertip-reachable and physically distinct stalks I can run my (intermittent rain sensing!) wipers, cruise control, blinkers, headlights, radio, and phone (which can stay in my pocket!).
Has an iDrive knob that controls all non-driving-critical features but can still be safely operated when driving. This includes the navigation system but also things like car settings.
Keyless entry where I just grab the handle and pull (this is one operation, not two) and the car unlocks. This works on the front doors and the trunk. It also works to start the car. No phone interaction required. The key fob stays in my pocket. In 8 years of ownership I have changed the fob battery once. There's a physical lock cylinder in the door if my key fob or the car battery die. I can lock the car with a touch as well.
Has physical buttons for almost everything (except car settings and nav). Seats (including heaters), mirrors, windows, blinkers (including hazards), head lights, cruise control, radio (volume, tuner, track, presets), dual zone climate control, hill descent, etc.
The Tesla isn't just unfamiliar, it is worse.
I do largely agree with you re the Tesla, although the steering wheel controls I could argue both sides. They're multi-function, which allows you to customize their operation and do a lot more than you can with dedicated controls.
Edit: though I guess it's 2024 now. IIRC the 2009s had slightly less bad idrive.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BnLbv6QYcA
No screen.
The seat memory does remember. Not just for the physical key, but for your phone. You do nothing. If my wife gets in the car, it sets up the car for her. If I do, it sets it up for me. Neither of us touch anything, it's automatic depending on where our phones are.
The steering buttons aren't labeled for a reason! Because you can remap them. Which is awesome, because I can set them up exactly how I like them. I can put all the functionality you mentioned on the steering buttons.
It doesn't need an idrive button. It has voice. I don't look at the car to navigate. I tell it what I want. Same with other non critical functions.
It needs zero phone interactions. I walk to the car and open the door. That's it. I don't look at the phone. Don't wait. It just works. For every door and the trunk. You just never think about it.
The Tesla does all the things you listed vastly better. You just haven't learned to set them up and use them.
Every car has voice, it just does not work well in the US because street and establishment names are often not real words in English, people don't know how they are pronounced and, even if they do, the car itself has different ideas about pronunciation. iDrive guarantees that you can get to the "Manet st" and not the "Monet st".
>The Tesla does all the things you listed vastly better.
Don't you need to get into menus to change the A/C air direction/temperature/pressure in a Tesla? How is it better than operating a physical dial/lever for example? Especially for the people on the rear seat? Also, the glove box latch is in the menu too, is not it?
And no. I never go into the menus for the AC. I do it though voice.
Well, good for you, perhaps you are the person the voice models had been trained on.
>And no. I never go into the menus for the AC. I do it though voice.
What about the passengers on the rear seat? And how is it "vastly better" to change the AC direction through voice than just to pull the lever until it's blowing in the right direction?
But you're spot on! The fact that people in the rear have no amenities is one of the big downsides of Tesla. And that rear seat heater? You need to pay extra to unlock it! I hope they choke on their $200
BMW is currently having all excellent EV cars, and that’s even with shared architecture with their ICE counterparts. Specially their electrical motors are above everyone else’s, due to the lack of permanent magnets, which allows for finer control of their power and instant disconnection. I am expecting to BMW to beat Tesla completely when they finally offer their dedicated EV platform in 2025-2026.
Maybe excellent, but they have nothing as affordable as what other EV makers are offering AFAICT.
Personally I care more about an elegant ride than a fast, jerky one.
The most painful part of the experience was attempting to charge it before returning it. Finding a compatible, working L3 charger was very difficult, even in Zurich and the experience of downloading an app to start the charging process was terrible. It of course, didn't accept my non-Swiss credit card and I had a get a local friend to help with the payment part.
If I can't use the vehicle without needing to carry a working cellular-connected computer running a specific operating system in my pocket and/or having a specific category of bank card, that's a hard 'no' for me. Either have the car negotiate payment with the charging network or give me the option of handing currency to a person at a register. Otherwise I insist on a dino car.
It's third-party chargers that are an endless source of frustration.
That's not the "just need to" that works for me. For privacy reasons I don't carry a device that constantly reports my personal information to Apple or Google. Can I install this app from F-Droid? Strike one.
Now supposing I decide I'm cool with being tracked by Apple or Google all the time and use a device I can get the app on. Do I need to register an account with the app? With my personal information? So the fact that I am driving a specific Tesla vehicle along with my location can be tracked by Tesla? Strike two.
Now supposing I decide I'm cool with being tracked by Apple or Google and Tesla, do I need to register a Visa or Mastercard with the app so I can also be tracked by the payment provider, who will sell my transactions to random third-party eReceipt brokers who will dutifully add my travel habits to the profile they keep on me? Strike three.
Nope. Not playing any of these games. Gas car, cash. Thank you very much.
Hang on though, this part has nothing to do with repair costs. This just sounds like an accounting issue, right? If anything I would expect this to benefit Hertz since they could write off the higher loss in their taxes immediately, instead of waiting until future years to write the value off via depreciation.
On the other hand, I can see how this would make their numbers look worse at a glance since it shows up as though they lost money, but in fact no actual assets have been lost; they have the same car, it was repaired, and the repair was paid for by insurance, but now it looks like they took a loss because an arbitrary accounting rule forces them to adjust their balance sheet in a different way than they would otherwise.
Not sure if I'm understanding this right but it sure sounds like Hertz is flat-out admitting that they're making sub-optimal business decisions to make their numbers look better. Wouldn't that be a blatant violation of their fiduciary duties?
But on a newer vehicle, it takes a lot of damage to get branded salvage.
Also makes sense for Hertz to do it in-house as they'll have a somewhat standardized fleet. Can "borrow" a rear bumper from a vehicle in for more serious heavier-duty front-end repair to get at least 1 back in the fleet.
Insurance companies still make you pay for everyone else's coverage.
ref: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/09/05/auto-insu...
So in this case they are basically writing off more value “for free”, because the loss is coming from a genuine loss in value of the asset, but since the asset is a car that may still provide the same amount of value back to Hertz and still last the same amount of time, it’s sort of a weird corner case where you could argue they haven’t really lost anything.
Of course that loss is offset by lower depreciation losses in the future, so it’s not like it’s coming out of nowhere.
For a public company with steady growth I imagine you generally want to amortize losses over a fairly long window. Also if you already had losses this year, and think you’ll grow more in future years, you really don’t want to book more losses now! Hertz has been getting hammered recently. Especially problematic if these are lumpy losses which will make profits less predictable. You’d rather smooth those out and hit your earnings forecast. (At least, that’s the CFO’s mandate.)
It gets even more complex when you consider the interplay with windfalls and rapid growth, but you can probably assume here that they are optimizing for short-to-medium term stock price (1-5 yr). Most CEOs don’t invest in 10yr bets. You might get fired for lackluster growth before that pays off!
More generally, “fiduciary duties” is generally construed pretty loosely. Delaware corporate law defers quite strongly to the corporation; if they can make a coherent argument for why they are benefitting shareholders they tend to get the benefit of the doubt.
The root cause is that batteries are too heavy so other components must be made lighter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_hardening
Other materials have their own issues, but if you cast large pieces of anything you also make it super expensive to replace parts that can't be repaired onsite.
Don't know if the Tesla cars owned by Hertz are built using a Giga Press.
The only thing really of note is that they're not buying more of them, selling off cars that are 2 years (or about 30k miles) or so old is standard rental car policy. Sell it whilst they can recover much of the capital outlay.
It’s important to note that they have been renting half this fleet to Uber drivers at approximately 1/2 their consumer rental rate, according to TheVerge:
> Hertz is scaling back its EV ambitions because its Teslas keep getting damaged / Also, Uber drivers, who are using about half of Hertz’s Teslas, are damaging their cars more than Hertz expected.
And:
> repair costs are about double what the company spends on gas car fixes, Hertz CEO Stephen Scherr told Bloomberg.
Apparently they tried to pull more vehicles into the leisure category (aka consumer rentals not Uber driver rentals) to mitigate repair costs, but it didn’t work.
Also, the price cuts Tesla has been making are turning the company off on renewing:
> Price cuts have taken another toll on Hertz. “The MSRP [manufacturer suggested retail price] declines in EVs over the course of 2023, driven primarily by Tesla, have driven the fair market value of our EVs lower as compared to last year, such that a salvage creates a larger loss and, therefore, greater burden,” Scherr said.
Your analysis seems spot on.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/27/23934691/hertz-tesla-ube...
I honestly can't fault them, they tried a thing and they ran into real issues.
I suspect that Tesla themselves could manage a (smaller) rental EV fleet for those who wanted them, and do decently well (they could rent out used cars they've prepped for sale).
I'm a Gold member through Delta status (which is 1000% better than trying to use Hertz without the status), so they had an upgrade for me - a Tesla Model 3, which was by far the cheapest option.
I live in Utah, drive a (hybrid) F-150, and had never driven a Tesla. It was fun and novel but a PITA to figure out charging (at Disneyland no less).
When returning the car I was a little surprised to see what seemed like hundreds of Teslas on the lot.
We have another SoCal vacation this summer, and I expected to see a Tesla at the top of the list again, but I was surprised to see that it wasn't even an option, and the other EV (I think a Bolt) was 50% more to rent than the standard Jetta. So we got the Jetta /shrug
Even if 10% of the customers would be fine with it (I'd love to rent one to see what it was like) it's not worth bifurcating the fleet.