They would if Tesla had a reputation for build quality, repairability, and reliability. (None of which they have)
Also they don’t allow aftermarket parts which causes parts bottleneck which delay repairs. Additionally they sometimes unilaterally decide to nerf the software on cars that have been resold.
So I’d probably stay away. Shame though. I’m the sort of person who might if the above were different.
On the face of it $14K for a Tesla is a steal. My dad has been coveting mine and I’ve been on the lookout for a cheap used one. I think I will wait a few months to see if any issues shake out before I get one.
The article answers the question in the second paragraph (not that I agree or disagree):
> Hertz initially ordered 100,000 cars from Tesla, but has since pushed back its EV adoption for a multitude of reasons. The company blamed high repair costs and recent price cuts on new Teslas for the decision in an earnings call reported by CNBC.
The repair costs (on the invoice) aren't that much higher than other luxury cars, but rather the issue is how long it takes for the repairs to get done, with both parts availability/delivery times and shop demand issues. That effectively makes it much more expensive to repair a damaged vehicle if their opportunity cost is losing e.g. $100/day in margin. This is mostly just for body work, though - regular automotive diagnosis and repairs are very quick, with the only issue being how far out the appointments might be for your shop depending on demand and availability of repair shops.
$17k before the tax rebate apparently. The cheapest one I available right now is $22,400 with 81,400 miles compared to the MSRP for a new one of $38,000. To me that doesn't sound like that great of a deal. A car, especially an electric car, with that many miles is likely over half way through it's lifespan and it's in the most maintenance heavy half to boot. As someone who always bought used cars I think the used market in general is so bad right now that next time I need a car I'm going to buy new. The value just isn't there like it used to be.
It does seem to be cheaper than other Model 3s with similar mileage that I'm seeing on Carmax so for someone who does want to buy a used Tesla then it's probably worth taking a look.
Last year my son needed a car to get to work and we were shocked at the price of recent used cars. We found a Buick fanatic an hour away and got ourselves a 1996 Park Avenue which at the beginning of the OBD II era so it a modern car in terms of maintenance and having features like airbags, antilock brakes and traction control. We’ve had to make some repairs on it since but it was a great deal.
For me it was a real adventure because I’d never owned an American car.
Right now I am thinking about another automotive adventure which is that you can get a Nissan Leaf with a degraded battery for not much more than the tax credit you can get for buying a used EV. It would still have enough range to drive to work, pick up groceries and that sort of thing if we install a charger at home.
It spent a lot of time in Ohio and only has about 100k miles. We had it up on a lift the other day and the mechanic was amazed at how good the undercarriage was. My son sprayed the bottom with WD-40 which will hopefully protect it from road salt.
We are plugged in a bit to networks that bring cars up from down south, there is a place in Binghamton that sells police cars (and other cars) from southern Pennsylvania which is already a much better environment.
> A car, especially an electric car, with that many miles is likely over half way through it's lifespan and it's in the most maintenance heavy half to boot.
Teslas have shown to last hundreds of thousands of miles. I'm unsure how you've come to the conclusion that one with 80k miles is beyond 50% of it's useful life.
Were those Teslas used as rental cars? Were they charged/discharged aggressively by users unconcerned with longevity?
I rented a Model Y from Hertz. The battery life was suspiciously poor during the 3 or so days I drove it, necessitating multiple trips to a supercharger.
Don't underestimate the abuse from rental customers.
It's a battery and electric motor(s), it doesn't matter if they were primarily fast DC charged and the users beat them up. I have beat the shit out of a 2018 Model S for 110k miles and I've only had to put tires and wiper fluid into it. I have primarily Supercharged it back and forth across the US more times than I can count, and I've only lost ~7% of the 100kw pack range.
> We compared cars that fast charge at least 90% of the time to cars that fast charge less than 10% of the time. In other words, people who almost exclusively fast charge their car and people who very rarely fast charge. The results show no statistically significant difference in range degradation between Teslas that fast charge more than 90% of the time and those that fast charge less than 10% of the time.
I bought a gas car from the last hertz liquidation sale and it’s been great.
I don’t think people abuse rentals as badly as you may think. Even the aggressive charging has only been happening for what, a year? It’s not going to cut the life all that much imo.
Yeah maybe I'm underestimating them in that case. Every other battery powered device I own degrades a lot faster than that but I guess car batteries are higher quality.
The ones which actually last, i.e. toyota/lexus products, have the associated "toyota tax" for their used vehicles. No good discounts going anymore except on dying out sedans
> I think the used market in general is so bad right now
I'm in the same boat, only I've never owned a used car after the one my parents gave me as my first car. But after going through several new cars, I thought I would try the used market. All I'm seeing are not good deals that makes me wonder why anyone would take a 5-10 year old car for not enough of a difference from new to risk the maintenance.
All of these high prices just feels really really artificial to me. I've been around enough dealership owners that it just feels exactly like what they would do. If there was ever a real reason to explain the way the prices shot up, there's no way the dealers were just going to leave money on the table by lower their prices.
COVID interrupted the supply chains for new cars, forcing people who normally wouldn't to buy used cars, which spiked the price of used cars. This is likely to be temporary because, of course, high used car prices will encourage more people to buy new cars now that they're available again, which will in turn ultimately lower the price of used cars by increasing supply. But first the new cars have to get old enough to become used cars.
Leased cars are old enough after 12-24 months. We're far enough in for the 3rd generation of that to have been sold. Twenty four months is also long enough for newer rental cars to come on the market.
My position is that this temporary is being extended because of greedy dealership owners feel like they can vs a lack of inventory. This is based on precedence of the banks not releasing all of the foreclosed properties they still own after the '08 meltdown. Also, I've been to events sponsored by car manufactures rewarding their top dealership owners. There's fewer of them than people would think as these larger owners own multiple dealerships across the country. They absolutely have the opportunity to "talk amongst themselves" while conveniently in the same place to discuss this.
The theory that dealers are going to sit on inventory to keep prices high would have to assume that they're fools.
The banks sat on the properties because they knew the government was going to lower interest rates and otherwise cause the value of the properties to increase from their post-crash low.
For dealerships to keep prices high they would have to purposely sell fewer cars. But selling more cars for high prices is the reason they want prices to stay high -- all they'd be doing is giving the high price sale to another seller. Meanwhile they're paying to store inventory and paying interest on the borrowed money they used to buy it, or foregoing alternate investment returns if it's their own money. Only to continue holding something they could sell for high prices now so that they can wait until the prices come down and sell it for a lower price later?
1) There's a grand conspiracy between all the dealerships in the country where they've all secretly formed a cartel together and have all agreed to all abide by the same artificially high prices.
or
2) There's legitimate economic reasons for prices to be high. If there wasn't, then any single dealership could simply lower their artificially high prices and then make more profit by stealing all the customers away from their competitors and increasing their sales.
Dealerships are essentially cartels already. There's a reason it's illegal for manufacturers to directly sell vehicles, and it's not because the consumers don't want it. It's not because the manufacturers don't want it. What does that leave you?
> makes me wonder why anyone would take a 5-10 year old car for not enough of a difference from new
Here is one reason: New cars are riddled with phone-home spyware. Cars from 10 to 15 years old today are the sweet spot of having everything as modern as you really need, but none of the bad things.
While I'd like to get a good deal on those used cars, I would pay more for them than for a new car if need be. Unless some manufacturer starts building simple cars again, I'm never buying a new car and will keep looking for cars from ~2000 to ~2015 forever.
> A car, especially an electric car, with that many miles is likely over half way through it's lifespan and it's in the most maintenance heavy half to boot
as someone whos never had a car but is interested.. is there a good estimate for what modal maintenance costs look like? is the used car market efficiently priced for accounting for those costs?
Consumer Reports does longitudinal research on car models, their repairs, etc. I don't know if they have a dollar figure for lifetime repairs, but they will have something valuable.
OT: I don't know why Consumer Reports isn't overwhelmingly popular on HN, why their articles aren't regularly on the front page: Empirical, professional, scientific research on consumer products. They have a budget, labs, serious expertise. Also, they are a non-profit serving the public interest with exceptional integrity - they refuse advertising, buy every product they test at retail, even forbid manufacturers from citing CR, etc. It's the HN dream.
I suspect it's a generational thing - for people on HN, Consumer Reports is their parents' publication, a magazine with old-fashioned-looking layout.
I can imagine not being a Consumer Reports, uh, consumer (their user-friendliness wasn’t the best last time I had a subscription), but I can’t imagine not respecting their mission. As far I can tell, their methodology is generally sound and they seem totally incorruptible.
> I can imagine not being a Consumer Reports, uh, consumer (their user-friendliness wasn’t the best last time I had a subscription)
Not to question your preference, but to understand: How can you imagine that? The UI isn't great, but it works: search, click, read. Where else will you find anything like it? Almost all other reviewers seem to be astroturf or bought off, and the more serious prominent ones are someone's opinion trying one, not empircal, objective research.
> is there a good estimate for what modal maintenance costs look like?
This depends heavily on the make and model. Some publications like Consumer Reports will try to estimate this, and this is generally a good way to compare makes and models, but the costs also depend on things like how you drive, where you drive, and where you take the vehicle for repairs.
Maintenance can be a lot less expensive when you do it yourself.
> is the used car market efficiently priced for accounting for those costs?
Definitely not. Used cars are priced based on a large number of factors, maintenance costs being only one, and the buyers (and, for that matter, sellers) generally don't have any better information on it than you do.
That seems to reflect my experience with used rental cars in general.
Remember - this is THEIR TRUE BUSINESS.
Rental car companies traditionally get huge discounts from the manufacturers to buy their cars in volume, and in return the contract says they will not sell them early and/or with little mileage. This would compete with dealers, and degrade the market for new cars.
(I believe not tesla, it seems they didn't get a discount from them for the huge volume purchase?)
So they have to continue renting them out before they can "cash in" and sell the cars to folks who feel comfortable driving a middle-of-the-road car for a little less than a new car but with a warranty.
Not that great a car, not that great a deal, not that much hassle.
What I find interesting is that tesla kept the ev rental market from bottoming out. Early EV's usually had terrible resale values. I remember you could get a nissan leaf for 1/4 of retail after the 3-year lease was up. Tesla managed to keep the early used tesla price high by selling them themselves after the lease was up.
Used cars from rental companies are usually in terrible shape. I might know some people who practiced their handbrake-turn skills in rental cars, among other adventures...
Usually can be applied to any used car category. Usually the bad owners dont maintain their cars. Usually the bad drivers dont care for the car. Usually the bad car manufacturers make bad cars.
I personally whenever rent a car, I try to keep it safe so that I don't incur any damage costs.
Drivera who drive bad, will not go out and rent a car to practice their bad driving thrills. They will do that in any car, rented, yours, mine, their own.
A good driver will drive like a sane person, or reasonable person. Rental or not.
Purchased a MY2018 Ford Fusion Hybrid in mid-2019 with 32k on it that was a former Avis rental, and my first ever car was a 2009 Kia Rio that was an Enterprise rental with around 56k.
Never had a problem with either-or and they both were perfectly cromulent to drive for tens of thousands of miles onwards. The Fusion is still in my home fleet today at 114,000 miles - something around 20k/year, even through the pandemic.
(And for a hybrid battery wear note: I'm still getting 35mpg in the winter and 40-42mpg in the summer in upstate NY.)
I'm surprised the sibling comments have had a good experience. I currently drive a former rental and there were so many issues early on, especially with the transmission.
Anecdotally my friends have had similar experiences with ex rentals. That said, maybe it only comes up because we're bitching about our cars and there are plenty of ex rental lovers out there.
Cars are pretty simple to estimate value on. Take a car, estimate its useful life left, estimate TCO. Compare to new.
If the batteries are good for 200,000 miles and you get one at 75,000, for half the price of new, and you pay cash (financing on used is typically terrible interest rates), then this is an economical purchase. If they require serious repairs other than the battery then maybe it's not economical.
There's some small advantage to buying used, even if it's not the best deal. It's a fixed amount of money for a fixed amount of time (life left). If you hate the car and want to change it, or it gets totaled and insurance won't pay for it, then your financial hit is less than if you had paid full price. Your next car can still be new, or used if you find a better deal. Finally, if you have the means, there's no shame in wasting some money on something you really want.
However, being used, and being a used rental car, are two different things. Buying it from a fleet, at least it would be driven somewhat sanely. But there's no crazier driver than a rental driver.
Exactly, the battery question is what it is all about. I wonder if these Hertz cars will be tracked on Recurrent[0] so you can gauge their battery health
[0] recurrentauto.com, started friends of mine but otherwise no relation
It should basically align with the mileage, if the battery management system is at all reasonable. Like a given battery should be about as healthy as any battery with the same mileage if you make the assumption that the battery management system works.
I'm not sure that's true - temperature is a big factor that's uncorrelated with mileage, as is how frequently the battery depletion beyond the optimal level. There may be other things - I don't own an EV yet so I'm not particularly current on it,
I think used car lots are the biggest users, per se - like a CarFax situation. I think a lot of the relevant data can be pulled off the car's monitoring post (i forget the acronym).
Perfectly fine to buy cars that were rentals. I bought my Mazda 5 used and it came from Enterprise car rental. Still have it now and it’s 9 years old. Nobody aggressively drives a Mazda 5, so we knew it was less likely to have been abused, versus a Mustang.
We tried buying used again, but the deals are terrible. For the first time in my life, had to buy a new car. The days of a 2 year old car, with 60,000 km (37,000 miles) with a 45% discount are gone. We found it was like 15% to 20% discount for 2 year old card…we were only looking at Subaru Foresters in Canada.
I don’t know enough about Teslas, but being ignorant, they are giving you about 50% off a 3 or 4 year old car. It’s on the borderline of a good deal for both parties on paper, but what repairs do you need after 4 years? If the battery needs fixing in 4 years how much is it? Those kind of costs could kill this hot deal. Either way, the math needs to be done. Oh, and you’re probably going to need new tires. Used cars are notorious for coming with crap nearly dead tires. So add that to the price.
I went to the Hertz used car site and couldn't find anything close to the $17k in the screenshots used for all those news articles. They are mostly around $30k.
All the reports talk about Hertz dumping EVs but all the models listed are 2022 and older, how often does Hertz cycle their vehicles? I don't recall renting a car and ever getting anything but 1-2 year old vehicles. Could this just be their normal cycling of inventory?
I could see them choosing to not buy more EVs with the inventory refresh, and that would make sense based on my experience with how they were surprising people with EVs who never asked for them. Being given an EV, especially not a Tesla, and saying "bring it back 80% full" is a horrible experience.
65 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 136 ms ] threadAlso they don’t allow aftermarket parts which causes parts bottleneck which delay repairs. Additionally they sometimes unilaterally decide to nerf the software on cars that have been resold.
So I’d probably stay away. Shame though. I’m the sort of person who might if the above were different.
From the article:
> The cheapest cars depicted have already sold, so the lowest we found at time of publication was $20,500
Edit: It's 24K right now for me.
> Hertz initially ordered 100,000 cars from Tesla, but has since pushed back its EV adoption for a multitude of reasons. The company blamed high repair costs and recent price cuts on new Teslas for the decision in an earnings call reported by CNBC.
It does seem to be cheaper than other Model 3s with similar mileage that I'm seeing on Carmax so for someone who does want to buy a used Tesla then it's probably worth taking a look.
For me it was a real adventure because I’d never owned an American car.
Right now I am thinking about another automotive adventure which is that you can get a Nissan Leaf with a degraded battery for not much more than the tax credit you can get for buying a used EV. It would still have enough range to drive to work, pick up groceries and that sort of thing if we install a charger at home.
We are plugged in a bit to networks that bring cars up from down south, there is a place in Binghamton that sells police cars (and other cars) from southern Pennsylvania which is already a much better environment.
If you leave it plugged in overnight, you'll have a full charge in the morning.
The slow charge offered by a 110v outlet is easier on the battery chemistry as well...
Teslas have shown to last hundreds of thousands of miles. I'm unsure how you've come to the conclusion that one with 80k miles is beyond 50% of it's useful life.
https://shrinkthatfootprint.com/what-is-the-average-tesla-ca...
Even Nissan's CEO has said Leafs are lasting longer than expected, and their battery management (air cooled) is garbage.
https://cleantechnica.com/2022/09/21/surprise-nissan-leaf-ba...
I rented a Model Y from Hertz. The battery life was suspiciously poor during the 3 or so days I drove it, necessitating multiple trips to a supercharger.
Don't underestimate the abuse from rental customers.
https://electrek.co/2023/08/29/tesla-battery-longevity-not-a... ("Tesla battery longevity not affected by frequent Supercharging, study says")
> We compared cars that fast charge at least 90% of the time to cars that fast charge less than 10% of the time. In other words, people who almost exclusively fast charge their car and people who very rarely fast charge. The results show no statistically significant difference in range degradation between Teslas that fast charge more than 90% of the time and those that fast charge less than 10% of the time.
https://www.recurrentauto.com/research/impacts-of-fast-charg...
I don’t think people abuse rentals as badly as you may think. Even the aggressive charging has only been happening for what, a year? It’s not going to cut the life all that much imo.
https://www.batterytechonline.com/charging/report-supercharg...
I'm in the same boat, only I've never owned a used car after the one my parents gave me as my first car. But after going through several new cars, I thought I would try the used market. All I'm seeing are not good deals that makes me wonder why anyone would take a 5-10 year old car for not enough of a difference from new to risk the maintenance.
All of these high prices just feels really really artificial to me. I've been around enough dealership owners that it just feels exactly like what they would do. If there was ever a real reason to explain the way the prices shot up, there's no way the dealers were just going to leave money on the table by lower their prices.
My position is that this temporary is being extended because of greedy dealership owners feel like they can vs a lack of inventory. This is based on precedence of the banks not releasing all of the foreclosed properties they still own after the '08 meltdown. Also, I've been to events sponsored by car manufactures rewarding their top dealership owners. There's fewer of them than people would think as these larger owners own multiple dealerships across the country. They absolutely have the opportunity to "talk amongst themselves" while conveniently in the same place to discuss this.
The banks sat on the properties because they knew the government was going to lower interest rates and otherwise cause the value of the properties to increase from their post-crash low.
For dealerships to keep prices high they would have to purposely sell fewer cars. But selling more cars for high prices is the reason they want prices to stay high -- all they'd be doing is giving the high price sale to another seller. Meanwhile they're paying to store inventory and paying interest on the borrowed money they used to buy it, or foregoing alternate investment returns if it's their own money. Only to continue holding something they could sell for high prices now so that they can wait until the prices come down and sell it for a lower price later?
1) There's a grand conspiracy between all the dealerships in the country where they've all secretly formed a cartel together and have all agreed to all abide by the same artificially high prices.
or
2) There's legitimate economic reasons for prices to be high. If there wasn't, then any single dealership could simply lower their artificially high prices and then make more profit by stealing all the customers away from their competitors and increasing their sales.
Here is one reason: New cars are riddled with phone-home spyware. Cars from 10 to 15 years old today are the sweet spot of having everything as modern as you really need, but none of the bad things.
While I'd like to get a good deal on those used cars, I would pay more for them than for a new car if need be. Unless some manufacturer starts building simple cars again, I'm never buying a new car and will keep looking for cars from ~2000 to ~2015 forever.
as someone whos never had a car but is interested.. is there a good estimate for what modal maintenance costs look like? is the used car market efficiently priced for accounting for those costs?
OT: I don't know why Consumer Reports isn't overwhelmingly popular on HN, why their articles aren't regularly on the front page: Empirical, professional, scientific research on consumer products. They have a budget, labs, serious expertise. Also, they are a non-profit serving the public interest with exceptional integrity - they refuse advertising, buy every product they test at retail, even forbid manufacturers from citing CR, etc. It's the HN dream.
I suspect it's a generational thing - for people on HN, Consumer Reports is their parents' publication, a magazine with old-fashioned-looking layout.
Not to question your preference, but to understand: How can you imagine that? The UI isn't great, but it works: search, click, read. Where else will you find anything like it? Almost all other reviewers seem to be astroturf or bought off, and the more serious prominent ones are someone's opinion trying one, not empircal, objective research.
This depends heavily on the make and model. Some publications like Consumer Reports will try to estimate this, and this is generally a good way to compare makes and models, but the costs also depend on things like how you drive, where you drive, and where you take the vehicle for repairs.
Maintenance can be a lot less expensive when you do it yourself.
> is the used car market efficiently priced for accounting for those costs?
Definitely not. Used cars are priced based on a large number of factors, maintenance costs being only one, and the buyers (and, for that matter, sellers) generally don't have any better information on it than you do.
That seems to reflect my experience with used rental cars in general.
Remember - this is THEIR TRUE BUSINESS.
Rental car companies traditionally get huge discounts from the manufacturers to buy their cars in volume, and in return the contract says they will not sell them early and/or with little mileage. This would compete with dealers, and degrade the market for new cars.
(I believe not tesla, it seems they didn't get a discount from them for the huge volume purchase?)
So they have to continue renting them out before they can "cash in" and sell the cars to folks who feel comfortable driving a middle-of-the-road car for a little less than a new car but with a warranty.
Not that great a car, not that great a deal, not that much hassle.
What I find interesting is that tesla kept the ev rental market from bottoming out. Early EV's usually had terrible resale values. I remember you could get a nissan leaf for 1/4 of retail after the 3-year lease was up. Tesla managed to keep the early used tesla price high by selling them themselves after the lease was up.
Usually can be applied to any used car category. Usually the bad owners dont maintain their cars. Usually the bad drivers dont care for the car. Usually the bad car manufacturers make bad cars.
I personally whenever rent a car, I try to keep it safe so that I don't incur any damage costs.
Drivera who drive bad, will not go out and rent a car to practice their bad driving thrills. They will do that in any car, rented, yours, mine, their own.
A good driver will drive like a sane person, or reasonable person. Rental or not.
Never had a problem with either-or and they both were perfectly cromulent to drive for tens of thousands of miles onwards. The Fusion is still in my home fleet today at 114,000 miles - something around 20k/year, even through the pandemic.
(And for a hybrid battery wear note: I'm still getting 35mpg in the winter and 40-42mpg in the summer in upstate NY.)
Anecdotally my friends have had similar experiences with ex rentals. That said, maybe it only comes up because we're bitching about our cars and there are plenty of ex rental lovers out there.
No. They might have once been the fastest cars on the street, and that's exactly why I don't want them.
If the batteries are good for 200,000 miles and you get one at 75,000, for half the price of new, and you pay cash (financing on used is typically terrible interest rates), then this is an economical purchase. If they require serious repairs other than the battery then maybe it's not economical.
There's some small advantage to buying used, even if it's not the best deal. It's a fixed amount of money for a fixed amount of time (life left). If you hate the car and want to change it, or it gets totaled and insurance won't pay for it, then your financial hit is less than if you had paid full price. Your next car can still be new, or used if you find a better deal. Finally, if you have the means, there's no shame in wasting some money on something you really want.
However, being used, and being a used rental car, are two different things. Buying it from a fleet, at least it would be driven somewhat sanely. But there's no crazier driver than a rental driver.
[0] recurrentauto.com, started friends of mine but otherwise no relation
We tried buying used again, but the deals are terrible. For the first time in my life, had to buy a new car. The days of a 2 year old car, with 60,000 km (37,000 miles) with a 45% discount are gone. We found it was like 15% to 20% discount for 2 year old card…we were only looking at Subaru Foresters in Canada.
I don’t know enough about Teslas, but being ignorant, they are giving you about 50% off a 3 or 4 year old car. It’s on the borderline of a good deal for both parties on paper, but what repairs do you need after 4 years? If the battery needs fixing in 4 years how much is it? Those kind of costs could kill this hot deal. Either way, the math needs to be done. Oh, and you’re probably going to need new tires. Used cars are notorious for coming with crap nearly dead tires. So add that to the price.
I could see them choosing to not buy more EVs with the inventory refresh, and that would make sense based on my experience with how they were surprising people with EVs who never asked for them. Being given an EV, especially not a Tesla, and saying "bring it back 80% full" is a horrible experience.