[HN Gopher] How Hertz's bet on Teslas went sideways
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How Hertz's bet on Teslas went sideways
Author : helsinkiandrew
Score : 178 points
Date : 2024-04-04 11:23 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bloomberg.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bloomberg.com)
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| https://archive.ph/uyTuG
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| We have no car.
|
| We love electric cars.
|
| For convenience we only rent gas powered cars.
| janmo wrote:
| Same here, I only rent cars to do road trips and for this
| purpose an EV is not as convenient as a gas powered car
| paultran wrote:
| In November, I visited USA for a holiday and hired a Hertz
| Model Y for a road trip from Philadelphia - Orlando FL - New
| Orleans - Houston. It was amazing.
| kreetx wrote:
| Forgot "We only do road trips"?
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| We use a car for longer road trips, afternoon trips to the
| islands and for gardening supplies from Home Depot for our
| garden.
| kreetx wrote:
| Do the visits to Home Depot also benefit from using a
| gasoline car somehow, i.e is it far away or there haven't
| been many electric trucks until recently?
| eagerpace wrote:
| " By piling into EVs as car prices were peaking, a fact visible
| at every showroom in the country, the two had made the most
| classic of Wall Street errors, buying high and selling low. "
|
| They also mention at the beginning of the article the numerous
| failed CEOs and attempts to turn around the company over the last
| 20 years.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| They should also mention their plummeting reputation due to
| erroneously reporting rental cars stolen causing innocent
| people to get arrested.
|
| All I need to know about Hertz is that their quality or prices
| are so bad that costcotravel.com does not list them.
| Digit-Al wrote:
| This is mentioned in the article.
| mannykannot wrote:
| The last time we rented from Hertz (and by 'last time', I
| don't just mean just 'most recent') they attempted to invoke
| a bogus 'smoking in the car' penalty, after having taken
| various steps to hide the existence of a residual smoke smell
| before we drove off the lot. Fortunately, we were still in
| the area when the bogus charge appeared on the email receipt,
| and after we confronted the perpetrator's co-workers in
| person (the perpetrator himself conveniently taking a break
| at the time - perhaps smoking in one of their other cars),
| the charge was dropped.
|
| Costcotravel.com is the way we do it now, too.
| adolph wrote:
| > numerous failed CEOs and attempts to turn around the company
|
| Ok, let's say they have been through this cycle annually. That
| would make it about 1/31,536,000 Hertz?
| dzink wrote:
| EVs are great as vehicles. When they are designed simply and
| efficiently, the way Tesla does, they don't need much maintenance
| unless you get in a wreck. But they are not good investment
| assets, which is what Hertz was betting on (likely because at
| that time they didn't go down in value, unlike other cars). Their
| big mistake was not realizing Musk was going for mass-market
| dominance and undercutting the plethora of bad EVs on the market.
| nradov wrote:
| Teslas need a lot of maintenance. They are among the least
| reliable car brands. Just having fewer moving parts isn't
| sufficient to overcome incompetent engineering and sloppy
| assembly.
|
| https://www.truedelta.com/Tesla/brand-reliability-Tesla
| erupt7893 wrote:
| I haven't had to take my Tesla in for any maintenance. My VW
| Golf however needed annual maintenance and taken in to the
| dealer service center. Completely different experience
| babypuncher wrote:
| That is a sample size of 1
| frumper wrote:
| The sample size on that page is something to be looked at.
| The 2017 model 3 has 6 reports. It also appears to be a self
| reporting site. Who is logging on to report, nope, I didn't
| have to fix my car today!
| rainsford wrote:
| It's weird to me that you have to get 60% of the way through the
| article before it unveils the seemingly obvious problem with
| Teslas, or really any EVs, as rental cars...charging. One of the
| major appeals of an EV is that you can charge it at home, a
| benefit that you don't have when you're traveling. And for now at
| least, hunting down a gas station in an unfamiliar area is easier
| and more comfortable for most people than hunting down a charging
| spot.
| pornel wrote:
| That is not true for Tesla which automatically routes via
| charging stations when necessary. Tesla has an exceptionally
| good implementation that even re-routes drivers when chargers
| are busy, and they have top notch reliability.
|
| There's no hunting involved, you go where the nav tells you.
| hmottestad wrote:
| In Norway we have more chargers in the big cities and fewer
| out in the country side or up in the mountains. This means
| that if you rented an electric car for your Easter holidays
| and drove up to the mountains like a lot of other people do
| then you would be routed to a charger with 20 cars in line to
| charge in front of you.
| gnfargbl wrote:
| ...and also means that (a) your battery will be heated ready
| for a fast charge when you arrive, (b) the charger will
| likely actually be in operation, and (c) you can start
| charging your car as soon as you plug in without messing
| around with apps or cards.
|
| Here in the UK at least, you still don't reliably get (b) or
| (c) with non-Tesla chargers. Though that is seemingly
| starting to change.
| alibarber wrote:
| But it still takes time, more so than a petrol car - and when
| you rent a car, that's exactly what you are paying for.
|
| It's fine if that time is while you are asleep, or at your
| destination - but the last thing I wanted to do when
| returning the car before a flight would be to wait for ~30
| mins for the thing to charge up, no matter where the app
| would direct me to.
|
| Logically you'd have a supercharger at the car rental depot
| to try and relieve this problem, but alas, the last time I
| was renting a car, and was considering an electric one from
| Hertz, this was not an option.
| inciampati wrote:
| One fun thing about returning the car less than fully
| charged is that the cost of recharge is just labor. I think
| they billed me $15-25 for it when I left a car without
| fully charging it.
| rainsford wrote:
| It's not so much that chargers are hard to find, whether
| Tesla or otherwise, it's that they're less common and may or
| may not be convenient to where you're staying or where you're
| driving while you're on your trip. If I was going to travel
| somewhere and rent an EV, I'd at least look on Google maps
| first to see where the chargers were, something I've never
| felt the need to do when renting a gas car.
|
| This isn't an insurmountable problem, but most people don't
| like any additional uncertainty when traveling and that extra
| little bit of friction is probably enough to make travelers
| want gas powered cars. But I can also see that changing over
| time as more chargers come on line and especially if hotels
| start becoming reliable charging destinations. If I could
| rent an EV and charge at my hotel, that's way more convenient
| than looking for a gas station.
| cogman10 wrote:
| When I road trip with my EV, I prioritize hotels with
| chargers. While it's getting better, there really is no
| guarantee a hotel has a charger or that it's functional.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I travel a fair amount to mid-sized and smaller towns in
| the midwest. I've never seen an EV charger at a hotel.
| And in larger cities, hotel parking is often by valet.
| cogman10 wrote:
| I'm in the West and it's surprisingly easy to find hotels
| with chargers. Granted, they tend to be hotels like the
| Hilton or Marriott.
|
| Some states are generally just better about it as well.
| Nevada, in particular, has pretty excellent charge
| infrastructure in remote locations.
| gambiting wrote:
| Or that even if it has a charger and it is functional
| that it won't be already in use or blocked by a regular
| car. I've had all of those happen before and it really is
| a crappy idea to rely on chargers in hotels. The only one
| this has worked at really well was a very posh hotel in
| Yorkshire that had a valet, I asked if they can charge my
| car and they did, the car was fully charged the following
| morning when they brought it out - but that's a place
| where the entire charging situation is managed by the
| hotel, so they knew how to do this and I didn't have to
| worry about it. I guess once you throw enough money at a
| problem it's "easy".
| jostmey wrote:
| I'm guessing the problem here is that Hertz didn't have
| chargers. I rented and EV was allowed to return the car with
| 10% battery. The rental, I assume, had a charger on site. It
| was a super great experience. I would not use hertz if I had
| to charge the car upon return, and I say this is a Tesla
| owner knowing how the charging navigation works
| linsomniac wrote:
| >Tesla which automatically routes via charging stations
|
| That's only true in certain situations: longer trips with
| superchargers. If you are renting a Tesla for a trip across
| the country, you're probably golden. If you're renting it for
| bopping around a city, it's not going to work as you propose.
| Even if there's a convenient Supercharger, you're likely to
| be doing enough short trips that you never trigger it to hit
| a supercharger.
|
| On longer trips though: the Supercharger experience has been
| exceptional.
|
| For reference: I've had a Tesla since 2016. Just last weekend
| I was in "the big city" coming home, and turned on navigation
| and it told me "You don't have enough charge to make it", and
| I had to do "navigate to supercharger" instead.
| nullindividual wrote:
| I don't want an exceptional experience recharging a car. I
| want a mundane experience. Just like a gas station is.
| brnt wrote:
| Whenever EV drivers describe their 'charging
| experiences', all I hear is ordeals, whether they think
| it was positive or negative.
|
| It could be so simple: side payment card and done, with
| the only worry being the power output. (Still a worry
| that gasoline doesn't have, but OK, I understand that
| that's a fact of this infrastructure.)
|
| I'm not going to be interested until I am not required to
| install random proprietary apps on my phone to charge,
| but I can just use my payment card.
| JohnFen wrote:
| So much this. Requiring an app (be it on a phone or on
| the car) to use a charger instead of just accepting a
| credit/debit card is a huge problem.
| rpmisms wrote:
| And that's Tesla. I don't even have to use a payment
| card, I just pull up and plug in. No drama, no fuss.
| NewJazz wrote:
| Electrify America chargers work like this.
| mjamesaustin wrote:
| Weird to make this complaint in an article about Teslas,
| when their charging stations work exactly as you hope.
| You just pull up, plug in, and leave when you're done.
| Nothing to install or log in or add payment details.
| recursive wrote:
| With my Ford, I don't need an app or a card. There are
| also chargers that exclusively use cards.
| linsomniac wrote:
| Ok, let's compare experiences:
|
| Gas: I'm driving West across the state of Colorado, I'm
| on I-70 in the mountains, with 2 other vehicles, they get
| dramatically longer range than I do. I can see 1-2 miles
| most of the time. My car tells me it's range, but I have
| no idea where the upcoming petro stations are, I just
| know that they're going to be "pretty frequent". So at 50
| miles I start looking for a station. I pull off, I might
| have to wait, but usually no more than a few minutes,
| usually not. I have to mess around with the credit card
| reader. It's the better part of $100.
|
| Tesla: I tell the car my destination and it tells me
| where I'm going to stop to charge and for how long. I
| pull up, I might have to wait but usually not. I plug in.
| It's free.
|
| Which one is the ordeal?
| brnt wrote:
| Nav systems have been able to get you to gas stations for
| ages?
| stonogo wrote:
| The one where the Tesla's battery system is miscalibrated
| and you run out of power three miles from the charging
| station it was routing you to. I'm a happy EV owner, but
| I'll never rent one again.
|
| Meanwhile, to be fair, you don't need satnav to get to a
| gas station -- I-70 has signs a mile or two before every
| exit telling you which gas stations there are, just like
| the rest of the interstate system. I'd like to see
| another blue sign with charging stations, and which
| businesses you can relax in while you charge!
| treflop wrote:
| Gas: I enter my destination into Google/Apple Maps, see
| my range, and pick a station along the way, preferably
| before I run out of gas.
|
| Excluding Costco, I've waited at a gas station maybe 5
| times in 15 years of driving across the US and in the
| world.
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| > I don't want an exceptional experience recharging a
| car. I want a mundane experience. Just like a gas station
| is.
|
| I understand that but you won't get there by expecting it
| day one. These things take time.
|
| It's amazing to me the Tesla was able to roll out the
| best and most ubiquitous charging network in the US
| despite being a newcomer in a field that had absolutely
| no guarantee of catching on any time soon.
| blinding-streak wrote:
| Gas stations are ubiquitous. Charging stations are not.
|
| You don't need to use any brain power to fill up a gas tank.
| I've never driven an EV before. When I'm on vacation or
| business trip, not sure I'd be in the mindset of learning how
| to find a charging station and charging a car for the first
| time in my life.
| dagw wrote:
| _learning how to find a charging station and charging a
| car_
|
| I'm traveling to a foreign country and renting a car in a
| few weeks and this is the main reason I don't want to rent
| an EV. I know I can work out how gas stations work there, I
| have no idea if can work out how to charge a car (Do I need
| an app? will that app work on a foreign phone? Do I need a
| local address/credit card to create an account with that
| app etc. etc.)
| adolph wrote:
| No problem, just put a cheap gas generator in the back
| seat:
|
| https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1094356_how-to-
| recharge...
| bluGill wrote:
| If you are using Tesla's map. If you have paper directions
| because GPS doesn't get you there (happens all too often to
| some destinations) you won't have that. If you have already
| made the trip 3 times this week (common on a business trip)
| you know the route and may not use GPS anymore.
|
| Gas stations are all over. I have high confidence in most
| places that when I notice the gas gauge is getting low I will
| see a gas station in about 10 minutes without a any detours.
| By contrast EV chargers exist but you will not see every 10
| minutes no matter where you go.
| lupusreal wrote:
| I like to use nav as little as I possibly can. On road trips
| I usually look at the route once in the morning, then turn it
| off and don't look at it again the whole day. Feeling
| tethered to the nav sounds like a total drag.
| mrgoldenbrown wrote:
| If you own a Tesla you might know that and even trust it. As
| a potential renter, I don't know that and will still need to
| make sure there are chargers near where I am headed.
| api wrote:
| There was a giant federal subsidy for charging infrastructure
| in the infrastructure bill that passed a few years ago. I
| wonder how that's going...
|
| https://www.politico.com/news/2023/12/05/congress-ev-charger...
|
| A few months old, but I doubt that much has changed. I think I
| heard a few came online, so that's over $1B per charger. Maybe
| they are made out of solid gold and sculpted by hand.
|
| The problem as usual is that we can't build things anymore.
| This is a civilization scale existential risk problem at this
| point. It's not just EV chargers. I wonder how many decades
| (plural) the Baltimore bridge will take to replace?
|
| Edit: I still don't fully understand _why_ we can 't build
| things anymore. It's tempting to say regulation but the EU has
| a lot more regulation than we do and they at least seem capable
| of building things when they feel like it. Neither China nor
| Russia are paragons of free market liberalism, and they are
| able to build things. India is known for batshit crazy levels
| of bureaucracy and they can build things.
|
| We have some private companies that can execute, of course, but
| overall our society seems to excel at rent extraction and
| delaying things for more rent extraction.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| China obviously can build things, but I don't know how you
| can compare India to the US. It's far more of a shit show
| there, with things getting tied up in courts for even longer
| than the US. And I would not trust the quality as much
| either.
|
| Building things is easier with cheaper labor, fewer
| environmental and safety concerns, and fewer property rights,
| all of which the US does not have anymore.
| api wrote:
| Point taken about India, probably a bad example. As for the
| rest -- EU can build things and has similar labor costs or
| even higher in some cases due to more unions and
| bureaucracy around them. China's labor costs are lower than
| ours but they are no longer bargain-basement-low.
|
| Autocracy certainly makes it easier to build some types of
| things like trains, but EV chargers do not require
| autocratic land appropriation. Hell it'd be pretty easy to
| sell stores and restaurants on allowing them in their
| parking lots because customers are likely to come inside
| and shop or grab a meal while the car is charging. This is
| why you can very often find chargers in a Wal-Mart parking
| lot.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| On this specific issue, I would bet electric vehicles and
| electric chargers are not priorities for swing voters.
| Announcing it might offer some cheap political points,
| but spending the resources to implement and execute it
| might not be seen as worthwhile because at the end of the
| day, most US voters, especially the important ones in
| swing states, don't care.
|
| People are generally happy with the cost and qualities of
| their gas vehicles, or hybrid vehicles. If I was buying a
| car right now, I'd be looking at gas or hybrid too. They
| are proven to work and maintain value for a couple
| decades now. I'll let others beta test EVs for another
| decade. I certainly would not rent one.
| ourmandave wrote:
| The fed set a high bar (97% reliability) and a station every
| 50 miles along interstates.
|
| Then there's state regs with some states (like Ohio) already
| well along before the bill passed.
|
| And you have to plan the network and manufacturers have to
| ramp up.
|
| We can build it fine, eventually.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >Neither China nor Russia are paragons of free market
| liberalism, and they are able to build things.
|
| Dictatorships perform exceedingly well in executing top-down
| schemes.
|
| In the lands of the free that is the US and most of the
| western world, we can pass laws and dangle bags of cash to
| entice society, but the executive can't do much beyond
| begging for everyone to please spend the cash before the
| legislature comes to ask questions.
|
| Meanwhile over in the land of the dictators, if the dictator
| wants five bajillion chargers by tomorrow then _bah gawd_ you
| will build five bajillion chargers by tomorrow because _you
| won 't exist tomorrow_ if you don't.
| _heimdall wrote:
| The major caveat here is that dictatorships (and similar)
| are entirely dependent on the assumption that the few at
| the top will largely make the right decision for all of
| their society. By cutting out everyone else they lose
| diversity of thought and experience and risk failing
| miserably when the dictator(s) make the wrong choice.
| bluGill wrote:
| Most often the dictator is making the right decision for
| their personal life. IF they build anything useful for
| the people at all it is because they want to avoid a riot
| (bad for their personal life), or what a monument for how
| great they are.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| That sounds like a rather benevolent "dictatorship." I
| wouldn't expect the "average dictator" to give two shits
| what people want.
| _heimdall wrote:
| Well personally I'm pretty cynical, I also don't expect
| much benevolence from a dictator. There are examples of
| it in history though.
|
| While I don't want to live under a dictatorship, I'd
| argue that a dictator will only be as good as the system
| that put them into power. A huge issue we have today in
| the US is that our political system is so broken and
| corrupt that the only people willing to work their way to
| the top are ones we likely wouldn't want to have power.
| It may be a democracy of sorts, but if the system is
| broken the leadership will match regardless of how
| many/few are in charge.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| For what its worth the average dictator is even more
| concerned with public approval (or the facade of public
| approval) than their democratically elected colleagues.
| They know their rule rests on a foundation built in sand,
| unlike a democratically elected politician that has the
| legitimacy of their institution and can expect to be in
| power until at least the end of their term.
|
| I didn't say this very well, but this is genuinely a well
| studied area in Political Science.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| That does make sense though.
| ksherlock wrote:
| As of last week, 7.
|
| https://www.msn.com/en-
| us/news/politics/biden-s-75-billion-i...
| roneythomas6 wrote:
| Well when congress passed the bill they have allocated 7.5
| billion for charging infrastructure. They haven't fully spend
| the money. Of which 5 billion is towards states to apply for
| the funding. States need to apply for this. So far only
| Hawaii, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania have applied and
| built their stations(7 stations in total for 38 stalls)
| another 4 states have also applied and is under construction.
|
| Twelve additional states have awarded contracts for
| constructing the charging stations. Then you have 17 states
| that have not yet issued proposals.
|
| The remaining 2.5 billion is allocated for DoE, which will
| allocate funding based on proposals it receives.
| bluGill wrote:
| 7.5 billion sounds like a lot of money, but even at the
| most reasonable costs it doesn't build many charging
| stations. You need to buy land, the chargers, install
| electric service to the land, install the chargers, build
| the parking spaces - that is at minimum. Realistically you
| really should be building restrooms and something to do
| while waiting for the charge (think play ground and walking
| path - though stores and restaurants are also useful)
| roneythomas6 wrote:
| These are grants and isn't meant to fully cover the cost.
| Depending on who is going to own the station. They also
| need to chip in the cost. Just like how EV tax credit
| works.
| foobarxyzzy wrote:
| To say that the EU has more regulation is not necessarily
| true. Let me give you an example. Suppose that i want to
| create a custom cellular device to control some process in
| the field. In the EU I pretty much just need to get a CE
| mark, whereas in the US, I need: - FCC - UL or ETL (now this
| is "voluntary" but if you deploy a non listed product in to
| some environements, you will be taking your company's life in
| your hands - PTCRB - this is a cellular industry
| certification - carrier approval for each carrier that i want
| to deploy on (verizon, etc)
|
| Now some will rightly point out that there are faster ways of
| doing the above like using modules with modular
| certification, but you need to pay $$$ for this.
|
| Folks don't see UL, PTCRB and carrier approvals as
| "regulations" because they are not government mandated.
| However, they are just as detrimental to innovation as
| anything that is driven by government.
|
| As a developer of technology products, I also see more and
| more that US customers are terrified of custom hardware, or
| even anything physical - they just want to create cloud-based
| software systems that site in a datacenter that they do not
| own, running on virtual servers. They are often quite happy
| to give loads of margin over to folks selling and installing
| off-the-shelf hardware solutions that are often sub-optimal
| in terms of functionality, just so they can stay away from
| the scary physical stuff.
| bluGill wrote:
| We can build things when we want. However we have noticed
| that just building isn't always right. Urbanists often point
| to what Robert Moses did to New York City - he was able to
| build and he built a lot, but in order to build a lot he
| bulldozed a lot of the city which people object to, and many
| think he built the wrong things. So we put roadblocks in
| place to ensure there is more time to object should someone
| like him come along. Of course that means things we should
| build don't get built.
|
| The other half of this is often we do not want. Many things
| that you think we should want to build are not important to
| the people in charge, and so they don't do anything. What
| matters to congress isn't that we build something it is that
| we use a lot of consultants and union jobs to build it - both
| those groups donate a lot to campaigns. (I call this
| corruption - you decide what you think). Note that congress
| doesn't care care what gets built in the end of it serves a
| useful purpose, just that we use a lot of consultants and
| union labor to build it. Blow up the costs by building a
| massive monument - this looks great at the ribbon cutting so
| congress loves it never mind that the costs mean we can't
| build very much.
| beastman82 wrote:
| Have you read a recipe on the Internet? The first half is all
| filler. Not sure why but it's a plague
| rainsford wrote:
| Recipe blogs were the first thing I thought of! At least most
| of those have a link at the top to jump right to the recipe.
| vlan0 wrote:
| >Not sure why but it's a plague
|
| Perceived SEO
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| true-ish, but also because lots of scrolling means you can
| throw tons of ads before you reach actual recipe
| measurements
| rchowe wrote:
| Recipes aren't copyrightable, so websites add some filler
| that is copyrightable to the start.
| Am4TIfIsER0ppos wrote:
| So just copy the part that is without copyright somewhere
| else.
| yowzadave wrote:
| Why would anyone want to steal the filler? I had assumed
| people did this for some inscrutable SEO reason
| ghaff wrote:
| A barebones recipe is a complete commodity on the
| Internet and aside from maybe some ratings you have no
| idea if you should make it or not. The life history on
| some sites can definitely go too far but mostly I
| appreciate some of the backstory about why they made
| certain choices in a recipe and what else they tried.
| rekoil wrote:
| Yeah, what they needed was for there to be enough chargers at
| every conceivable location their customers might stay the night
| at, otherwise it's just a nuisance to the customer.
|
| If all hotels had as many charging spots as they did hotel
| rooms then no issue, but as soon as they don't then customers
| end up needing to spend a bunch of time at charging stations
| unnecessarily.
|
| That might still be a problem if they're driving farther than
| half the range of the EVs, but it's extra troublesome if they
| can't even get a full charge overnight, or if they're picking
| the vehicles up not fully charged.
| martini333 wrote:
| I bought the cheapest (shortest range) Tesla. I can charge at
| home. The money I save, I will use for renting ICE for roadtrips.
| speedgoose wrote:
| But then you have to drive a fossil car for road trips.
| bluedevil2k wrote:
| EVs undercut one of the main 2 revenue streams of rental car
| companies - gouging people on gas charges when they don't fill
| the tank up themselves. (The other being overpriced insurance). I
| recently returned an electric rental car to Hertz without
| charging it. It cost $15 extra. To me, that price is low enough
| I'd likely never charge it before returning it.
| ourmandave wrote:
| $15 to skip finding a fast charging station and not wait around
| the 20+ minutes (assuming no waiting line)?
|
| It's like they're paying you not to charge it.
| bdcravens wrote:
| Does Hertz charge an additional fee if the charge is below a
| certain level? I know many renting on Turo do if the charge is
| below 20%, even those with the fee to return without charging.
| kristjansson wrote:
| But based on other comments, it sounds like they're not
| actually charging before sending the car out again, so $15 is
| just a pure gouge, with no relation to the actual cost of
| charging
| ianferrel wrote:
| Most places won't actually put gas in a car you bring back
| with less gas in it either, they just mark that it's at 3/4
| or 1/2 a tank and you need to bring it back with the same
| amount of gas or they charge you.
|
| And presumably it's just pure gouge often because people will
| overfill.
| reacharavindh wrote:
| It is interesting that a bunch of finacial careeerists decided to
| jump on EVs without thinking - "Hey, we are going to need
| chargers as convenient as gas stations, or else people wont use
| them!".
|
| In an alternative world, Hertz could have become _the_ EV rental
| company if they turned every rental office they have in the US to
| a fast charging center, and told customers "Look, just drive this
| thing and dont worry about returning it at a certain charge
| level". Such an action could have actually had a positive impact.
|
| Instead they focussed on "technology that will automatically open
| the doors for the users, adjust their seats, adds their favorite
| playlist"... I mean... Darwinism and all.
| mcculley wrote:
| They also should have made deals with hotels. When I travel for
| business, I'm not going to allow for delays for finding and
| waiting for charging stations. They should have made a deal
| with Hampton Inn. Hertz kept trying to push EVs on me and I
| kept asking where I would charge them and the clerks had no
| idea.
| thegrim000 wrote:
| I wonder how much they paid Tom Brady to be their spokesperson.
| They decided to market their EVs by just having a celebrity act
| cool/funny. Not by, you know, telling the customer why it's a
| good value, or why to choose their vehicles/service, or any
| positive aspects of their business. No, their strategy was to
| just push out commercials where Tom Brady would do something
| stupid/funny like have a power cable plugged into him, to
| promote EVs. It's so baffling to me that that is the strategy
| of a multi-billion dollar corporation. It's also depressing to
| think that it probably does work on at least some portion of
| the population. But apparently not nearly enough.
| bbarnett wrote:
| I don't necessarily see a link to the advertising and the
| borkedness of this rollout.
|
| After all, commercials are very often just like this. Sadly,
| a vast majority of people have no interest in real
| information, and to be fair, the main purpose of a commercial
| is to stick the brand in mind.
|
| And as memory is amplified by emotion, humour helps.
|
| The real problem is range anxiety I think. PHEV is what we
| need now, as a transition path. With one, people can plug in
| for almost all uses, and still be OK if surprise usage means
| they won't have charge.
|
| Other comments in this thread highlight this. Primary,
| because when traveling you have no idea about the local
| infra.
|
| Where can you charge? What companies are cost effective? What
| hotels support charging, and for real, not just saying so on
| their website.. but only having one or two of them?
|
| When you travel, all the knowledge which makes EV usage at
| home easier, are gone.
|
| And so Hertz should have done PHEV.
| sbrother wrote:
| Do you know why there aren't any PHEVs with a more
| reasonable electric range? Something like a 100 mile range
| with backup gas tank would let my family do most of our
| driving on the electric battery while still being a usable
| car for roadtrips. But nothing like that seems to exist.
| bbarnett wrote:
| They ae improving, as battery tech improves. Some now
| boast almost 70 miles, whereas 35 miles was common a
| decade ago.
| cogman10 wrote:
| They didn't even install chargers at their own parking lots.
| The end result is getting an EV from them would easily mean
| getting a flat battery if the previous driver didn't charge it
| or the car was in the lot for a while.
|
| The cheese brains thought just having an EV on the lot was all
| that was needed and that they could charge ice prices for
| things like half filled batteries.
|
| I drive an EV and would not rent one from Hertz.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| I got a plug-in hybrid from Hertz a month ago. Delivered with
| a full tank of gas an a 100% empty battery...
|
| Good thing I noticed it and charged it with my own charger
| before going for a trip.
| rwmj wrote:
| I'm a bit confused, isn't the point of a PHEV that the
| battery charge is optional?
| SR2Z wrote:
| Optional, but a full charge saves around $10 of gas
| depending on the PHEV.
| alt227 wrote:
| How much does a full charge of electricity cost in order
| to save $10 of gas?
| gambiting wrote:
| My Volvo XC60 costs about PS1.50 to fully charge(at home)
| and easily saves ~PS6 in fuel cost for the amount of
| miles you can cover. I drive daily and fill up every 2-3k
| miles on average, it's a massive saving over a regular
| car(for me anyway).
|
| But even if it didn't save us any money, it's still worth
| charging as driving in EV mode is just such a luxurious
| experience, it's completely quiet inside and that's what
| elevates the whole experience. If you don't care about
| it, why buy/rent an PHEV in the first place lol.
| saalweachter wrote:
| PHEVs tend to have 10-20 kWh batteries.
| eclarkso wrote:
| That is impossible to say in a general way but generally
| speaking: significantly less.
|
| On our PHEV minivan, the electric range is ~30mi, and
| costs ~$1.50 in electricity (12 kWh usable, ~13c/kWh). On
| gas, it's ~$3. (30 mi/g, $3/g). Some places you'll save
| substantially more (cheaper electricity, more expensive
| gas) or less (vice versa).
| emilecantin wrote:
| Spotted the Pacifica driver ;-)
|
| And yeah the calculation varies, here in Quebec it's
| about $1.20 CAD to charge it at home(10C//kWh), and about
| twice that to charge it at a public L2 charger (1$/hour).
| I save about 4 liters of fuel with that. Fuel right now
| is ~1.60 so I end up saving around $5 everytime I charge.
|
| Adds up pretty quick, and the vehicle is actually cheaper
| to purchase initially because of the government
| subsidies. Makes me wonder every time I see a gas
| Pacifica...
| sokoloff wrote:
| Sounds like you'd have to do 7 full PHEV battery cycles
| to save the upthread $10. (I'm pretty sure your math is
| correct and upthread claim is... _optimistic_.)
| theshrike79 wrote:
| Gas costs about 2EUR/litre here. So if we go by that,
| you'll get 5 litres for 10EUR. That'll take the average
| gasoline powered family car around 100km.
|
| The current price for electricity is 0,07EUR/kWh. My car
| uses 15kWh per 100km on average, which costs me 1,05EUR.
|
| That's 90% cheaper and as such a complete no-brainer on
| which to choose.
|
| Same goes for PHEVs, driving on electric is just so much
| cheaper it's not even funny.
| RadixDLT wrote:
| pure greed
| IlliOnato wrote:
| Comparing to the following, chargers might not be the biggest
| issue...
|
| > Sometimes the kludgy system erroneously showed cars as
| missing, resulting in hundreds of innocent Hertz customers
| getting arrested on charges of stealing rentals they'd
| actually returned.
| r00fus wrote:
| I got a "free upgrade" from Enterprise to an EV with 20%
| remaining battery. I took it because I knew I had L2 spots at
| my hotel and wasn't driving much anyway.
|
| So it's not just Hertz.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| I disagree. The problem with Hertz is I primarily interact when
| them after flying. They're always at some terribly inconvenient
| lot near the airport that takes a long time to get too.
| mrgoldenbrown wrote:
| That is normal with most companies at most airports in my
| experience, (in major cities in the US). Phoenix was nice
| because it had a train from the terminal to the rental lots,
| but usually IME it's a shuttle bus .
| ghaff wrote:
| I'm not sure the last time I flew into a US city of any
| size that you _didn 't_ have to take a bus or other
| transport to the rental car center.
| nunez wrote:
| The article says they tried to do exactly this but many of
| their largest locations (like Newark-Liberty International
| Airport) didn't have the infrastructure to accommodate that.
|
| That said, many Hertz locations do have way more chargers than
| they did before starting this gambit.
| mr_coffee wrote:
| This is such a terrible take. In any market with Chicken or Egg
| problem, someone needs to move first. Sure, they could have
| been more conservative in their approach (easy to see in
| hindsight), but to say they jumped in "without thinking" is
| pure nonsense.
| JALTU wrote:
| No, because the first lesson in bankruptcy clearly didn't
| Darwinize any of them manage by numbers, 1-2-3 peeps...(easy as
| a,b,c - thank you Sting) ;-)
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Doings this would deny the reality of the car rental customer.
| People don't rent cars to commute between their house and work,
| or to run errands around town. They are travelers. Either they
| are renting the vehicle to get from A to B during a vacation or
| such, or they are from out of town and need the vehicle to
| travel between the airport to the hotel/relative's house where
| they are staying. Neither of those groups will have ready
| access to chargers, nor do they want to drive all the way back
| to Hertz to charge the car.
|
| Rental cars are just not a good match for EVs. The best are use
| cases involving repeated short trips to known locations such as
| mail/Amazon delivery, school busses and commuters. Suburbia is
| where EVs thrive, the land of owned private charging stations
| and routine short commutes. EVs are not suited for hurried
| tourists.
| Retric wrote:
| I think you're overestimating what most car rentals are used
| for. Often it someone that just got into an accident and
| needs a car while the body shop fixes the issue or they shop
| for a new car. As such it is driving to work or doing errands
| is common and an EV owner may simply prefer an EV.
|
| Even for vacations you don't really need level 2 chargers at
| most locations. A normal outlet can take a model 3 from near
| zero to full over a long weekend let alone a fast charger.
| Many camping stops even have RV hookups which are much
| faster.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Maybe I just have a warped view of the market. I use rental
| cars about a dozen times a year. Inevitably, I am picking
| up the car at the airport, at midnight, and then driving
| 100 miles to the place I need to be. In a few weeks I am
| going with a team to the UK. They have us landing at
| Heathrow, picking up five rental cars, and then driving
| three hours north. (That was deemed cheaper than a more
| direct flight.) There is absolutely no way I would accept
| EVs for this trip as I have zero confidence that we would
| have access to chargers. We normally end up fighting just
| to get our cellphones working properly. Paying for parking
| with an out-of-country credit card is bad enough. I don't
| want to attempt getting a charging station working after
| midnight, in the rain, after already spending a dozen hours
| on planes.
| iknowstuff wrote:
| Teslas don't have issues with superchargers, they're
| billed straight to Hertz and reflected on your final
| bill. They're everywhere.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> They're everywhere.
|
| Lol. Maybe in the UK or California. Google maps tells me
| the nearest Tesla charger to my apartment is 114 miles
| away, as the crow flies.
| Retric wrote:
| > Then driving 100 miles to the place I need to be.
|
| Driving 100 miles in an EV isn't even close to needing a
| recharge. The UK is covered in chargers and 3 hours is
| again fine on a single charge for any decent EV. So what
| exactly is your concern here?
| alibarber wrote:
| This was almost exactly my last UK rental car experience
| - something like 4 hours north (380 miles). For some
| reason I booked an electric car first, and then saw sense
| and changed my mind.
|
| People claim that the UK is covered in chargers - but all
| the big ones seemed to be at least about 20 mins off of
| the motorway, then waiting to charge, then driving back
| to the motorway (burning up the charge to get there and
| back). On my holiday too, there's a long list of things
| I'd rather be doing.
|
| I was there last week too (not driving) and I saw so many
| 'chargers' in public car parks that were just either
| covered up or needed some specific app to work - no way
| to use a credit card.
|
| The whole thing is improving and if you had a house in
| which you could fit a proper charger then owning an
| electric car wouldn't be too bad, but actually renting
| one and driving it on a long trip - no way. It's not
| specifically the UK either, I'd say the same for most
| places I've been in and had a need to rent a car.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Surely cars are rented far, far more often for travel
| reasons than car repair reasons.
|
| I think I've only ever rented a car for car repair
| [mechanical or body] reasons once, at that was a mechanical
| breakdown while I was about 350 miles from home, so I had
| to leave it at a shop and rent a car to continue the trip.
| Meanwhile, I've rented cars almost once a month for
| business or personal travel reasons.
| Retric wrote:
| There's 6.1 million police reported vehicle accidents in
| the US each year with most involving more than 1
| vehicles. Average to say 1 car for 1.5 weeks for 6
| million accidents which then cluster around snowstorms
| etc and you easily need 200,000+ rental cars just for
| that purpose.
|
| But let's take your use case, how many of those involved
| driving more than 300 miles per day? Or even total?
| sokoloff wrote:
| US passenger embarkations are around 800 million per
| year. For business travelers, that's likely a car rental
| per 4 flights maximum (most of mine are one rental per
| two flights). For leisure travel, it might be one per 10
| flights (families probably rent only one car and might be
| more willing to take connecting flights to save money). I
| think these are orders of magnitude more common in use
| case than car repair related rentals.
|
| > But let's take your use case, how many of those
| involved driving more than 300 miles per day? Or even
| total?
|
| Less than 10% of them. We would sometimes fly into one
| city and drive around a country or into Fort Lauderdale,
| rent a car, drive to Key West, and make our way back over
| the following week. But even if I don't drive more than
| an EV's range, I would still need to be certain that the
| EV left Hertz fully charged and that Hertz was OK with me
| bringing it back empty. The former sure doesn't seem to
| be happening based on discussions in this page and if
| they allow the latter, the former becomes harder to
| ensure.
|
| (I daily drive an EV, have for almost a decade, and love
| it. Even _I_ don 't want to rent an EV when I travel.)
| Retric wrote:
| Hertz completely fucked up renting an EV. There's zero
| question about that, but pick one up at 80+% bring it
| back at 5% should definitely be the plan to pull it off
| successfully. If you can't guarantee the car is mostly
| charged I'm not going to rent an EV.
|
| > per 4 flights
|
| > it might be one per 10 flights.
|
| Both of those seem like massive overestimates to me. I've
| flown for business and pleasure and never rented a car
| after flying. My sister probably does 100 flights a year
| and rents a car once or twice when traveling with her
| husband. I know plenty of people who've completely given
| up on renting a car on vacation.
|
| Uber or public transit is just far less of a hassle, and
| when visiting family why have a car? Run the numbers for
| 1.5 hour long Uber ride vs 4 day car rental and you might
| as well just relax.
|
| Further most travelers aren't going to rent for as long.
| Few business travelers are going to use a car for a full
| week but repairs or finding a new car takes a while.
| alibarber wrote:
| > I think you're overestimating what most car rentals are
| used for.
|
| The fact that most large international airports, worldwide,
| have absolutely huge car rental operations on site, along
| with partnerships with airlines, hotels and such, to me
| suggests something different.
| organsnyder wrote:
| When I rent a car, it's rare that I use more than a tank of
| gas or full charge. The only time I need to refuel is when
| I'm returning it to the rental company.
| Shawnj2 wrote:
| It's not as practical for the rental company to deal with
| the car as a gas one though
| jccooper wrote:
| Travelers are in a particularly poor position for charging.
| You're on a schedule, you don't have the accounts, you don't
| know where things are, you don't know how the car works, etc.
| But your latter group is a fine match for an EV. I'm not
| going to do 300 miles driving from the airport to the
| convention hotel and back. As long as you don't have to
| charge it before you bring it back, there's no problem.
|
| I've done this before. Different country, car brand I've
| never seen, never even charged a car before. But my travel
| itinerary was less than the range, and it was fine. (I tried
| for fun to charge in a garage in Bruges; could not figure it
| out. Good thing I didn't need to.)
|
| It's not appropriate for every rental, and there's some
| customer information and education requirements that are new
| because of that, but it's quite plausible to have a decent
| portion of a rental fleet be electric.
| macspoofing wrote:
| >In an alternative world, Hertz could have become _the_ EV
| rental company if they turned every rental office they have in
| the US to a fast charging center, and told customers "Look,
| just drive this thing and dont worry about returning it at a
| certain charge level". Such an action could have actually had a
| positive impact.
|
| I think you just demonstrated exactly the thinking that got
| them into trouble. EV rental business, turns out, has
| superficial benefits, but major underlying issues. They failed
| because of the basic economics of EV rentals: maintenance costs
| and depreciation. Also, there are massive challenges with
| building out a charging network as well. And yes, they pretty
| much have to give the option to customers to not return car
| fully charged, especially business customers. For business,
| taking 15 minutes to tank up is reason enough to overpay for
| the option to not do that, and that's 15 minutes - for EVs,
| charging up is a 3 hour exercise. Who would sit at a charging
| station for 3 hours (so now you need to be 5-6 hours before
| your flight at the airport?)?
|
| >Instead they focussed on "technology that will automatically
| open the doors for the users, adjust their seats, adds their
| favorite playlist"... I mean
|
| They didn't fail because of that.
| jandrese wrote:
| A 3 hour charge is pretty far out of the norm in the modern
| world. Most EVs will go from 20-80% in 20 minutes or so if
| you're at a reasonably modern fast charger.
|
| I think a big part of the problem is that Hertz did a
| terrible job of instructing people new to EVs about the
| quirks of the platform. Charging to 100% is almost never
| necessary or even a good idea. It takes so much time that
| you're better off just making one more charging stop instead.
| The built-in computer in the cars is excellent at figuring
| out where to charge and even does stuff like pre-warm the
| batteries right before you arrive to make the charging go as
| smoothly as possible. But of course if Hertz doesn't tell you
| this you instead have a panic attack as you suddenly realize
| you have no idea how to find a charger in your area. It
| doesn't help that there are two competing standards currently
| so you have to know which kind of plug your car has and where
| the available chargers are. Of course the on-board computer
| has all of that information, assuming you know to ask.
|
| Given how many stories there are of people wandering around
| looking for chargers, it is clear that Hertz did a terrible
| job of informing customers of how their cars worked.
| elevatedastalt wrote:
| The problem is these companies ask you to return the car at
| at least 70%. Or levy a 20-30 dollar charging fee. So that
| only leaves say 10% of margin between the optimal charging
| level (80%) and the minimum level at return. I won't want
| to take the risk of being charged a charging fee and so
| will instead try to over-charge.
|
| I am ok if they charge reasonable rates (like say $2 per
| 10% of battery) for the recharge. But that's not what they
| do.
| macspoofing wrote:
| >Given how many stories there are of people wandering
| around looking for chargers, it is clear that Hertz did a
| terrible job of informing customers of how their cars
| worked.
|
| If that was the core issue, that's solvable. They didn't
| fail because of that either.
| jccooper wrote:
| > They failed because of the basic economics of EV rentals:
| maintenance costs and depreciation
|
| That sounds like a Tesla problem, not an EV problem.
|
| There's no particular need for body work on an EV to be
| particularly expensive, and the depreciation issue is from
| Tesla changing their new prices.
| ypzhang2 wrote:
| They did think about it and that was their plan? It would be
| helpful not to strawman arguments that can be directly refute
| by reading the article.
|
| It didn't work out because of real world execution is harder
| than just saying that they are going to do it.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| In the real world, commercial fleets (lease cars, uber drivers,
| delivery vans, buses, and increasingly trucks, etc.) are
| electrifying very rapidly. Reason: the economics have proven to
| be better. That debate was over years ago and it was very
| brief. Most car leasing companies are pretty much done
| switching to EVs at this point. TCO is way better for them. The
| market is bottle-necked on production volume. There is no
| demand problem for EVs at the right price point. Of course
| there are some manufacturers unable to meet those price points.
| And there are lots of attractively priced products in the
| market now.
|
| What went wrong with Tesla and Hertz relates to poor financial
| planning, poor execution combined with a Tesla specific problem
| of poor repairability. All of that is fixable. But maybe Teslas
| aren't the ideal vehicle for this. Having driven rentals,
| people using their bumpers for bumping into things is something
| that is a given. When those bumpers are really expensive to
| repair/replace, you have a problem.
|
| Charging infrastructure is actually a minor issue. The real
| issue is drivers having to figure things out for the first time
| in a rental car. That pain is easily offset by the low cost of
| charging. But of course you have to make that matter for the
| user and really deliver on that.
|
| Hertz made a mistake there by not just including that in the
| rental price. Just plug it in and don't worry about it.
| Electricity is cheap and Hertz is charging a premium so what
| are we talking about here? They should have just done a deal
| with Tesla on this. Tesla actually used to do include free
| charging and it helped them grow their customer base
| enormously. Don't worry about returning the car with a charge
| either. Herz can plug it in while they clean the vehicle. And
| so what if it isn't at 100% charge? Probably better for the
| battery if it isn't. This is both simple to do and it totally
| removes charging as a friction point because it is cheap, easy,
| hassle free and there's no pressure to top it up.
| silverlyra wrote:
| > Hertz could have become _the_ EV rental company if they
| turned every rental office they have in the US to a fast
| charging center
|
| They did build out fast charging - but at some locations, the
| local electric utility couldn't support it:
|
| > While the company had installed its own charging network as
| part of the electrification push that started in 2021, some
| older airports, such as New Jersey's Newark, don't get enough
| power from the electricity grid or lack the infrastructure to
| support the number of so-called Superchargers that Hertz needed
| to get EVs back on the road in a half-hour or less. Once a
| Tesla was returned to those locations, Hertz employees often
| had to drive them for miles to find a Supercharger[...]
|
| The image of Hertz staff driving around Jersey, searching for
| an open supercharger any time a Tesla needed a fast turnaround
| ... tragicomedy.
|
| I would think that only a gradual pilot rollout of Tesla
| rentals could have saved this from getting out of hand. Instead
| they ordered 100,000 full-price Teslas, and congratulated
| themselves on getting a lock on a market ... a market which
| proved to be much smaller and more expensive to serve than
| they'd imagined.
| josefresco wrote:
| About Scherr:
|
| "One former colleague said he had off-the-charts "EQ and IQ."
|
| "Scherr didn't want to give up his New York existence and move to
| Florida, where Hertz was based, and the board agreed that was
| fine"
|
| About West:
|
| "In December, GM dismissed him along with eight other executives
| in the struggling unit"
|
| About O'Hara:
|
| "The warnings Wagner and O'Hara had brushed off were proving all
| too prescient."
|
| "Meanwhile, little of the $150 million in profit O'Hara forecast
| from rentals through Amex GBT had materialized, and O'Hara
| himself had moved to Italy"
|
| What a joke these men are.
|
| Mark Cuban often says on Shark Tank that every billionaire is
| just incredibly lucky and that luck doesn't translate to
| knowledge in another field. Yet year after year people give these
| "smart" men (mostly investment bankers) the reins of failing
| companies that fail even harder under their watch and they just
| golden parachute their way to another grift.
|
| And the two "successes"? No numbers of course, just vague
| statements like this:
|
| "Uber drivers have put more than 1 billion miles on EVs rented
| from Hertz. Carvana has helped the company recover more value
| from used vehicles."
| toddmorey wrote:
| People may like the Tesla ownership experience, but it makes a
| bad rental experience because everything about the car is so
| different.
|
| How do you unlock it? Turn it on? Put it in reverse? Use the turn
| signal? Open the door from inside? Etc. All need to be learned;
| all unlike other cars.
| altcognito wrote:
| I've had this experience with ICE (luxury) vehicles as well,
| but Tesla does take it to an extteme
| rekoil wrote:
| You could conceivably do unlocking and turning it on by simply
| having the Hertz app installed on a smartphone that's new
| enough (last 10 years should be enough to ensure it has all the
| features necessary). The app would also always know where the
| car is, how much range it has, all useful information and
| conveniently available from the rental company app.
|
| Agreed on the other points though, EVs are very different to
| what ICE drivers are used to.
| tekla wrote:
| It takes about 10m to figure it out. I rented a Tesla, was
| confused for a few minutes, and then no problems for a 2000
| mile road trip.
| bangaladore wrote:
| To be clear, every single Tesla that Hertz owned/owns has a
| standard turn signal/drive, reverse stalk.
|
| Others I agree with.
| edude03 wrote:
| Tesla as a company has only existed for 10 years and the
| current design language 5? years or so. Anyone old enough to
| drive would have experienced gas cars and the norms there, but
| we're also starting to see people get a Tesla as their first
| car.
|
| As the population ages, maybe the current "Tesla norms" will
| become "car norms" and this will be a moot point.
| JCM9 wrote:
| So basically a couple of finance bros thought they could make a
| killing by buying Hertz cheap at auction and then doing the old
| pump and dump with the company. Turns out they weren't actually
| very good at running a business and made a huge mess of things.
| While renting cars is sort of a stodgy boring business turns out
| it's boring for a reason... because that's what works.
| horns4lyfe wrote:
| But my MBA!
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _But my MBA!_
|
| Scherr is a lawyer [1].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Scherr#Education
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| This guy is 0 for 2 in the last decade (from Goldman's
| disappointment in Marcus and its deal with Apple):
|
| > In 2016, Scherr led Goldman Sachs' launch of consumer
| banking, branded as Marcus.[3] He also served as CFO during
| the firm's launch of AppleCard, in partnership with Apple,
| Inc., in 2019.[8][9]
| epgui wrote:
| This was not a pump and dump, it was merely poor performance.
| kekeblom wrote:
| The one thing that is painfully obvious to anyone who has rented
| an electric vehicle in a foreign country, is that charging those
| things is close to impossible.
|
| Most charging networks require a specific app, that often can
| only be downloaded in that country's App Store. If you do manage
| to download the app for a network, signing up can fail because it
| requires a local address or phone number. Eventually, you'll find
| a network that does allow foreigners to sign up, but realize that
| their closest charger is slower and 10 miles away. Often the
| chargers will show up as available in the app, but actually not
| be functional and there is no-one at the site to help, even if
| it's a gas station. They'll just roll their eyes and say it's not
| their charger. Call the network.
|
| At least gas you can buy with cold hard cash or by simply swiping
| your credit card at a gas station. No need to input your pronouns
| into an app.
|
| A good example how society sometimes regresses on some fronts.
| titi75 wrote:
| In Paris I rented an EV car in Paris with Avis. I did the regular
| check, used the car and gave back the car.
|
| After that, I received a letter for a missing cable in the car
| and I have been charged 950EUR. I told them they didn't mention
| that cable anywhere but they refused to cancel that fee.
|
| Don't rent an EV, it doesn't worth the price.
| dctoedt wrote:
| > _I received a letter for a missing cable in the car and I
| have been charged 950EUR._
|
| You didn't mistype an extra zero on the end?
| titi75 wrote:
| No 950EUR for a missing charging cable and Avis is one of the
| largest renters in France.
| frumper wrote:
| That isn't a problem with EVs, that's a shady company being
| shady.
| eclipsetheworld wrote:
| The comments in this thread appear to overlook a crucial point.
| The business model of rental companies fundamentally revolves
| around earning more from vehicles than the depreciation costs
| incurred before resale. However, the recent price reductions by
| Tesla, coupled with the accelerated depreciation of electric
| vehicles (EVs) due to rapidly evolving technology and increasing
| competition, seem to clash with this business model.
| MyFirstSass wrote:
| I did a rented EV roadtrip in Norway and it was amazing with a
| Citroen e-c4.
|
| But Norway is probably one of the most saturated with chargers,
| and i still almost had to call service at some point because i
| went to zero, a bit nerve wrecking.
|
| This was because there is so many different apps and 20% do not
| work for foreigners, then 10% just don't work for anyone - so
| eventually you'll experience a small city where you can't charge,
| then have to re-route, and if that city also isn't working or
| isn't providing service then things can get tight.
|
| I'll say we are very close, but the "signing up for 10 different
| services" and following instructions on so many chargers, giving
| no service to foreigners because of some weird banking setup is
| what makes it not feasible yet.
|
| I could manage because im an IT pro, i couldn't imagine my mom
| figuring this stuff out.
|
| All chargers should have the same system by law, just beep your
| credit card and it starts charging, instead of requiring you to
| sign up through brittle interfaces in some weird app with bad
| cell service.
|
| I skipped the Tesla because it seemed cheap inside, had no
| speedometer (this is so weird), and the buttons on the steering
| wheel would drive me crazy, the Citroen was great though!
| brnt wrote:
| You don't even have to be a foreigner: when friends come over
| and ask where to charge it's a total crapshoot whether or not
| their passes and/or apps'll work (this is NL). I don't
| understand why they don't just let users swipe with any old
| payment card. Why does payment need to be more complicated than
| filling up with gasoline?
| rsynnott wrote:
| The EU AFIR regulation requires that, for any publicly
| accessible charging points installed after 13th of April
| 2024, adhoc recharging must be possible using a payment card
| or other commonly-used payment instrument.
|
| So, kind of cold comfort for existing ones, but this should
| sort itself out over the next few years.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| >had no speedometer (this is so weird)
|
| My Toyota has both a dial speedometer [hidden behind right
| hand/wheel], and a large numeric speed display that is easily-
| viewable. Unfortuneately, if there is any status update (e.g.
| cruise control, low gas) then the numeric speed digits
| disappear (replaced with whatever status/issue) -- at which
| point I then no longer know how fast I'm going.
|
| Fortunately, I believe both infotainment displays are running
| an open Linux distro -- perhaps the numeric speedometer can be
| made permanent?
| fennecfoxy wrote:
| Doesn't matter, investors these days demand so much ever
| increasing profits that their Ws will exceed their Ls anyway.
| Money begets money after all.
| nunez wrote:
| > In the field, everything started looking different from what
| was on the spreadsheets. Unlike EV owners comfortable with the
| idea of charging a car battery at home and on the road, business
| travelers and vacationers suffered from range anxiety and didn't
| want the hassle or worry of having to find a charger in the wild.
| Rudy Gardner, who as president of Teamsters Local 922 represents
| Hertz workers at Washington, DC's Dulles and Reagan National
| airports, says travelers after a long flight would arrive at
| those Hertz locations to find that Teslas were the only vehicles
| available. "People didn't want to charge them," he says. "At the
| end of the night that's all we had left, so they'd go to Avis."
|
| This is incredibly true. I travel a lot for work. Many (MANY!) of
| my colleagues don't want to deal with electric cars. They
| (Teslas) are too different, and charging them (non-Teslas) is an
| ordeal.
|
| This was (and still is) amazing for me, as I can rent very nice
| EVs at low corporate rates, but there is no way this is good for
| Hertz or Avis.
|
| > Hertz's Teslas got into accidents four times more often than
| the company's other vehicles
|
| This is a wild, but very unsurprising, stat. Teslas are so, so,
| so different from regular cars. You have to _want_ to get plugged
| into this ecosystem. It's great for Turo (where you know what
| you're getting into) but horrible for the salesperson who has a
| meeting in two hours and needs a car RIGHT NOW.
| atonse wrote:
| 100% agree. And that is even for Tesla drivers.
|
| I drive a Model 3 and it took some getting used to, but that as
| my car. But recently I had to drive a friend's Model X (to take
| him to the doctor twice), and I felt so lost EVEN coming from a
| Model 3.
|
| The first hour of driving feels so distracting cuz you're just
| trying to figure things out. I can imagine it being doubly
| frustrated in a work/sales meeting situation. You're already
| stressed about your meeting, without having to also worry about
| how to drive this TOTALLY DIFFERENT car.
| pizzalife wrote:
| What were the main factors making the Model X feel so
| different?
| atonse wrote:
| The main was the fact that the X has two displays (one
| where a gauge cluster would be behind the steering wheel in
| a car, the other in the center between the two front
| seats), whereas the 3 has one (just in the middle).
|
| So there are various functions that are on the X's main
| display (but not on the side display). I was used to keep
| checking my speed and all that on the 3 on the center
| display, but instead had to keep checking in the main one.
|
| Same with nav showing the next turn with your perspective.
| In the X it shows in the main cluster, but not in the
| MASSIVE map on the huge display. So I initially kept
| feeling unnerved not knowing when to turn.
|
| The 3 uses one stalk on the right hand side of the steering
| wheel to handle autopilot, Park, Reverse, everything.
|
| The X has another stalk for autopilot and cruise control
| and it's hidden behind the steering wheel. (my friend had
| to show me) so it's not obvious.
|
| The doors on the X open up differently, and by themselves.
| That's just weird. I don't like that the door auto-opens
| when I walk up to the car.
|
| It's a thousand papercuts. But that's for me as a Tesla
| driver where I already understand 95% of the concepts (even
| if I can't find the Autopilot stalk for example).
|
| I can't imagine how complicated it is for a first-timer who
| isn't playing with it in their garage for a couple hours.
| bdcravens wrote:
| I rented on Turo for a couple of years. I had a relatively low-
| cost 4-cylinder gas car (Toyota C-HR) and an EV that cost twice
| as much. The ROI on the gas car was much higher, as I could only
| get about 25%-50% more for the EV. That said, I did find that the
| quality of the renter was higher for the EV (as in things like
| smoking in the vehicle, etc)
| horns4lyfe wrote:
| These financiers are a plague and it's a shame we let them have
| so much outsized influence. They behave and we treat them like
| geniuses, when they are just really good at a narrow skill set
| and it happens to be a well-compensated one. But then if you give
| them an inch they start hiring all their friends to positions
| they don't know anything about, and the cycle continues. Kind of
| like IT actually...
| xenadu02 wrote:
| The article posits charging as the problem but that's not
| actually true.
|
| The issue was twofold: 1. Repair cost and parts availability.
| Fleet damage was more expensive to repair and took longer. That
| means more of the fleet is offline at any given time and cost to
| operate is a bit higher. 2. Tesla lowered prices forcing them to
| recognize the depreciation. The cars resale value dropped faster
| than they anticipated.
|
| Car and RV rental companies have this problem. People don't want
| to rent ragged out vehicles. In the case of RVs units for rental
| are built extra cheap so they don't last anyway. The model is get
| more in rent then you lose in depreciation then dump the vehicle.
| In the case of RVs they often turnover the entire fleet yearly.
|
| The real killer was no doubt depreciation. That breaks the whole
| rental car model.
| supportengineer wrote:
| A mountain of waste generated for a short term profit. There
| has to be a better way.
| malyk wrote:
| The disposable economy is pretty shit.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _mountain of waste generated for a short term profit_
|
| The vehicles are sold after use, not disposed of.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| ... if you find a buyer for them which is the real problem.
| Not many people want to drive a car that has been used as a
| short-term rental, because they're a guarantee for needing
| a replacement clutch and engine _at least_. People drive
| rental cars like shit, and it shows up everywhere.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| They sell pretty quickly. They price a little bit lower
| than normal cars. People need cars, and don't have cash.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _Not many people want to drive a car that has been used
| as a short-term rental, because they 're a guarantee for
| needing a replacement clutch and engine at least_
|
| Well, obviously not in this case. Battery health would be
| the only real concern, I suppose, and that hasn't proven
| to be an issue so far.
| jandrese wrote:
| From what I've seen the most desirable vehicles on used
| car lots are former rentals. Maybe slightly behind cars
| that fell off of a lease. There's always the stories
| about people who rent cars so they can thrash them in
| street races or whatnot, but really most rentals are for
| businesspeople who need to get around a city for a bit.
| The companies usually try to keep up on the basic
| maintenance items as well, which is not always the case
| for used cars. You get a fairly new car with higher than
| average but not crazy miles for a decent price.
|
| These Teslas should also qualify for the $4000 used EV
| tax credit as well, which could make them quite an
| affordable option.
| nwellinghoff wrote:
| I for one would love a company that rents out "ragged out"
| vehicles for bottom dollar. A well maintained toyota etc. lasts
| 20 years. Rent me the fully depreciated vehicle and reap pure
| profit. Not to mention not worrying about every little dent or
| scratch. Sounds like a dream rental to me.
|
| Side note: when renting in other countries, I always ask for
| the worst looking beat up car that they have. Really is less
| stressful to drive around.
| saalweachter wrote:
| Isn't that the premise of Rent-a-Wreck?
| tech4all wrote:
| Agreed! In the US there is a company that does this but they
| don't have a nationwide presence:
| https://www.rentawreck.com/. Also in Iceland there is "Sad
| Car" which was great for kicking around.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| There was one in Australia when I was there, Rent A Bomb.
| avar wrote:
| When did you rent with SADCars? I did once in 2014, and
| cheaply got some small old manual beater, which was just
| perfect.
|
| But I think they've "pivoted" to just another rental
| company since then. Looking at their website and Google
| maps reviews the cars now look new, and indistinguishable
| from what you'd get from Eurocar, Hertz etc.
| ydant wrote:
| I rented in 2015 and it was an experience.
|
| I had to turn down the first car due to non-functioning
| wipers and a broken door handle.
|
| Ended up with a Subaru Forester that had definitely seen
| a lot of miles and had its share of minor issues, but was
| a beast in the surprise blizzard.
|
| Shame if they pivoted but their office was a pain to deal
| with and last thing you want after a red-eye is to be
| worried about the car maybe not actually working
| properly. Decided next time we'd just rent from a more
| established brand.
|
| From their FAQ:
|
| > However, we decided to use the name to make it more
| memorable as our cars used to be older in the beginning
| but it's been many years since we stopped using old cars
| and now all our cars are new, or one or two years old
| mcguire wrote:
| In the 90s, RentAWreck at least used to be part of an
| operation called FixAWreck who did low cost auto repairs. I
| used them shortly after I'd moved and had an excellent time
| with the two sub-compacts they gave me while my car was in
| their shop.
| jasonpeacock wrote:
| There used to be "rent a dent" discount car rentals that did
| exactly this. You could save a bunch by renting a clearly
| used (and usually scuffed/dented) car.
|
| I agree about driving a brand-new rental being stressful. I
| don't to worry about little scratches and dings, especially
| when you're driving an unfamiliar car in a foreign place.
| dazc wrote:
| There was a business in the UK doing this but didn't work out
| any cheaper than a regular rental from Enterprise. Economy of
| scale at such a level is hard to beat.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| It's not economy of scale - they get to write off
| depreciation at a much higher rate than the cars actually
| depreciate.
|
| This is true of all businesses and all capital. It's a
| great big tax cheat, centered around companies getting to
| claim that their capital is worthless after just a few
| years.
| votepaunchy wrote:
| How is this a "tax cheat" and not simply a tax deferral?
| Businesses can deduct expenses, and accelerated
| depreciation is not increased depreciation.
| IshKebab wrote:
| How would that actually help long term though? Imagine
| they write off their entire entire fleet in 1 year. Yes
| they pay less tax that year, but in future years when
| they sell their old cars that are worth nothing for lots
| of money they'll have a load of extra tax to pay.
|
| I can see how it lets you move tax around in time a bit
| but that's it (and it's often allowed explicitly anyway).
|
| Am I missing something or is this the common "tax write-
| off = magical money" misunderstanding?
| graemep wrote:
| On top of that the business referred to was a UK one and
| that means max 18%/year on ICE cars (6% if high CO2
| emissions).
| mikeInAlaska wrote:
| We rented from a place called SAD CARS in Iceland. The car...
| worked for our entire trip.
| Filligree wrote:
| The way you said that worries me... were there other
| issues?
| bittercynic wrote:
| It's been a little while, but I've used Turo for this a few
| times. Got older, rattier cars for $20-$25/day, and way less
| hassle than trying to deal with Hertz/Budget/etc. It was
| perfect for my needs.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| With a clean, damage-free car, you know there isn't anything
| on the car you can be blamed for that you didn't put there
| yourself.
|
| I used to do zipcar and I would always do a full walk-around
| and email zipcar support a set of photos of any and all
| damage I'd find before I'd even unlocked the vehicle so there
| was proof the damage wasn't caused by me.
|
| I did this after Zipcar claimed a dent that was already on
| the car was put there by me, because a prior renter didn't
| disclose it, or zipcar was double-dipping.
|
| Finding a clean, undamaged car was a relief because I knew I
| could take photos afterward
|
| It got particularly annoying because after the first 4-5
| years zipcar clearly cut back on maintenance and repairs.
| Cars kept getting dirtier, more damaged, more "weird noises
| from the suspension", etc. Cars would be overdue for oil
| changes, have check engine lights on, etc.
| brewdad wrote:
| Budget/Avis is getting there. I had an absolutely horrible
| rental at O'Hare about five years ago. Rattles and squeaks
| and probably 50,000 miles overdue for an alignment.
|
| Last fall, I got an almost new Mazda SUV from Avis. I was 3
| miles down the road when a Service Engine Soon message took
| over the entire center of the dashboard. I hope they got it
| serviced after I returned it the next day.
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| > Fleet damage was more expensive to repair and took longer.
|
| Do car rental companies even bother to fix collision-damaged
| vehicles? I assumed they would just sell them off.
| gambiting wrote:
| Most regular cars can still be driven after a (minor)
| collision, they might need some work to fix them up but
| usually they are fine. If you're ok with mostly cosmetic
| damage or replacing a body panel, then it's a great buy.
|
| A Tesla after a minor collision might disable itself entirely
| until inspected by a Tesla technician, and it might need a
| whole new (and very expensive) battery pack - no one would(or
| should) take a bet on such a car.
|
| So it's a lot less attractive thing to buy over regular cars.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Teslas do not "disable themselves"; it's done by Tesla HQ,
| using criteria they do not disclose, but it seems to be
| just a matter of whether the crash happens to come to their
| attention.
|
| Rich Rebuilds has covered this extensively. Sometimes he
| comes across a heavily damaged Tesla, still on their
| network that hasn't been disabled. Other times he comes
| across one with minor damage that has been disabled. I
| believe one of his rebuilds, he took some of the guts from
| a heavily damaged car that wasn't deactivated to transplant
| into the guts of a car that had easily repaired damage that
| had been.
| gambiting wrote:
| Interesting - it was my understanding that most
| collisions(and definitely collisions that activate
| airbags) cause the car to disable itself until inspected.
| Good to know that this isn't always the case.
| talldatethrow wrote:
| I've never heard this being the case, and I sure hope it
| isn't for most cars. Imagine being in a remote area.. you
| hit a deer after slowing down.. and now you're trapped at
| night? You're in death valley offroading a little too
| enthusiastically, airbags deploy and now you're stuck? A
| small fender bender in Baja Mexico and you're disabled?
|
| I once rolled a vehicle in Nevada being stupid with
| friends. Airbags deployed. The radiator was crushed and
| leaking. We strapped the radiator support to another
| vehicle and bent it back out. Took the other vehicle into
| town and bought a radiator at AutoZone. Installed it and
| drove it an hour home. The steering wheel was only
| slightly off center.
| callalex wrote:
| > Teslas do not "disable themselves"; it's done by Tesla
| HQ
|
| That's the same thing. If the owner isn't disabling the
| car, then it is disabling itself.
| hansvm wrote:
| Fixing collision damaged vehicles is a profit center. They'll
| bill your insurance for every tangentially related
| maintenance item they'd been putting off (the belt is
| _obviously_ squeeky because the collision loosened the
| tensioner, the brakes are worn down because the emergency
| stop was too aggressive, the windshield fluid won't come out
| because the shock knocked a wire loose in the electric pump,
| ...). The car comes out in better shape than it went in.
| dmoy wrote:
| Does that still apply in the case of rental car companies
| that self insure?
| hansvm wrote:
| In the US, you (and transitively your insurance) are
| liable as a driver if you cause damage. You can
| separately have a contract assigning that liability
| (e.g., the $20/day or so a rental company will often
| offer to waive basically all physical damage to the car
| at a $0 deductible). I assume it's that latter sort of
| thing you're referring to?
|
| I'm not sure how they handle cars damaged under those
| sorts of policies. I do know those policies are also
| wildly profitable (I've never come close to approaching
| eqv. $7300/yr for insurance, despite a horrible driving
| record when I was younger). Rental cars don't even crash
| 1.5x as often per mile, so a 5-20x multiple on your
| premium is noteworthy.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| If you rent cars frequently, consider getting a credit
| card that includes free collision damage waiver and loss-
| of-use coverage for rental cars.
|
| The coverage you buy from the rental company is a massive
| rip-off, that's why credit cards can offer it for free as
| a perquisite.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| That pales in comparison to the charges for lost income
| they claim they would have received from the car while it
| was out of service.
|
| 90% of their fleet at that location might sit unused for a
| week or more, and most of their rentals are steeply
| discounted from the standard rate - but that car you backed
| into a pole? Why, _that one_ would have been earning them
| the standard rate, _every day._
| dboreham wrote:
| Counter-point: I rent cars fairly frequently and over the
| past 30 years I've had three damaged. Case 1 windshield hit
| by rock and cracked. Case 2 creased driver door via grey
| pillar in gray colored underground parking lot. Case 3 semi
| truck with those pointy front wheel nuts max-maxed my
| passenger door with them. In all three cases the outcome
| was positive. No excess charges or shenanigans.
|
| otoh Hertz have twice billed me for damage I definitely did
| _not_ cause. In one case for a scratch on the front air dam
| that you had to lie down under the vehicle to see (which
| their agent in fact did when I returned the car). So now I
| use Avis.
| wood_spirit wrote:
| Hire cars in the UK often have a long list of already-known
| dents and scrapes. You have to be super careful and check the
| car over to spot any others so you don't end up paying for
| prior damage. But all those dents have been paid for by
| previous renters; the hire company charges the renter but
| doesn't actually fix the damage...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Tesla lowered prices forcing them to recognize the
| depreciation_
|
| I'm surprised Tesla and Hertz couldn't work out a deal, _e.g._
| reimbursement or a large discount on additional purchases that
| would wipe out the accounting charge. Rental vehicles are a
| sales channel for new vehicles. And every Hertz Tesla being
| dumped on the secondary market is new-vehicle profit Tesla
| could have booked.
| LeafItAlone wrote:
| In what way would that have benefited Tesla more than the
| current situation?
| ado__dev wrote:
| PR more than anything. Tesla growth story is pretty much
| over, many people turned off the brand for a multitude of
| reasons (Musk, terrible service, price, lack of innovation,
| more EV competition). So if anything a good opportunity for
| Tesla to win some PR, potentially expand partnership, sell
| more cars.
|
| Now they get more bad news "rental company dumps Tesla
| because of XYZ", the used market took a big hit as well
| pissing off existing owners, and I feel like this pushes
| newer buyers even more away.
| jjulius wrote:
| >PR more than anything.
|
| Tesla doesn't believe in PR[1].
|
| [1]https://electrek.co/2021/04/28/elon-musk-no-new-tesla-
| pr-dep...
| Spooky23 wrote:
| They didn't believe in advertising either, but I'm
| getting alot of it.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| And yet Elon does massive PR stunts on the regular,
| including smashing a Cybertruck's windows at a launch
| event. Curious...
| jjulius wrote:
| >And yet Elon...
|
| Elon does that. Tesla doesn't have a PR department to
| spend the time thinking about the things that the OP
| suggested they should consider.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| The parent comment said "Tesla doesn't believe in PR".
| It's clear that Tesla _does_ in fact believe in PR
| judging by all of Elon 's related activities, they just
| do it differently than other companies.
|
| Also, look at website content like this:
| https://www.tesla.com/about
|
| That is PR, regardless of whether you want to call the
| people doing it "PR" or not.
| jjulius wrote:
| Elon believes in doing his own PR, but Tesla does not,
| simple as that. If I'm to believe that Tesla _does_
| believe in PR then, as I mentioned in response to another
| user, I 'd wager they'd be doing a lot more to improve
| their image given how much of a negative impact Elon's
| poor attempts at shaping public discourse via Twitter has
| had on Tesla lately.
|
| An "about" page is bog standard stuff and a pretty paltry
| effort in the grand scheme of the things a PR department
| at a company the size of Tesla would otherwise
| traditionally be doing. It's like, yes, _technically_
| that 's a form of PR, sure, but it ain't much.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| LOL. Tesla believes heavily in PR, Musk just doesn't
| believe in PR departments.
|
| That's why if you're involved in a Tesla accident, even a
| fatal one, Tesla will have no hesitation holding a press
| conference, pulling vehicle telemetry, to make sure that
| (rightly or wrongly) blame goes to you as the driver and
| not Tesla.
|
| They'll make statements like "Autopilot wasn't to blame
| here. The vehicle had warned the driver of his
| inattentiveness", and the Tesla fans will nod their
| heads, reassured.
|
| What will later come out will be that Autopilot was
| active, and that while a driver attention (steering
| wheel) warning had occurred on the fateful trip, it had
| happened ONCE, and that that one time was EIGHTEEN
| MINUTES prior to the collision.
|
| But there won't be a press conference to correct those
| details.
| tnmom wrote:
| I feel compelled to point out that usually, the story
| develops the other direction - from:
|
| "Autopilot crashes car, kills family!"
|
| to (with much less fanfare):
|
| "Actually, it was a drunk dude driving manually and
| wrapped his car around a tree at 120mph in his own
| driveway"
| callalex wrote:
| Got an example of that?
| jdminhbg wrote:
| Yes: https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/21/22738834/tesla-
| crash-tex...
| avgDev wrote:
| I have never seen such a story from a respected source.
| Please provide some examples.
| jjulius wrote:
| Two minutes before you responded:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39933211
| avgDev wrote:
| Is the verge a reliable news source now? Oof.
| jdminhbg wrote:
| Here's the NTSB report:
| https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/Pages/HWY21FH007.aspx
| jjulius wrote:
| [sigh]
|
| You know, it's hard to know what sources other people
| consider to be "reputable" these days, so perhaps you
| could put on your big boy britches and google the subject
| to find a source you like rather than expecting us to
| know what you trust and don't trust? I mean, shit, if you
| bothered to look at the Verge article you'd have seen the
| link to the NTSB report. Here ya go...
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/09/ntsb-finds-no-evidence-
| tesla...
|
| https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tesla-crash-spring-texas-
| deaths...
|
| https://fortune.com/2024/03/17/ntsb-fatal-crash-
| automated-dr...
|
| https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/02/autopilot-had-no-
| involv...
|
| https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/us-
| pro...
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/driver-was-behind-
| wheel...
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/21/automobiles/tesla-
| texas-c...
|
| https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/driver-was-behind-
| wheel-...
|
| https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/autopilot-engaged-texas-
| tesl...
|
| https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a36387950/ntsb-
| investigati...
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2021/05/10/nts
| b-p...
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39933859
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34731013
|
| Would you like some more?
| brewdad wrote:
| Where are the initial headlines that blamed autopilot for
| this crash? The assertion had two parts and these stories
| only reflect the latter.
| jjulius wrote:
| I suppose I'll keep holding folks hands...
|
| So, Google's results only seem interested on showing the
| articles about the NTSB's ultimate findings, _not_ the
| ones that were originally reported immediately after the
| crash. I then assumed that some of the articles I had
| linked in that post would probably link back to their own
| previous articles about it, and figured I 'd just start
| by going through that list from the top down.
|
| Sure enough, the second one I linked, from CBS News,
| linked to their older article on it, entitled, "No one
| was driving Tesla before fiery crash that killed 2
| passengers in Texas, authorities say".
|
| https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tesla-crash-texas-no-one-
| dirvin...
|
| Edit:
|
| >The assertion had two parts and these stories only
| reflect the latter.
|
| They don't, actually. Take this line from the Ars piece
| (though Ars isn't the only one that says something like
| this - most of them do! :D), for instance:
|
| >The possible involvement of Autopilot was suggested in
| the wake of initial reports that one of the two occupants
| --specifically the driver--was found in the back seat of
| the car.
|
| If you click the Ars link, you'll notice that the phrase
| "initial reports" also links to _their_ own article
| written immediately after the event, titled, "Cops
| 'almost 99.9% sure' Tesla had no one at the wheel before
| deadly crash".
| mrgoldenbrown wrote:
| Musk might claim to not believe in PR but his twitter
| activities (both the purchase and his actual tweets)
| strongly imply he does care about public opinion and his
| ability to shape it.
| jjulius wrote:
| What Musk does on Twitter is wholly separate from Tesla
| not having a PR department to handle some of the things
| that OP suggested. In fact, I'd wager that the lack of a
| PR department hampers Tesla's ability to control the
| negative reactions towards the company that have been
| caused by Musk's attempts to shape public discourse on
| Twitter.
| Draiken wrote:
| Which is in itself, a PR stunt.
| Rinzler89 wrote:
| _> the used market took a big hit as well pissing off
| existing owners_
|
| Oh no, poor wealthy Tesla owners loosing value on their
| car. /s Since when are ordinary cars appreciable
| investments?
|
| It's been well known cars tank in value, especially when
| you're an early adopter of new tech in a market that's in
| constant disruption. Your 1999 GeForce 256 also lost most
| of it's value in a year compared to other later GPUs,
| it's the nature of tech in a rapidly changing market.
|
| People who expect cars to hold/go up in value need to buy
| limite edition exotics, not mass produced commodities.
|
| EVs tanking in value on the used market is good for EV
| adoption as non wealthy people can afford them.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> good for EV adoption as non wealthy people can afford
| them.
|
| The sticker price isn't the issue. The issue is
| ironically fuel costs. Anyone who doesn't own their own
| house will rely on commercial chargers. In many
| circumstances a commercial charger can cost more per-mile
| than gasoline, and certainly they take much more time. So
| the non-rich, people who rent apartments and don't
| generally have spare time, cannot afford a used EV
| despite the sticker price.
|
| Not-rich people also generally own only one car. They
| cannot "afford" a vehicle that is expensive to fix, both
| in time and cash. A couple days waiting for a part is a
| couple days missed work. A few weeks without a car (ie
| most any Tesla repair) could mean a lost job.
| rurp wrote:
| It's a matter of degrees. A car losing 25% of its value
| is much better than losing 75% over the same time period.
| How well a vehicle will hold its value is a factor that
| many people factor into their purchasing decisions.
| Rinzler89 wrote:
| _> How well a vehicle will hold its value is a factor
| that many people factor into their purchasing decisions._
|
| Cars are commodities, like microwave ovens or washing
| machines, not houses. You won't get any sympathy because
| your risky economic bet didn't pan out the way you
| expected it to.
| avgDev wrote:
| One can buy a good brand like Lexus/Honda/Toyota or even
| BMW and be able to figure out their actual cost of
| ownership, depreciation is part of this.
|
| If a value of a vehicle can drop $40k over a period of a
| month, it is too volatile and I will never purchase such
| brand.
| Rinzler89 wrote:
| _> If a value of a vehicle can drop $40k over a period of
| a month, it is too volatile and I will never purchase
| such brand.
|
| _
|
| And why is this bad? Who said a brand/company is entitled
| to a certain amount of sales just because they exist?
| Aren't we in capitalisms where it's sink or swim and the
| market/customer is right? If a product is volatile maybe
| it's not good and people should orient to other brands,
| no?
|
| If Tesla bins it, other better manufacturers will pick up
| the slack if the EV demand is there according to market
| forces. If the EV demand isn't there, maybe the EV hype
| was a bubble that was gonna pop sooner or later?
| thwarted wrote:
| Why are you interpreting bad as some kind of moral
| position? You seem to be purposely misinterpreting these
| comments to start an argument about economic systems.
|
| It's not bad that it happens, it's bad for Tesla if they
| are marketing their product as high-end/luxury while
| their product very obviously lacks the attributes, such
| as a stable/predictable value over time, that
| competitors' luxury products have. Someone deciding not
| to buy a product, for whatever reason, is the system
| working as intended. If Tesla can't produce a product
| people want to buy, Tesla will suffer the consequences,
| as they should. If they don't change their marketing or
| improve their product in the light of low sales, that's
| on them.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > You won't get any sympathy because your risky economic
| bet didn't pan out the way you expected it to.
|
| No one is offering sympathy, we're just saying that when
| buyers are considering a car, depreciation _is_ a
| consideration.
|
| Because, you see, no one simply burns down a 3 year old
| car when they want a new one - they use whatever equity
| in their existing car as part of the payment of the new
| car.
| jsight wrote:
| Not only that, but these were rented cheaply to Uber
| drivers. They'd come back with worn brakes from Ubers
| who'd drive hard and brake hard instead of using regen.
| They'd have batteries that had more cycles than most from
| charging to 100% whenever there was a break between
| rides.
|
| They depreciated like a rented Uber, which seems entirely
| predictable.
| ado__dev wrote:
| There's a huge difference between a car depreciating
| normally (which all of them do at varying rates) and what
| happened to the Model 3 depreciation curve over the last
| 12 months.
| kube-system wrote:
| You are arguing with a straw man. Managing depreciation
| on a vehicle has nothing to do with anyone expecting
| appreciation. Many people simply want to maintain a
| reasonable residual value for their next trade in, and/or
| maintain an above-water loan.
| somerandomqaguy wrote:
| "Buying a car today is an investment into the future. I
| think the most profound thing is that if you buy a Tesla
| today, I believe you are buying an appreciating asset,
| not a depreciating asset."
|
| -Elon Musk, 2019.
|
| Whether you believed him or not is a different matter but
| that's what he said at the time.
| Rinzler89 wrote:
| Remember when he said your Model 3 can act like a
| robotaxi and earn you money? Pepridge farm remembers.
| TheHypnotist wrote:
| Good faith when dealing with customers who buy volume.
| caturopath wrote:
| Sounds like they would have been able to sell more cars to
| Hertz.
|
| Depending on when they negotiated the relevant stuff, Tesla
| might have thought they needed to contribute more to the
| deal to sell even the cars they ended up selling already.
| jerlam wrote:
| Since Hertz was buying Teslas at near peak demand/hype,
| it's rumored that Hertz was buying the cars at full
| retail. No special deal for Hertz.
| rurp wrote:
| I'm not sure why you think charging anxiety couldn't have been
| one of the factors. TFA calls it out as one. Charging is one of
| the main concerns with ownership and that would be even more of
| a challenge with a rental car in an unfamiliar area.
| czbond wrote:
| I believe charging anxiety was. The base case for car rentals
| is generally "time bound, busy itinerary" of some sort....
| think business trips, holidays, etc.
|
| Few want to spend that precious time becoming familiar with
| that cities charging network if charging is new to them.
|
| I recently rented a Mach-E over Christmas in a large Metro,
| and stayed in a populous suburb. Charging & the states of
| chargers was no fun and really added a cognitive load.
|
| However, I did realize I enjoyed EV's for some point in the
| future - somewhat curing range anxiety of my normal life
| routine.
| jsight wrote:
| TBH, I've experienced it where it can go either way. I've
| rented gas cars and ended up at a hotel with nice L2
| stations. The EV would have been easier! :)
|
| But I've also rented EVs in metros with decent fast
| charging, but none at the hotel. It was fun, but charging
| was a notable downside.
| mcguire wrote:
| How many hotels have sufficient charging capacity to charge
| EVs while people sleep?
|
| A lot of hotels around here have 110v outlets in their
| parking lots for fishermen to charge their bass boats but I
| haven't heard that a similar ethic applies to EVs. :-)
| wishfish wrote:
| Here's something purely anecdotal: recently stayed in a
| motel in very rural Arkansas. In the morning, I noticed a
| Chevy Bolt (or similar) plugged in with an extension
| cord. Asked the clerk about it. She said it was a
| relatively rare situation but they didn't have a problem
| with someone using their outside outlet.
|
| I suppose I can't extrapolate this situation to everyone,
| but I have a feeling if you provide your own cord, most
| motels won't have a problem with you charging. Especially
| since it'll be uncommon. If everyone had EVs, then they
| might start putting a fee on it.
| creer wrote:
| I was surprised during a ride in a friends' Tesla. We
| needed a few more miles. They let their phone guide them
| to a convenient pile of superchargers. Plugged in. We
| checked messages and chatted for a few minutes. Then
| continued. Remarkably painless.
|
| This future is probably not yet evenly distributed around
| the world. Sure. But fast charging might eventually come
| to something. Eventually.
| brewdad wrote:
| I have never seen a hotel with more than two EV chargers
| and that was a very high end spot near Seattle. Most
| hotels, if they have an EV charger at all, will only have
| one. If there are 100 guests you'd better hope they are
| all petrol-heads.
| gnicholas wrote:
| Absolutely. My local paper's environmental columnist recently
| rented an EV and chronicled the experience. [1] There were so
| many compromises involved, largely related to charging/range.
| For example, she had to walk in the cold (Maine) from her
| hotel to her car, which she was charging overnight elsewhere.
| She also had to skip part of her trip due to lack of range.
|
| The columnist concludes the sacrifices were worth it, given
| her dedication to environmentalism. The vast, vast majority
| of people would not choose her experience to be a little
| greener.
|
| 1: https://www.almanacnews.com/blogs/a-new-shade-of-
| green/2024/...
| DFHippie wrote:
| My brother lives in Maine and has two electric cars. I have
| one and travel in Maine a few times a year. It's a
| particularly bad state for charging. I'm not sure why that
| is.
| gnicholas wrote:
| I imagine the temperature doesn't help. Compared to CA
| (where the columnist is from), the average temp is
| probably 20deg colder, which could cut 15% off the range.
| samatman wrote:
| This is unlikely to be the central factor, given that
| Norway, one of the few inhabited places which is colder
| than Maine, has the highest rate of electric car
| ownership in the world.
|
| That's in spite of the range issue, and is due to the
| Norwegian government carrot-and-sticking heavily towards
| electric. Maine has no such incentives, and is sparsely
| populated, which doesn't play to the strengths of
| electric cars.
| DFHippie wrote:
| Maine is sparsely populated, but most of its population
| is concentrated in a narrow strip along the coast.
| Actually, this is probably true of Norway as well.
| joncrocks wrote:
| Also worth noting that in Norway, they will often have
| cars with engine block heaters
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_heater), with
| associated plug points in parking spaces/places.
|
| Makes it much easier if there's already infrastructure.
| gnicholas wrote:
| Norway has huge financial incentives for buying EVs,
| including exemption from VAT and registration fees. This
| has added up to billions of USD in subsidies, [1] and is
| why there are so many EVs in Norway. I'd be very
| surprised if their neighbors, who have similar climate
| but fewer incentives, see the same rate of adoption.
|
| Norway shows that you can have EVs in a place that is
| very cold if you shovel cash at buyers. It doesn't prove
| that weather wouldn't be a central factor in a place like
| Maine.
|
| 1: https://www.oecd.org/climate-
| action/ipac/practices/norway-s-...
| DFHippie wrote:
| Yeah, the cold hurts the range, but not all that much.
| The central (I was going to say "main") thing is that
| Maine is a charging desert.
|
| Bar Harbor, the destination of most of the out-of-state
| Teslas, has almost nowhere to charge. I went to a hotel
| once which promised to have 4 level-2 Tesla chargers. All
| of the spots were occupied by ICE trucks. I went in to
| point out this problem to the clerk. She shrugged her
| shoulders and said, "they're probably our customers."
| Apparently the chargers were just there to lure in
| suckers. "Yes, we _have_ chargers, but good luck using
| one. They tend to be parked in by ICE pickup trucks. We
| 're helpless to do anything about this." I failed to
| check to see whether the trucks had Maine plates. They
| didn't look like typical customers of this hotel.
|
| Around Portland things are a bit better. And new stations
| are being put it. It's just behind neighboring states.
| ghaff wrote:
| Probably some combination of:
|
| - It's a cold state in winter and there's at least the
| perception that you don't want an EV in places with cold
| winters. (I see few enough Teslas in the wild in exurban
| Boston.)
|
| - It's a relatively poor state.
|
| - I imagine pickups and the like are disproportionately
| represented.
|
| - It's big and sparsely populated as you say.
|
| A friend of mine who lives in Boston but owns a house on
| a bunch of land in northern Vermont finally got a Tesla
| when he convinced himself there was sufficient buffer for
| weekly trips between the two places.
| skrtskrt wrote:
| one of the primary complaints I've seen is the Tesla apps
| being inaccurate about charger availability - like 4 out of
| 5 chargers available here! And you show up and they're
| actually all taken with a huge line of people waiting.
| nickv wrote:
| So weird (and I'm not a Tesla apologist at all) but I
| have never in 5 years seen this happen - and I've driven
| across America 4 times in a Model 3.
|
| In fact, mid drive Tesla will auto-reroute you to a
| supercharger station with more open slots if the one
| you're going to gets busy while on the drive. The UI is
| extremely accurate (like I can see open station numbers
| increment when a car pulls out).
|
| Are you sure you're not hearing complaints about non-
| Tesla chargers?
| skrtskrt wrote:
| yes this is specifically the Tesla charging stations in
| LA
| jonasdegendt wrote:
| It's all about charger coverage. As a large group we rented
| 2 Volkswagen ID.4's in Norway over the Christmas holidays
| (think -4 degrees F so we were getting about half the
| advertised range) and it was never a limiting factor.
| Anywhere we went we could top up, from the grocery store
| down to the cabin that was quite out in the boonies, never
| had to fight for a charger spot either.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > -4 degrees F so we were getting about half the
| advertised range
|
| Does this mean the electricity you paid for went half as
| long?
|
| (ev exp is ltd bc my cars are 30y-60y)
| jonasdegendt wrote:
| > Does this mean the electricity you paid for went half
| as long?
|
| No, the battery simply isn't able to hold as much energy
| because the chemical process that makes it work "slows"
| down (my basic understanding of electrons, someone feel
| free to correct me).
| c0nfused wrote:
| At cold temps you lose range a few different ways: First
| heat in an EV isn't free, this is usually where it gets
| you. People get in go "oh man its cold" and crank up the
| heat and there goes range. When you see one of the "this
| person ran out of power waiting in line at the Tesla
| charger in winter time" pictures this is how they did it.
|
| Second battery efficiency goes down.
|
| Finally, the battery usually is constantly doing the
| regen breaking thing but in cold weather it doesn't to
| save pack wear until you get the pack warm again
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Shouldn't a couple regen braking events be capable of
| dumping a boatload of heat?
| amluto wrote:
| At least last time I checked, Teslas had rather anemic
| battery heaters. IIRC they're around 6kW.
|
| 6kW is not enough to make a big dent in required
| mechanical braking, and it's also not enough to quickly
| heat the battery pack, especially when operated
| intermittently.
| gnicholas wrote:
| I thought GP was referring to generating heat for HVAC,
| which is an interesting idea. I assume one challenge
| would be getting the warmth from the brakes to the cabin.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Yeah, from what I've read, Tesla max regen is 60+kw. Does
| it just lockout regen braking until the battery pack is
| "receptive"?
| ggreer wrote:
| The problem is that cold batteries can't charge or
| discharge quickly. From the battery's point of view,
| regenerative braking is the same as fast charging (just
| for a very short period of time). When the battery is
| very cold (or almost full), Teslas regen as much as they
| can, then use the friction brakes to keep a consistent
| feel for one pedal driving. The battery does have fluid
| pumped through it for heating/cooling, but it can take
| some time before the pack is warm enough to
| charge/discharge at its rated capacity. The longest I've
| had a cold battery notice is 20 minutes, and that was
| after my car sat at 0oF overnight.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| My thought was to use the regen braking electricity for
| (more) resistive heating when it has nowhere else to go.
| It's an extra thing that only gets some use (depending on
| climate), but not a very expensive extra thing and takes
| some load off your pad/rotor brakes.
| darkwater wrote:
| I think you are missing the most important effect of
| cold: more air density at terrain level, which creates
| way more drag on the car.
| ghaff wrote:
| I very much doubt this. I've never seen this having a
| notably measurable effect on ICE vehicles in
| Massachusetts winters (which can be cold but aren't
| notably arctic).
| ggreer wrote:
| The density of air at 20oC (293oK) is 1.204kg/m^3. At
| -10oC (263oK) its density is 1.341kg/m^3, or 11% denser.
| For a Model 3 moving at 100kph, about half of its power
| is used to overcome air drag and half is used to overcome
| rolling resistance. Air drag is 1/2 * density *
| velocity^2 * coefficient of drag * area, so an 11%
| increase in density means an 11% increase in drag, so a
| [?]5.5% decrease in range. That's significantly less than
| typical cold weather range loss.
|
| Most of the range loss comes from climate control. In a
| combustion car, the majority of the energy in the
| gasoline is turned into heat. In cold weather, you just
| dump some of this heat into the cabin to keep it warm. An
| EV's efficiency is a disadvantage in this case, as it
| needs to use energy from the battery to heat up the
| cabin.
| Kirby64 wrote:
| Yes. You use twice as much electricity to go the same
| distance.
|
| Gas cars lose efficiency in the cold too, but it's less
| drastic. Only stats I can find are 15% loss at 20F (which
| is a lot warmer than -4F).
|
| Also, charging tends to be much slower in the cold as
| batteries need to be warm to accept full charge rate. If
| you're cruising on the highway it's usually not too bad,
| but if you start from an overnight stop and then try to
| immediately charge the car you could be waiting for the
| battery to warm up.
| dev_tty01 wrote:
| It is not about charger coverage. When I have a 7:00
| flight after an all day meeting I don't want to or can't
| budget the time required to fully charge an EV on my way
| to the airport. It's all about time.
| avhon1 wrote:
| That's about there not being a charger in the lot that
| the rental company uses as a matter of course when
| rentals are returned to them.
| jsight wrote:
| Articles like that make it all sound so complicated and
| hard!
|
| TBH, the experience of most Tesla owners is just put the
| dest in the map and charge when needed on the way.
|
| The one clear problem that is highlighted in that article
| is that hotel, or more generally destination, charging
| makes a huge difference. People think it is all about
| getting there, but it really is the being there that can be
| tricky.
|
| Rental cars magnify this problem, which is why it was so
| strange that Hertz expanded the fleet so rapidly. Scaling
| the same move over 3 years would have had very different
| results(*).
|
| (*) Maybe other than maintenance costs. There were odd
| rental effects in that from the stories that I've heard.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > of most Tesla owners is just put the dest in the map
| and charge when needed
|
| Do you think that's because it's far easier to charge
| your car at home while you are sleeping? And that renters
| who lack this convenience or face difficulty achieving it
| might be put out by the experience during a possibly
| expensive and rare vacation?
| jsight wrote:
| I'm sure it happens. We get EV 'reviews' from time to
| time in some of the ev forums and reddits. I've noticed a
| common tendency to get this experience, then extrapolate
| it to the rest of the experiences as well. It isn't
| always a representative sample, though I understand why
| it happens.
|
| But that's not why I mentioned Tesla. I mentioned them
| because there's so much weird industry caused complexity
| that they avoid. Need to charge the car you've just
| rented? Just find a supercharger and plug in. Not ideal
| necessarily, but at least it isn't hard.
|
| Got a non-Tesla and need to use EVGo or EA? If you're
| lucky the card reader isn't broken. Then there's a decent
| chance it times out while communicating, because the
| order of events isn't intuitive for first timers.
| Cancelling the session at this point sometimes gets
| tricky too. Oh, and all of this is assuming the unit
| itself wasn't broken. If the card reader was broken, now
| you are downloading an app, tapping in card details,
| trying to figure out which stall to active, etc. And
| finally, you find out that the Bolt might require you to
| hold the cord just right for it to activate. EA used to
| have a whole video just on this detail. :facepalm
|
| It can be a really terrible experience.
| ggreer wrote:
| It's because Tesla's navigation automatically adds
| charging stops to the route. Also you add billing info
| when you set up your Tesla account (which the car is tied
| to) so you don't do anything besides plug in. While
| you're driving you can see on your car's screen how busy
| nearby chargers are, whether any stalls are out of
| commission (an extremely rare occurrence), and what the
| maximum charging rate is.
|
| I've tried 3rd party chargers a few times and gave up on
| them. They're often broken or extremely slow. They
| usually require installing some app, and you don't know
| whether they're occupied or not until you get there. In
| contrast, Tesla's chargers are a consistently good
| experience. Without them, I'd simply never use my EV for
| road trips.
| jsight wrote:
| The Tesla supercharger team rarely gets enough credit.
| They do an amazing job behind the scenes to make all of
| that a reality.
|
| I still use other charging networks from time to time.
| The best that I can say is that they are usable, but they
| are often frustrating in various weird ways.
| smcin wrote:
| > _For example, she had to walk in the cold (Maine) from
| her hotel to her car..._
|
| Equivalently, she chose a hotel without chargers, or
| without enough chargers. How much extra time and money
| would it have taken to find a hotel with/near chargers?
|
| Which travel search engines/ OTAs/ directories allow you to
| find hotels with L1/L2 chargers? (Do they list number and
| ratio of chargers/rooms?) Just like how most of these allow
| you to search on free parking, breakfast, wifi, disabled
| access etc., I see this as a feature that will become
| common then standard.
|
| EDIT: to the down-voter, this is on-topic and substantive
| comment. Per my other comment here, the onus is on the
| rental company to actively incentivize behavior
| modification in first-time-EV-renting customers, help them
| plan their trip, not just to merrily slam them for fees.
| Assuming Hertz want loyalty and repeat business (if not,
| then this is a wider issue with them, not with EVs).
| achow wrote:
| Right.
|
| The key takeaway for me, they being wall street people -
| customer empathy was missing.
|
| 101 of salesmanship - understanding of customers needs,
| desires and then selling solutions for those. Here their
| customers were out of town weary travelers wanting to have a
| hassle free quick ride to a hotel or a meeting; have not used
| EVs before (perhaps never intend to), now have to focus on a
| new problem - how to learn a new skill of handling EV, how to
| plan for charging during their multi day trips.. etc.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| Stealing a recent comment from reddit on someone's Hertz EV
| experience. It's a Solterra (Subaru's first EV in
| collaboration with Toyota) which made it even worse than
| the Teslas, but I think a good illustration of this idea
| that you can just roll out EVs to rental customers and act
| like it's the same as a gas car:
|
| _> Hertz gave me a Subaru Solterra for a one way trip from
| Temecula to Vegas because it was their last car. Couldn 't
| tell me how to start it or anything because they just got
| it the day before... and they didn't bother plugging it in
| so it had 20 miles of range. Couldn't tell me where to
| charge it so I wasted much of it driving around the mall
| looking for the charger._
|
| _> Four hours later I had enough charge to get to Barstow.
| Or so I thought. Had to charge in Victorville. Then get a
| hotel room because it was midnight. Put it on a fast
| charger in the morning and a full charge should have gotten
| me all the way back. Hit Baker and I knew it wouldn 't._
|
| _> My five hour drive ended up taking 25 hours._
|
| _> Fuck Hertz._
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/1bi99tk/hertz_ceo_ou
| t...
| monknomo wrote:
| My god, not having enough on site fast chargers for both
| charging the fleet and reassuring renters that if nothing
| else they can come back to the airport and top up is
| really stupid
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> My god, not having enough on site fast chargers for
| both charging the fleet and reassuring renters
|
| Take a look at a major airport. They could average a
| hundred rental cars arriving, with peaks into the
| hundreds. Even assuming every can arrives at a half-
| charge, the power requirements would be immense. At 50kwH
| per car, charging up 100 cars every hour would require,
| at an absolute minimum, a 5000kw/5mW connection.
| fnbr wrote:
| That's a great reason not to have electric rental cars,
| but not a great reason to not charge rental cars.
| yummypaint wrote:
| Airports are massive pre-planned industrial facilities
| with utility connections to match. Getting chargers there
| should be easy mode compared to most businesses.
| mulmen wrote:
| They also don't offer automotive refueling services at
| the airport. This is the same reason they charge a
| premium to fill the tank. The constraints are the same
| for ICE and EV in this case.
| smeej wrote:
| What's your source for this? I'm just realizing I might
| be way off-base, but I thought airport car rental places
| all had their own fueling stations, and just overcharged
| you because they can and there's nothing you can do about
| it, and I'd thought of it as one of those "everybody
| knows" kinds of things. So now I'm very surprised to hear
| otherwise.
| mulmen wrote:
| I don't have a source. It just seems obvious to me they
| wouldn't bother with the cost of maintaining that
| infrastructure.
|
| Do you have any reason to believe car rental companies
| maintain onsite fuel stations? Have you ever seen one?
| Why don't they let customers use it?
|
| There are already gas stations near airports. If a car
| needs gas they pay someone to drive it there and fill it
| up. That's the source of your inflated prices.
| smallnamespace wrote:
| > pre-planned
|
| The power requirements were not drawn up with the car
| rental agency in mind. Maybe you can get the airport to
| cooperate and ask the utility to expand capacity - how
| many years of planning do you think that takes?
| wlesieutre wrote:
| Yes, definitely a project, especially with the shortages
| of transformers lately. But even if it delayed their
| (attempted) EV shift, it's something Hertz needed to have
| done _before_ buying a bunch of EVs. Handing out
| discharged EVs to customers who haven't driven an EV
| before was a totally braindead move.
|
| They have the added challenge of people dropping off cars
| at a different place from where they started, so they
| can't necessarily say "we're going to start with EVs at
| our new facilities where we can design that capacity from
| the start." They needed fast charging _everywhere_ for
| this to go smoothly.
| monknomo wrote:
| Sounds like something a car rental agency that wants to
| have a bunch of electric rentals should probably think
| through before yeeting a fleet into existence....
| cduzz wrote:
| 50kwH is a huge charger. You wouldn't need many of such
| feeds even with hundreds of cars.
|
| How long do cars sit in the lot? Do you need to send cars
| out at 100% full? Is it good enough to make sure the cars
| leave the lot with 50-80% full?
|
| They're returned, inspected, cleaned, put in the
| "outgoing" queue. I suspect having DCFC for just the
| cleaning area and then 16 or 20 or 24a /240v posts for L2
| charging the cars as they sit waiting to be rented would
| more than suffice.
|
| Other big issues would be around having to have dedicated
| parking for EVs and also having charging posts sticking
| out of the ground all over.
| masklinn wrote:
| > 50kwH is a huge charger.
|
| 50kWh is not the charger, half the battery capacity for
| the cars (as decided by GP).
|
| And 50kW would not be a huge charger, or even a large
| one, it's the bottom end of DC charging.
|
| > I suspect having DCFC for just the cleaning area and
| then 16 or 20 or 24a /240v posts for L2 charging the cars
| as they sit waiting to be rented would more than suffice.
|
| Aside from not being very efficient, 24@240 is not really
| a thing that's used. 32@240 is relatively standard but
| it's 7.2kW and generally considered a residential AC
| charger, acceptable when 3-phase is not available (or too
| expensive). It needs 7 hours to half-charge a 100kWh
| battery.
| monknomo wrote:
| This is a problem for a car rental company that wants to
| provide electric cars to solve, sure.
|
| The rental co really needs to provide reasonable charged
| cars, and so long as charging infrastructure is dicey
| (especially with hotels in the mix) they could provide
| peace of mind to their customers by providing a known
| charging spot.
|
| Put it wherever, I'm not Hertz, the airport is not
| Hertz's customer, but I would have a pretty strong bet
| that Hertz's customers would expect this sort of thing.
| SilasX wrote:
| Still scratching my head at why they couldn't make EV
| batteries hot-swappable, at least with a technician and
| specialized equipment assumed. (You'd need to changing
| the finance model a bit, of course, so that the batter
| replacement service were sold separately from the car --
| but this would be easiest for the case of a car rental
| fleet.)
| ghaff wrote:
| It was tried and failed--admittedly a long time ago.
| However, today, I want to have a pretty good idea of the
| battery health of the battery in my car and avoid it
| randomly changing when I "fill up." Also most recharge
| locations are 24-hour with no one on staff so you'd
| drastically cut when and how an automated replacement
| could happen.
| SilasX wrote:
| Yes, a user-swappable would be even better, but even
| limiting it to banker's hours allows you a five minute
| complete fill-up, which is still 100x than what it
| actually takes to fully charge via outlet, or even the 15
| minutes you would take if you're lucky enough to find an
| available supercharger, which still only gives you 200
| miles.
| jsight wrote:
| Not necessarily unheard of though. Tesla is planning a 52
| stall site at O'Hare. That will probably be ~6MW at peak.
| ghaff wrote:
| Furthermore, at a rental car center, you're not just
| swinging in and swinging back out. It could change of
| course but they're setup that once you drive in, you're
| returning the car. (Re: comments about rental car center
| being the charger of last resort.)
|
| (I had a friend joining me on a trip a number of years
| back. We wanted to add them to the contract once they
| arrived. I had to patiently explain that we could do it
| with a company that also had an off-airport location but
| we couldn't drop by the car rental center at the airport.
| I've had other experiences with how car rental companies
| really don't have good mechanisms to change things once
| you've signed and initialed the contract.)
| robertlagrant wrote:
| You almost can; just put in the same cost of 20 miles'
| worth of petrol in electricity and the thing will go for
| ages.
| mulmen wrote:
| I'm a big proponent of EVs but nothing about the current
| state of chargers can be described as "just put in
| money". I have never had an EV charger work the first
| time.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Tesla superchargers do but that is about it.
| alibarber wrote:
| When I looked into this, renting an electric car from
| Hertz in the UK, the only chargers I would have had
| access to were public ones that wanted something like
| 85p/KWh. I would have spent an absolute fortune compared
| to petrol for the trip that I took.
| jandrese wrote:
| In theory if the people used the in-car travel planning
| features it shouldn't have been a problem, but if Hertz
| wasn't telling them about that then you could have a very
| stressful experience.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > In theory if the people used the in-car travel planning
| features it shouldn't have been a problem,
|
| This is just a different way of saying "If people put in
| more work this wouldn't be a problem", but you're ignoring
| the context - people who rent cars are often in a hurry,
| need transport _now_ and need to get someone _now_. This
| all indicates that they are busy, and your suggestion is
| that they should work harder to get the same result?
| jandrese wrote:
| The systems aren't hard to use, quite the opposite, but
| they can't help if you don't use them. I think if Hertz
| spent even 5 minutes explaining to people how the in-car
| navigation worked and emphasizing how important it is
| this experiment have been a success. The car will work
| out the charging stops for you, tell you how long you
| need to be there (hint: not long), and do all of the
| stressful planning steps automatically.
|
| It's not just Tesla either. All major EVs come with route
| planning. If you have range anxiety you're using it
| wrong. This isn't even the driver's fault, how can they
| know about these features if nobody tells them? I don't
| even fully blame Hertz for this. Tesla should be
| marketing the route planning nationwide. Show people how
| life with EVs actually is instead of leaving them in the
| dark and letting them think that owning an EV means a
| roll of the dice every time you get behind the wheel
| where you might not find a friendly plug in time and be
| stranded on the side with no way to jerrycan more miles.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > The systems aren't hard to use, quite the opposite, but
| they can't help if you don't use them.
|
| I'm not claiming that the systems are hard to use, I'm
| saying that it's an additional friction over ICE cars, in
| which you _don 't_ need to put in extra work to learn a
| piece of software, you _don 't_ need to wait for the
| rental assistant to explain how it works and you _don 't_
| need to plan refuelling stops to coincide with rest
| times.
|
| As a renter, I give them my booking number, my drivers
| license and my credit card, then jump in and head
| straight to my destination. All the other stuff that the
| Tesla's required may be easy, but we go from 2 steps (pay
| and drive) to 5 or more steps.
|
| TBH, if Hertz had wanted this to be a success, the
| biggest thing they could have done was made sure that the
| cars were _always_ fully charged before the customer
| drove off.
|
| Route-planning is kinda irrelevant when you're doubling
| the friction required to rent a car.
| mulmen wrote:
| 5 marginal minutes is an eternity in customer service.
| Travelers are in a rush. The idea that Hertz will or even
| can train customers individually is a laughable fantasy.
| ghaff wrote:
| In fact, one of the points of my loyalty programs with
| various car rental companies is that I can look at the
| board and walk straight to my car.
| WheatMillington wrote:
| >If you have range anxiety you're using it wrong.
|
| Sorry but that is a hyper-obnoxious comment. I've never
| yet driven an EV, and range anxiety is undoubtedly
| something I will experience when I eventually get to. I
| don't want that in the context of being away from home on
| work or holiday.
| ycombobreaker wrote:
| I rented an electric car from Hertz out of necessity. They
| gave me NO information about this functionality, and in a
| new car UI my priorities were covering the basics for safe
| travel. This is not a realistic perspective, that EV-
| specific in-car features would provide help for an
| unfamiliar and weary traveler. That will change over time
| but it'll continue to be painful for now.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| The "in-car" planning features are a going to get people
| stranded on the side of the road, including in a Tesla.
|
| I had to make a trip from Tucson, AZ to Bisbee, a super
| common route you would make as it's a popular tourist
| destination. Bisbee is about 80 miles from the supercharger
| down Interstate 10. By default, the cars are configured to
| stop charging when they get to 80% or something like that.
| Your average consumer is not going to have a clue because
| that's not how gas pumps work.
|
| There was 0 public charging infrastructure after the
| Supercharger, not so much as a public J1772 charge point
| (It might look like it using an app, but they are broken or
| nonfunctional). The Model 3 gets under 200 miles of range
| going the pace of traffic, which is 80-85 MPH. Then they
| take a wrong turn or drive around at the destination and
| burn up the last 30-40 miles.
|
| The poor sucker that rented the Tesla was told it would get
| "270 miles of range". When he left the charger it said he
| had over 200 miles to go. But reality sinks in, and at some
| point in the journey, if they get even slightly distracted,
| they will find themselves 50 miles from the charger with 30
| miles left.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| > The poor sucker that rented the Tesla was told it would
| get "270 miles of range". When he left the charger it
| said he had over 200 miles to go. But reality sinks in,
| and at some point in the journey, if they get even
| slightly distracted, they will find themselves 50 miles
| from the charger with 30 miles left.
|
| And the reason gasoline took off as a fuel was because it
| was frequently used as a degreaser before we decided to
| burn it instead, so you could buy it in tins from the
| blacksmith in whatever town you found yourself stranded
| in. There's nothing analogous to that for EVs.
| mulmen wrote:
| Any regular wall outlet can charge an EV.
| alexb_ wrote:
| There are zero wall outlets in the middle of the desert.
| mrWiz wrote:
| Same as the number of blacksmiths, then.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| Are you suggesting people steal electricity from private
| homes or businesses?
| mulmen wrote:
| Are you suggesting blacksmiths weren't compensated for
| providing solvent?
| throwway120385 wrote:
| Are you suggesting that there exists a large nationwide
| network of chargers that is as convenient and as easily
| accessible as the electricity grid?
| masklinn wrote:
| That's true, but now you need to spend the night.
|
| A model 3 realistically gets 4~4.5 mi / kWh, US 16A@120V
| is rated for 1500W continuous, so that's about 6.5 miles
| per hour of charging. 20A@120V is close to 2000W
| continuous, so that's about 9 miles per hour.
| mulmen wrote:
| Were blacksmiths open 24 hours?
| masklinn wrote:
| You did not need to stay at the blacksmith's for hours to
| get a can of gas which would carry you to the next supply
| location.
| elsonrodriguez wrote:
| I like the historical context, but there are extremely
| analogous comparisons for EVs, as electricity is widely
| available.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| The thing is -- electricity is widely available to people
| who have purchased an electrical service and have
| installed the requisite breaker panel. So while you might
| be very close to places where there are electricity, you
| can't just roll up and plug in to someone's house.
|
| You could certainly offer to pay someone for electricity
| from their home or business, but then you're parked in
| their driveway for a period of time waiting. And the
| social aspects of this make it a lot more challenging
| than simply walking up to the local blacksmith and buying
| a gallon or two of solvent off the shelf so you can get
| to the next town.
|
| You're at that point relying on the kindness of
| strangers.
| threeseed wrote:
| Also we've seen recently in the US you are liable to get
| killed for randomly going up to someone's house.
| mulmen wrote:
| I rented a Tesla from Hertz. They gave me zero instruction.
| It took me 10 minutes to get out of the parking space.
| giantrobot wrote:
| My partner just travelled to middle of nowhere Illinois. At
| the airport car rental they were trying to offer EVs instead
| of an ICE. That was not in any way a viable option since the
| destination town not only wouldn't have charging stations
| there's no guarantee the car could be charged anywhere.
|
| If you _buy_ an EV you hopefully do so knowing full well the
| vehicle 's constraints. You've figured out those constraints
| aren't a deal breaker for your known use cases. When being
| offered as a rental most people have no idea what the
| constraints of the vehicle are nor can they make informed
| decisions about them. So having anxiety about any of those,
| including charging, makes complete sense. A rental car should
| be as flexible as possible, not have a care and feeding
| schedule like you're buying a Mogwai.
| hinkley wrote:
| We had someone plug their rental EV into a 15 amp outside
| circuit on our house on a friday night. We thought it said
| that it would be charged by 10 am the next day so we just
| drove them to their rental. Next morning when they showed
| up at 11 am we discovered that the charger hadn't said 10
| am Saturday. No, it said 10 am _Monday_.
| hinkley wrote:
| My friend's friend got an electric vehicle they didn't ask
| for an it made their entire visit a giant pain because they
| brought negative energy everywhere with them.
|
| I had been planning to get an electric but now I'm looking at
| PHEVs. And I still need to get the wiring for my house fixed.
| There's an outlet but it was meant for some early gen
| electric vehicle and literally nothing uses that plug anymore
| (and now the wiring is probably not adequate gauge)
| gnicholas wrote:
| We use 110 to charge our PHEV (which admittedly has a very
| small battery). I would like to get a PHEV for our next
| vehicle, but the price premium makes it very unattractive
| for us. Some vehicles are $12k more for PHEV, and given how
| little we drive it would never be worth it. It's nice not
| tanking up often, but the extra cost (and extra car
| insurance) isn't worth it for us.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Outlets are standardized and not specific to EVs. If you
| mean the charge plug, that's different.
|
| Assuming you're in the US/Canada or other country with
| 100-120v service, a standard wall socket is sufficient for
| many full EV users and plenty enough for a PHEV which has a
| _much_ smaller battery. Think about how much time your car
| spends sitting in your driveway /garage...and if you don't
| get a full charge, so what? The engine kicks in.
|
| The wiring gauge is good for a certain current. That
| affects what sort of plug is installed in the wall, as
| they're keyed according to current limits. The EVSE can be
| programmed to not exceed the appropriate current, which is
| 80% of the breaker's rating.
|
| If it was wired for an EV, it's almost certainly not
| 100-120v but 208 or higher, in which case even if it's a
| 15A circuit, that's _definitely_ enough for a PHEV and
| sufficient for charging all but the largest EVs practically
| overnight.
|
| A 208v, 15A circuit is good for 2.5kW. If you get home at
| 7PM and go to work at 7AM, you'll be able to charge 25kWhr
| each night, roughly. Average EV efficiency is about
| .35kWh/mile, so that's sufficient for 70 miles of driving.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| You'll probably have 240V in North America in a
| residential detached/duplex/row home. It's low/high-rise
| apartment buildings/condominiums where you'll see 208V.
| amluto wrote:
| I drive an EV and I'm still a bit unconvinced about renting
| one.
|
| If my total expected mileage is practical without charging
| and I expect the car to start adequately charged, fine. It's
| like a free tank of gas.
|
| If not, I can't charge at home. Charging at a hotel is a
| PITA. Charging first thing in the morning in cold weather
| without heated parking is _slooooow_ even at a Supercharger.
|
| And I really don't want to deal with the utter mess of
| charger networks and their ridiculous membership cards.
|
| And the usual rental model of strongly encouraging customers
| to return the car with a full tank of gas doesn't really make
| sense for EVs.
| xenadu02 wrote:
| I'm not saying it was no factor whatsoever but if you listen
| to the Hertz investor call they describe the reason for
| backtracking and they certainly don't cite charging as the
| primary reason.
| brk wrote:
| I know this is anecdata, but of a couple of friends that had
| Tesla rentals from Hertz, the number one issue was charging
| availability, or lack thereof. The fleet maintenance issues may
| have also been a factor, but from what I observed I would not
| take an EV as a rental car myself, solely because of the
| charging issue.
| jandrese wrote:
| Charging issue being that they couldn't find any available
| superchargers using the in-car navigation? Or was the in-car
| navigation not working because it was a rental? That would be
| a serious problem on a Tesla where the software stack is
| critical to running the vehicle properly.
| resters wrote:
| The in-car navigation to the nearest supercharger worked,
| but:
|
| - some markets don't have an abundance of fast
| superchargers. It can take > 1 hour to charge.
|
| - vehicles would often get returned mostly discharged,
| which forces the next customer to deal with it.
|
| - I rented a few that appeared to have been driven really
| hard, leading the remaining charge calibration to become
| mis calibrated, which caused me to have to stop for some
| unscheduled charges.
|
| - the vehicles lose a few percent of charge per day even
| when not driven (worse in hot weather)
|
| - Hertz locations are typically not equipped with any kind
| of charging infrastructure -- if they were, EVs would be
| far more convenient to rent.
|
| I wish the program would continue, and I would still prefer
| to rent a Tesla over the other options, but I think the
| aforementioned things factored into the failure.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| >the vehicles lose a few percent of charge per day even
| when not driven (worse in hot weather)
|
| Is that a Tesla thing? Or does Hertz have some sort of
| battery draining telematics? I have a non-Tesla EV and
| even in warm weather (100degF+) that hasn't been the case
| for me. If the weather changes drastically the SOC might
| change +-2%, but when I've left my car sitting for weeks
| it seems to average out
| brk wrote:
| From the accounts I saw it was mostly that the available
| charging locations were too far out of the way, and too
| slow. When someone is renting a car for business meetings
| you don't want to spend a bunch of time on a charger
| scavenger hunt and then be forced to sit there killing
| time.
| autoexecbat wrote:
| Is there a good place to look at these 1-year-old
| (specifically) RVs post-dumping?
| ijijijjij wrote:
| when I rented a Tesla, by mistake, because they didn't have any
| other cars available, charging was definitely the problem. They
| charged me the same price as their cheapest cars, but it still
| ended up being more expensive because of charging (I paid about
| $900 for 3 weeks of charging at Tesla's stations, and it would
| probably would have cost me $300 with a small gasoline car)
|
| In other words, you gotta be stupid to rent a Tesla unless you
| do it just for fun.
| DFHippie wrote:
| > I paid about $900 for 3 weeks of charging at Tesla's
| stations
|
| Huh. Did you rent a Tesla and then have to pay separately for
| the privilege of using Tesla's charging network?
|
| I've had a Tesla for years and what you paid for 3 weeks is
| comparable for what I've paid at superchargers the entire
| time I've owned the car (I mostly charge at home). It seems
| you did get ripped off, it just seems like it would be
| difficult to pay that much in three weeks at superchargers
| alone. There must have been some special surcharge (as it
| were).
| cruano wrote:
| Not OP but you do have to pay separately. Although as you
| say, that's a crazy amount for just 3 weeks. In my
| experience I was charged about $100 for two weeks of
| regular use + one roadtrip from Miami to Orlando and back.
|
| Maybe it was just idle fees, that seems like it could go up
| by a lot if you leave the vehicle on the station:
|
| >For every additional minute a vehicle remains connected to
| the Supercharger, it will incur an idle fee.
|
| https://www.tesla.com/support/charging/supercharger/fees
| forgotusername6 wrote:
| I only checked a few countries, but it does appear that
| the UK is getting a really bad deal on those idling fees.
| mcguire wrote:
| " _I mostly charge at home_ "
|
| That's kind of a key point. It may not be possible with a
| rental.
| Aspos wrote:
| Assuming $0.48 per kilowatt, that's 1875kW. At 7 km per kW
| that is 13 thousand kilometers or 8 thousand miles. That is
| about 400 miles per day every day in 3 weeks. Wow.
|
| A hypothetical Toyota Camry, btw, would have consumed more
| than $900 worth of fuel.
| jsight wrote:
| Did they charge you idle fees somehow? Unfortunately that's
| the other mistake that we've seen sometimes.
|
| Not that you actually incurred them necessarily. There've
| been cases of them billing hundreds in idle fees by mistake.
|
| $900 of supercharging would typically be >6k miles. Possibly
| a little less or a _lot_ more depending on the exact costs in
| your area.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| > The real killer was no doubt depreciation. That breaks the
| whole rental car model.
|
| Yep. It's not just about rental income - it's about acquiring
| fleet at bulk/discounted prices and then reselling quickly
| before they lose too much money. Tesla's drastic price cuts
| have been annoying to consumers who just bought cars whose
| resale value plummeted overnight, but a complete deal breaker
| for a company like Hertz, only exacerbated by unexpectedly high
| repair costs.
|
| I'd imagine charging must have been a demand factor too -
| people might like to experiment with an EV rental if they don't
| own one, but on business or vacation the last thing you want to
| be worried about is finding a charger or range-anxiety. If you
| have an EV at home, then part of the convenience, and a
| mitigation for slow charging, is overnight charging. Many
| hotels (often used by rental customers) are starting to have
| chargers too, but it's not something you can depend on.
| adam_arthur wrote:
| I was saddled with an EV from Hertz unexpectedly (they said it
| was the only car left), and had to drive from NYC to MD and
| back.
|
| Charging was absolutely the worst part. And most of the
| charging stations were full at any given time.
|
| Range was extra bad due to the cold as well.
|
| I understand the EV model for home use, but it makes 0 sense
| for rentals today. It's vastly less convenient, even ignoring
| the other factors like depreciation
| mintplant wrote:
| This is all in the article.
| resters wrote:
| How does one repair the chassis part that is one or two massive
| giga-pressed parts?
| mikepurvis wrote:
| I dunno about the back end business parts of it, but I've
| rented a few cars recently, and Hertz was not only 20-30% more
| expensive than Enterprise, but getting a Model 3 from them was
| over double the price of a comparable gas car. There's no way I
| was going to get enough miles in to make the fuel cost worth
| that differential.
| thinkling wrote:
| Pricing is going to depend a lot on the dynamics of the local
| market and the number of cars each company has available.
| (Article mentions that rental companies will truck cars
| between markets and that anticipating demand is key to being
| profitable.)
|
| For a while last summer, EVs from Hertz were the cheapest
| cars you could rent in the Seattle area because they had many
| and customers didn't want them. Sounds like they've been
| selling them off.
| foobarian wrote:
| The thing that gets me is that the guys who lead this effort
| are go-getting ex-finance, ex-trading people who work their
| butts off and have attention to detail of a microscope. And the
| article mentions that they did in fact do detailed studies and
| make financial models of the venture and things looked good
| enough to push forward. So... clearly even their experience,
| hard work, and attention to detail was not enough to predict
| what would happen.
|
| I'm not sure what that means in the end :-). Maybe predicting
| the future is just hard? Maybe it was a 30-60 bet and they just
| got unlucky? In that case what they did was not unreasonable
| and had it worked the same journalists that cackle at them with
| schadenfreude would be singing their praises.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| Or maybe a background in finance is not actually enough to
| know how to launch a totally new product within your company.
| Maybe you need some people with engineering expertise to ask
| a different set of questions beyond "will the costs add up?"
| jordanb wrote:
| My experience with Finance/PE people is that they don't
| really care about any details. They want all decks to be like
| three slides. If you can't represent something on a
| spreadsheet it doesn't count. And they're extremely good at
| working backwards from a conclusion.
|
| I'm sure they never asked "how fast can they be repaired?"
| "What will the customer experience be when a car has to be
| paired with your phone and you need a Tesla account?" "Are
| the maintenance claims put out by the manufacturer
| reasonable?" etc. etc.
| adamors wrote:
| It seems to me that the finance guys were completely out of
| their element and when their models didn't fit the reality on
| the ground they couldn't adapt at all.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| Last year Hertz gave me a Chevy Bolt. This was my first EV
| ever. I thought it's pretty crazy to let people rent EVs
| without any training. It took me a long time to figure out how
| to charge the thing and how to find chargers. And the charger I
| found was super slow and would have taken hours to fully
| recharge.
|
| I assume things are better with a Tesla but if somebody
| reasonably tech savvy like me has problems, I can't even
| imagine how difficult it will be for many less tech savvy and
| less tech interested people I know to deal with an EV.
| newaccount74 wrote:
| Our local Ikea rented out CNG vans to unsuspecting customers.
| And you had to return it with a full tank. That was fun :)
| erik_seaberg wrote:
| Wow. I used to drive CNG airport shuttles in Seattle, where
| there were two pumping stations in the _entire county_ (one
| just off the airport, fortunately).
| jseliger wrote:
| A few weeks ago I rented a Model 3 from Hertz in San Diego,
| and the car didn't come with an SAE J1772 Charging Adapter
| (this covers most level 2 stations). That's crazy. I was
| staying primarily at UCSD for cancer treatment, and there are
| a million level 2 chargers that I couldn't access without the
| SAE J1772 dongle. The Tesla my wife and I have always has a
| SAE J1772 dongle in the center console. I complained about
| the lack of this essential part.
| thinkling wrote:
| I ran into this. Desk staff said they had initially
| provided travel chargers but that so many got stolen that
| they stopped.
|
| Seems to me that this could have been fixed by making them
| optional and requiring a deposit, but when you read in the
| article that Hertz had major IT issues it seems safe to
| assume that they didn't have the capacity to make such
| process changes quickly.
| kelp wrote:
| Hertz also had absurd policies like bring the EV back 100%
| charged. Which is basically impossible unless there is a DC
| fast charger adjacent to the rental car center.
| thinkling wrote:
| As far as I saw, they required cars to come back 70%
| charged, or to the same level the car had when it went out.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Meanwhile, I'm trying to find the answer to this on a
| hypothetical hertz.fr RV rental.
|
| They have a gas policy section, which says "Si vous avez
| loue un vehicule electrique, veuillez vous reporter a la
| section Vehicules electriques".
|
| In other words, find and check the electric vehicle
| section. But they don't have a Vehicules electriques
| section...
| brewdad wrote:
| Yes. This was the policy I saw when I considered renting
| an EV in Phoenix. We were only going to be there for 27
| hours and our hotel did not have its Level 2 charger
| operational yet, so we opted for a gas car instead.
| lh7777 wrote:
| I rented a Bolt from Hertz last December and their policy
| at the time was:
|
| "Return your EV at the same charge level as pick-up and
| pay $0. Or return your EV at any level for a $25 Recharge
| Fee."
|
| They were pretty lenient about the return charge -- it
| was close to 100% to start and 80% when I returned it,
| but they didn't charge me the $25. Even if they had, the
| EV rental rate was cheap enough that I would've still
| come out ahead vs. renting a gas car.
| cruano wrote:
| > I thought it's pretty crazy to let people rent EVs without
| any training.
|
| They send you a bunch of "Explore your upcoming rental"
| emails when you rent a tesla, with video tutorials [1]. I've
| rented plug-in hybrids before and had pretty much the same
| experience as you, but for a tesla rental I watched the
| videos and all worked well.
|
| https://www.hertz.com/us/en/vehicles/tesla/faq
| Freedom2 wrote:
| My mother is the least tech-savvy person I know and she found
| it incredibly easy to intuitively use an EV (Volt). She also
| borrowed a friend's Tesla and had zero issues with it.
| Perhaps you are not as tech-savvy as you might think?
| jsight wrote:
| In fairness, the software is much easier to get up to speed
| on in the Tesla, especially as it relates to charging.
|
| Often others require messing around with smartphone apps,
| often with very bad UI.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| >> _Newbie Tesla drivers who weren't used to the car's
| instantaneous acceleration and immediate braking were running
| into obstacles or getting rear-ended, sometimes even before
| they left the rental lot. Hertz's Teslas got into accidents
| four times more often than the company's other vehicles._
|
| That statistic from the article shocked me.
|
| Four times?!
| dtnewman wrote:
| Eh... The charging is an issue. I have been in a position to
| rent EVs before but opted not to. If I own a Tesla, then I
| likely have a charger at home (and possibly at work), so
| dealing with charging is only an issue on my rare long haul
| trips (and if I _frequently_ make long-haul trips, I probably
| own a gas car), which I 'd be willing to put up with. If i'm
| renting in a city i'm visiting though:
|
| 1) I'm likely driving more than I do at home
|
| 2) I don't know if my hotel/s will have chargers
|
| 3) I am cognizant of my time and don't want to drive out of my
| way to sit in parking lots while my car charges
|
| 4) I might be travelling to rural areas where chargers are
| infrequent
|
| Not saying that the issues you brought up are invalid, but I do
| think there's a demand problem.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Why do you think that? Do you work in that industry?
| skmexyz wrote:
| Not sure why you think charging is not the problem.
|
| I am a very heavy user of rentals (300+ rentals last year, 200+
| the year before - max status on National / Enterprise, Hertz
| and Avis) and I've rented an EV (Tesla Model 3) exactly once.
|
| Most users don't have the time to think about places to charge
| and even more so, to bring it back at 80%
|
| Not to mention, outside of major metropolitan areas (US and
| Canada), charging infrastructure is spotty at best (esp. if you
| don't plan for it).
|
| This makes charging an added hurdle that takes away from the
| experience.
|
| If you're a business user - you don't do it because you don't
| have the time and if you're a leisure user - you don't do it
| because your vacation time is valuable and spending time at
| charging stations that are usually out of the way is not ideal
| time spent for an expensive vacation)
| klyrs wrote:
| I own an EV, I wouldn't rent one except: single day, and
| don't make me recharge it. The infrastructure sucks. I don't
| install charger apps on my phone; the number of chargers that
| just take a credit card and don't require an account -- even
| my local power utility requires a special card to access
| their network!
|
| With my own car, in my home town, it isn't a problem. My
| garage has a lvl1 charger for grocery getting; I know a few
| account-free fast chargers around town, and that's all I
| need. A multi-day trip, or a rental company putting the onus
| on me to return it full, just isn't worthwhile.
| ggreer wrote:
| With a Tesla you don't install apps or use a credit card.
| You just plug into their Superchargers (which are
| automatically added to your route if the car needs to
| charge to get to your destination). In the US, the largest
| gap between superchargers is Coeur d'Alene, Idaho to St.
| Regis, Montana (94 miles). I've gone on road trips all over
| the western US and never worried about charging.
| idop wrote:
| 1. You're talking about Tesla ownership, not rental.
|
| 2. You still need a very specific payment source, even if
| it's not physically on you at the time of purchase. If
| you're a foreigner, this may be literally impossible for
| you. Many places only work by linking with your local
| bank account. Tourists do not have local bank accounts.
| ggreer wrote:
| Hertz just adds the charging costs to your rental bill.
| You don't set up any sort of payment in the car. The
| experience is the same as owning a Tesla.
| idop wrote:
| I see, as far as I know that is not possible with Tesla
| rental in the UK (where my experience was). This is nice,
| but does it work with non-Superchargers? I wouldn't want
| to be tied down to one provider on vacation.
| Superchargers are rare in some countries.
| ggreer wrote:
| The article is about Hertz renting out Teslas in the US.
| That's what I was talking about, and that's what I
| thought you were talking about because you didn't mention
| that your experience was based on renting a different
| brand of EV in a different country.
|
| Teslas work fine with 3rd party chargers. It's just that
| (as you noticed with your Polestar rental) 3rd party
| chargers are inconvenient and tend to be poorly
| maintained.
| klyrs wrote:
| That's cool, but I'm not a tesla owner and I don't live
| in your country. When speaking of an international rental
| firm, I hope you understand that I'm going to base my
| expectations on past experiences, and not the best-case
| story of a tesla owner in a country I actively avoid
| traveling to.
| idop wrote:
| A thousand times this. Hertz dumped a Polestar on me on a 6
| week trip in Britain and it was absolutely ridiculous. No
| cash option anywhere. Most charging stations didn't even
| accept a credit card, and those that did required
| installing a badly written app that only works 20% of the
| time. Most apps/chargers only link your bank account, and
| I'm a fucking tourist, I don't have a bank account. And to
| top it all off, absolutely no charger anywhere gives out
| receipts, so I couldn't present the receipts/invoices for
| tax purposes.
| timthorn wrote:
| > Most apps/chargers only link your bank account
|
| That's just not true of the UK market. Most fast chargers
| accept credit cards using a contactless reader - indeed,
| by law, they will soon all have to. Of the main charging
| networks app based payments:
|
| Shell - charges to your credit card, BP Pulse - credit
| account topped by by credit card, PodPoint - credit
| account topped up by credit card, VendElectric - credit
| account topped up by credit card, Fuuse/evpoint - charges
| to your credit card, Mer - charges to your credit card,
| ChargePoint - credit account topped up by credit card
| idop wrote:
| You probably know better than me, but in those 6 weeks I
| drove in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland,
| and I charged a lot, in many different stations. Many did
| not accept a credit card:
|
| In Scotland, many chargers only accepted some specialty
| charging card that foreigners can't buy.
|
| Many stations claimed they do accept credit cards, but
| when I got there, card payments were conveniently
| "disabled at this time".
|
| Apps that did take credit card _all_ refused to work with
| non-British billing addresses. The only app I got to work
| was ChargePoint, and I only succeeded in that after many
| trails and errors, looking for ways to trick it into
| thinking I was British and getting it to successfully
| charge my card (which eventually I did). And they do not
| charge your card per session, they randomly bill your
| card based on usage predictions. They still haven't
| returned me the 75 pounds they stole from me on the last
| day of my rental, because they figured I was surely going
| to need them soon.
|
| And again, no receipts anywhere.
|
| All in all, it was an awful experience.
|
| EDIT: I only now notice that I wrote _most_ stations only
| link with your credit card. That's most probably an
| exaggeration, I suppose that was just the impression I
| ended with. All in all, I wasted exorbitant amounts of
| time on that trip purely on charging. Quite a few
| stations also failed on me, now that I'm ranting. In
| Northern Ireland, chargers often could not be used
| because there was no cell reception so I couldn't use the
| app, and cards were not accepted. One charger abruptly
| terminated my session mid-charge and made a scary noise
| and refused to work again. Turns out the charger stopped
| because _it itself_ lost Internet connection.
| m463 wrote:
| I take it you don't have a tesla? I've had a non-tesla EV
| and the infrastructure did suck.
|
| The infrastructure for a tesla is significantly better, and
| you don't have to install an app - everything is right
| there built into the car. It will add charging stops as
| part of navigation if you want. The superchargers are
| plentiful, have lots of stalls (rarely full) and are very
| fast. There is no fumbling with apps, credit cards or
| payment authorization, you just plug in.
| ein0p wrote:
| Easy solution for Hertz: don't require it to be changed upon
| return. Where I live a full 100% charge from zero at
| residential prices is $8. It'd also improve the customer
| experience I bet, especially over gas cars where you either
| need to refuel or get nickel and dimed on yet another thing
| brewdad wrote:
| From Hertz perspective, that car is now out of commission
| for half a day. Car rental companies rely on getting cars
| back on the road as quickly as possible once a rental
| period ends. A fleet that is parked, charging or waiting to
| be charged, is actively costing them money.
| ein0p wrote:
| What "half a day"? With proper infra it takes less than a
| couple of hours to charge even when charging 2 cars per
| charger.
| dev_tty01 wrote:
| 2 hours is still a lot longer than 5 minutes. Rapid
| turnover is important for these folks. I've seen rental
| companies run out of cars numerous times. Two hours is
| tough. Plus, how about when dozens of cars have been
| turned in and are waiting on a charge? If anything, they
| are most likely to levy a higher fee for returning
| uncharged because of their lost time.
| znkynz wrote:
| you still have to clean and process ready for next
| customer. adding 2 hours to other work may make it half a
| day
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| You can't clean the car while it's plugged in?
| Arrath wrote:
| It would seem ideal to have the line-up area where cars
| are turned in, inspected and cleaned set up with a bunch
| of retractable charger leads in the ceiling, ala shop
| air. As soon as you pull up, the attendant pulls down a
| lead and plugs the car in. Bam.
| mfer wrote:
| The article pointed out that some airports don't have the
| electrical infrastructure to support enough super
| chargers. It's partly a charging problem
| noodlesUK wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that if they're using even remotely fast
| chargers, cleaning and inspection (and associated
| queuing) would take most of that time. I also suspect
| that most rental places aren't so close to capacity that
| someone returning a car a few hours late would block a
| customer from pickup. There's a certain amount of slack
| in the inventory.
| smcin wrote:
| It seems like the same economics of tweaking the size of
| the fee for returning a rental Tesla uncharged, which is a
| flat $35 fee ($25 for Hertz Gold Club members) [0] vs the
| much higher rental cost ~$60-200/day [1], then most
| customers will skip recharging and pay the fee; just like
| returning an ICE car without refuelling (or comparable to
| returning it 1-2hrs later than the agreed time). Then it's
| Hertz's business model's challenge to figure out how to
| incentivize/penalize their customers. (If you return it at
| 79% do you still pay the same fee as if 10%? This is
| harsher than the unfuelled ICE penalty).
|
| If Hertz has a "morning/evening rush hour gap" between when
| uncharged EVs are returned vs when they're charged and
| cleaned and available again, then (just like surge pricing,
| or same-day standby offers that airlines make when
| oversold) maybe send individual customers $$ incentives the
| evening before to charge it or return it earlier.
|
| And as for improving first-time customer experience of
| renting EVs, Hertz has an incentive to do better with
| steering them towards reserving a hotel/motel with L1/L2
| chargers (give them a coupon for the price premium), or at
| least nearby ones. At least on their last night before
| returning. Or help them plan out which nights it'll need
| recharge, based on their itinerary, then factor that advice
| into suggested hotel booking.
|
| And another idea: the Hertz app could set reminders the day
| before for "If you want to return your car at 8am charged,
| and you estimate the return trip will take 45min and 8% of
| battery, then you need to charge overnight, or else start
| charging by (say) 5am, to 88%".
|
| I don't see any of this as a limitation of EVs, just
| figuring out how to incentivize behavior modification in
| rental customers, improve the app, teach customers how to
| plan for it, give coupons, do hotel partnerships etc. If
| the Hertz app won't, then a calendaring or driving-
| directions app could.
|
| [0]: https://www.hertz.com/us/en/vehicles/tesla/faq/your-
| first-dr...
|
| [1]: https://www.way.com/blog/how-much-to-rent-a-tesla/
| nicpottier wrote:
| What in the world do you do? 300 rentals a year and you are
| range limited on those trips? Genuinely interested just can't
| even imagine your life!
| skmexyz wrote:
| I used to essentially be a consultant (left that life
| behind this year). My title was Junior Partner / Assoc
| Director.
|
| I'd on one hand advice executives (public, private & gov)
| on strategy (usually focused on tech but also growth,
| finance etc.) and work with on-the-ground staff to figure
| out what was going on & implement changes (meaning tons of
| travel between my home base - Toronto, to on-site - all
| over US / CA, to engagement HQs - usually NYC / Washington
| / Chicago / Seattle / Nashville etc.)
|
| I also took tons of (very-short) vacations in-between
| because I used to get super burnt-out (eg. my last day was
| Dec 31, and I ended up working at a client from Dec 5th to
| Jan 1st and flew back on the 1st to start my new job on the
| 2nd) and I love driving so I'd rent cars and drive all over
| (eg. Toronto to NYC to DC or Seattle to Vancouver to
| Whistler to Kamloops to Edmonton to Calgary, Toronto to
| Halifax etc.)
|
| I used to joke that in general, any car I rented would come
| back with at least 1k km if I had it for more than 2 - 3
| days)
|
| Fun life (I'm just turning 29), enjoyed my job (tons of
| perks like I earned points for a lifetime on Air Canada and
| Marriott - my family used to joke that I'd treat my home as
| a hotel as I spent more time in hotels than at home), but I
| was grossly underpaid (I gave up a role that paid me 2x
| what I would have made for this) and I ended up on the
| wrong side of the politics at the consultancy (big 4) so I
| left on my terms (for a much better role) before I'd have
| been forced to.
| windowshopping wrote:
| I'm curious, what's the point of renting 300 cars in a year?
| Why not just buy a car? That's close to renting a car daily,
| no? Unless you're flying to different places and renting cars
| there _every day_?
| skmexyz wrote:
| it was mostly for work (I was home for less than 1 month
| including weekends) & some vacations (~15-20 rentals for
| vacations). My car was also stolen and wreaked and due to
| the auto shortage, it took insurance 3 months to get me a
| new car (meaning, 3 months of rentals - each for 1 week
| term).
| fallingknife wrote:
| Since they can just install chargers at the rental location,
| you would think they wouldn't need to make renters worry
| about that like gas.
| jimt1234 wrote:
| Never rented a Tesla through Hertz, but I did rent one
| through Turo once. The owner did stipulate that I return the
| car fully charged. However, he pointed out hotels in the area
| that offered charging. So, I just charged the night before I
| returned the car; couldn't have been easier. Not sure if
| Hertz has/had coordination with hotels that offer EV
| charging, but that would help in a lot of cases.
| emrah wrote:
| It's interesting Tesla did not take the opportunity to
| install chargers at the rental dealerships at no cost or
| reduced cost, and have the rental company offer "no need to
| charge before you return it" deal.
| willmadden wrote:
| The other issue is people rent cars where they do not live
| and are unfamiliar.
|
| No one wants to hunt for a charging station when they need to
| get to a business meeting on time or enjoy their vacation.
|
| It is also a change in consumer behavior. EV owners just
| aren't that big a percentage of the total market, and ICE
| users aren't going to learn EV on a business trip to
| unfamiliar territory.
| m463 wrote:
| I rented a model 3 twice. One time I brought it back charged.
| The other time I dropped it off uncharged. I think it was
| $25? I didn't think it was that big a deal, doing the same
| with a gas car would have been 3-4x the price.
| epolanski wrote:
| > The article posits charging as the problem but that's not
| actually true.
|
| How isn't it?
|
| It's literally the first reason why people avoided renting
| electric cars according to pretty much every poll out there.
| Not even the polls, it's literally what Hertz that commissioned
| studies on their low rental rate found out.
|
| And you can count me as one, I would never rent an electric car
| in a place I don't know, especially when on vacation/work,
| where I don't know where and when I will be able to charge and
| I'm busy already.
|
| I'm more prone to owning, but renting will be a no for quite
| some time.
| m463 wrote:
| I think you're right. The actual rental car model is to garner
| large discounts from the auto manufacturer, rent the car for a
| time, then sell it via the rental car used-car lot.
|
| The purchase discount (maybe fleet rate) is usually wrapped in
| a contract - the car must NOT be sold within a certain time or
| under a certain mileage - and in this way does not compete with
| the manufacturer's car dealers.
|
| Hertz and Tesla did not have any sort of contract like this.
| This means that Hertz did not have any concessions from Tesla.
| Instead of Tesla having a special relationship with Hertz - a
| car discount, guaranteed quick repairs, possibly special
| rental-car software helping renters onboard with the car -
| Hertz got NOTHING.
|
| It should have gotten something, at minimum some sort of fleet
| rate. It was a VERY good customer. Instead Tesla gave nothing
| and got a lot of bad PR in the end.
| incomplete wrote:
| the primitive state of charging in the US was a very large
| factor in the decision. i own an EV (egolf), so i'm already
| used to how terrible charging can be.
|
| last year i went on a trip to LA and got a polestar for 4 days!
| car was fine, but finding a working and available charger was a
| nightmare. after spending 10m on one charger that would take my
| CC but not connect to the car, i moved to another spot and
| tried again. that charger would actually connect to my car, but
| it wouldn't take my CC. a few minutes after that, i called
| chargepoint tech support but neither of us could understand as
| i was in a parking garage.
|
| after 15m on the phone before giving up and about to punch
| something, someone left and a new charger spot opened up. that
| one worked, but it wasn't chargepoint so i had to download a
| new app.
|
| so, it took over 45m for me to get the car plugged in and a ton
| of stress for the ONE charge i needed to perform. i can
| guarantee that my experience is far from out of the ordinary,
| and i will never rent an EV again.
| while_true_ wrote:
| Hertz's loss is my gain: bought a 2023 Chevy Bolt EUV in
| excellent condition with only 9k miles on it from the Hertz used
| car lot. Car was priced $8500 below MSRP. That's roughly 30%
| depreciation, more than the average first year hit of 15% to 20%
| for ICE vehicles.
|
| Wonderful car, I love it. I quickly adapted to one-pedal mode
| where instead of using brakes the car's motors become generators
| that recharge the battery when slowing to a stop. The quiet ride
| and instant throttle response beat gasoline cars by a mile, I'll
| never go back. GM engineers did a wonderful job with the
| ergonomics, it has just the right mix of traditional buttons for
| AC/heat and radio, speedometer cluster, and a large easy-to-use
| and responsive touch screen. The only drawback is it is slow to
| recharge (about 9 hours), making long trips impractical. For us
| it's a great second car for local and regional use.
| conjecTech wrote:
| I think that's the real loss here. Rental vehicles are a big
| source of cheap used cars. Having a steady flow of EVs from
| there would have brought down used prices and made them more
| financially accessible. Shame we won't see that now, at least
| in the near future.
| sf_rob wrote:
| Are you factoring in the federal tax credit with your math? I
| suspect not when I look at their website where lightly used
| EUVs are ~$20k. Of course, you may not be eligible for the
| federal tax credit, but $8500 doesn't strike me as much of a
| deal.
| while_true_ wrote:
| Used 2023's are not eligible for any tax credit. New EUV's
| are eligible for $7500 tax credit. Used EV's must be at least
| two years old to qualify for the $4,000 tax credit. There are
| no new 2023 EUV's available in my local market, nearest one
| is 50 miles away. The price was at the lower side of retail
| KBB, so it was a fair deal, not a huge bargain, no. I'm happy
| with it, I basically got the $7500 tax credit baked into the
| price at point of sale.
| sircastor wrote:
| I took a trip last year where I needed a car. Hertz was pushing
| the electrics hard, at a very reasonable discount. I ran the
| numbers in my head and decided there was no practical way I was
| going to be able to charge an electric and make my flight. I love
| EVs, I have an EV at home, but it was just not practical with my
| time limited schedule.
|
| Incidentally, in that same trip I took public transit most
| everywhere until the last day when I needed more mobility.
| jordank wrote:
| Having rented a Tesla via Hertz last year, here are some quick
| remembrances:
|
| -The car was not charged fully when I rented it.
|
| -I had to park in a pay parking lot at a shopping mall to charge
| the car. Charging to 100% cost me $7 but took 30 minutes of my
| time.
|
| -The UX of most of the basic car functions was much harder to
| learn than a typical rental car. I'm sure that Tesla's UX quirks
| start to feel normal after a while, but I had trouble locating
| basic car functions and had to text with Tesla-owning friends for
| advice.
|
| None of these things made me want to rent a Tesla again.
| inciampati wrote:
| I tried and failed to rent a Tesla from Hertz. Paid for the EV
| manager special, and got a crappy compact car instead.
| tootie wrote:
| The story has been that Tesla is losing market share even as EV
| sales rise. Early adopters were happy to buy in to a truly
| unique experience with a funky-looking vehicle and a complete
| rethinking of interiors and controls. Meanwhile, Kia, Hyundai,
| VW are producing EVs that just kinda look and drive like normal
| cars and the bulk of market prefer that. And that's indirectly
| causing backlash on Hertz because the drop in prices is what
| killed the financially viability of their deal. This is less
| about EVs being a bust and more that they put all their eggs in
| one basket and forgot to keep them warm.
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| > Meanwhile, Kia, Hyundai, VW are producing EVs that just
| kinda look and drive like normal cars and the bulk of market
| prefer that.
|
| Kia.com -> View Inventory -> within 50 miles:
|
| EV9 = (263) 246 Available, 17 Arriving Soon
|
| EV6 = (153) 151 Available, 2 Arriving Soon
|
| Niro EV = (39) 38 Available, 1 Arriving Soon
|
| They all have $XXXX discounts on them. I'm not sure the
| market is falling all over itself to buy them.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| How's the Tesla shipments going?
|
| The industry saturated the market, which will lower the
| prices. People will buy them cheap. Market at work.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| I think Kia and Hyundai are dealing with reputation damage
| after their cars were so easy to steal for a couple years.
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/04/business/hyundai-kia-
| thefts-i...
| nblgbg wrote:
| Its not completely true. Check their popular gas models
| like telluride etc, you still have to pay above MSRP or
| some crap accessories to get the cars. They are selling
| gas cars extremely well.
| p_j_w wrote:
| GP was talking about market share and you're talking about
| inventory. You may be right that GP is wrong, but the data
| you're sharing doesn't say one way or the other.
| cowpig wrote:
| > Charging to 100% cost me $7 but took 30 minutes of my time
|
| Did you really charge to 100%? I guess people unfamiliar with
| Teslas aren't used to the idea of charging to 80-85% as a
| default
| tiahura wrote:
| If you're renting F battery life.
| csa wrote:
| > If you're renting F battery life.
|
| It's a time issue.
|
| The battery charges much faster when low on charge and
| slower when close to full charge.
|
| I imagine the op was at 80% or more within 10 minutes or
| less.
|
| My comment to people about teslas is that they will be
| disappointed if they try to drive it like an ICE car. It's
| a different driving experience (e.g., you almost never want
| or need a "full tank"), and the good parts of EVs won't be
| as noticeable if one doesn't integrate those differences.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > My comment to people about teslas is that they will be
| disappointed if they try to drive it like an ICE car.
|
| Why would renters drive it any differently to any other
| rental car?
|
| > It's a different driving experience
|
| The only experience car renters want is reliable
| transport _now_. The car is not the primary objective,
| their destination is. Anything that degrades the journey
| to the destination is a turn off.
| ncallaway wrote:
| > My comment to people about teslas is that they will be
| disappointed if they try to drive it like an ICE car
|
| That kinda...tells the story of the article doesn't it?
| It's a pretty terrible rental experience if people will
| be disappointed if they try to drive it like the cars
| they're used to.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _It's a different driving experience (e.g., you almost
| never want or need a "full tank")_
|
| What does this even mean? I both want and need as much
| range as possible when I'm driving my rental car. I don't
| care about long-term battery degredation.
| gausswho wrote:
| For charging speed you are right, the last 10% is at reduced
| rate. But, if I understand correctly, battery health is not
| depreciated with a 100% charge limit on Teslas with the newer
| battery composition that started sale in late 2022.
| Klathmon wrote:
| That's not universally true, both battery chemistries are
| in use and still being sold new (I believe the smaller
| batteries are using the new "100% safe" chemistry, while
| the long range variants are using the "keep the charge
| around 70-80%" chemistry.)
|
| The car will alert you if it's not safe to charge
| frequently to 100% when you set the charge limit.
| s1mon wrote:
| At one point I really thought that our next car would be a
| Tesla. So when Hertz had a Model 3 available after our Hyundai
| from Enterprise was stolen (yep Kiaboyz hack time), we tried it
| out.
|
| We had similar UX issues. It's crazy. I'm all for a very clean
| interface, but the affordances for very basic functionality are
| limited. It started with just getting into the damn car. I felt
| like an idiot just trying to unlock the door. After we
| struggled for a few minutes we finally had to ask a Hertz
| attendant. Similarly, there were a lot of cabin controls which
| are buried in the touchscreen UI. Because I like to play with
| new toys, I was willing to take the time while parked to watch
| some videos and figure things out, but a Model 3 is not an easy
| car to just get in and drive without some prior knowledge.
| What's also kinda crazy is all the ways that things can be
| customized (e.g. one pedal driving). I wonder if Hertz resets
| any of this to the lowest common denominator after a rental?
|
| Charging was a bit of a pain without access to charging at our
| hotel. There was a supercharger site not too far away, but
| sitting for 20-30 minutes in a mall parking lot is not my idea
| of fun. We definitely want our next car to be an EV, but only
| because we would install a charger in our garage. I'm still not
| sure I would make the EV choice without that.
|
| I rented a Model 3 again another time, but through Turo, and
| had hardly any issues, but that's because of this prior
| experience.
|
| These days, Elon Musk has turned into (or exposed himself to
| be?) such a nut job that I can't see buying a Tesla. It's very
| frustrating, because overall I still like the Model 3 better
| than most other EVs.
| vel0city wrote:
| I'm a bit confused about your difficulty with unlocking and
| driving off. The car should have unlocked itself upon
| approach, and all you would have needed to do to drive would
| be to swipe the always on part of the screen to drive. Was it
| not this way with the rental?
|
| I don't own a Tesla and I'm not a fan of their extremely
| minimalist interior, but those two things should have at
| least been the easiest to do.
| kccqzy wrote:
| How does the car know it should unlock when approached by
| the right person but not a stranger? It has a Bluetooth
| connection to the phone. For a rental, the person renting
| probably doesn't have the Tesla app, and it's not obvious
| how to use the key card.
|
| None of this is easy for a rental. They are only easy for a
| person who bought the car and owns it.
| jsight wrote:
| I think they only give you the card, so walkup unlock won't
| happen, at least before setting up a phone key.
| jefftk wrote:
| _> The UX of most of the basic car functions was much harder to
| learn than a typical rental car. I 'm sure that Tesla's UX
| quirks start to feel normal after a while, but I had trouble
| locating basic car functions and had to text with Tesla-owning
| friends for advice._
|
| This was also my experience: "you'd only know if someone told
| you or you looked it up, and late at night after a cross
| country flight with two tired kids while poking at unfamiliar
| menu options on the dashboard tablet I was pretty frustrated
| with their minimally discoverable approach"
| https://www.jefftk.com/p/tesla-model-3-review
| 2sk21 wrote:
| That was an excellent write up! I am really surprised that
| the built-in navigation system does not enable you to search
| for charging + activity. That seems like it ought to be
| essential!
| jefftk wrote:
| Thanks!
|
| It's possible that searching for charging+activity is
| possible and I just didn't find it? But I spent a while
| looking!
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| > The major downside of the cruise control was phantom
| braking. In about 450mi of driving up and down CA 101 I has
| three false positives, where we suddenly decelerated:
|
| > I was in the rightmost of two lanes and an SUV was parked
| in the breakdown lane with its hazards on.
|
| Why was this a false positive?? This is what you are supposed
| to do if you don't get over to the left.
| dev_tty01 wrote:
| They said it 'suddenly decelerated.' That is NOT what you
| are supposed to do when a car is in the breakdown lane.
| khalilravanna wrote:
| Similar experience.
|
| - Rented Model Y. Show up and no Model Y. "We got a 3". I'm
| driving to Vermont with snow but no choice now. "Ok sounds
| great."
|
| - Have to stop every couple hours to charge.
|
| - Multiple times the GPS plotted us a route which would have
| battery hit 0% before arriving to charger. Nerve wracking.
|
| - Most of the full speed charging stations had lines and if we
| did the slow speed ones our entire weekend trip would be spent
| charging.
|
| - Regenerative braking is cool till you're going down hill in
| snow with all season tires. Then it's a great way to lock up
| and slide. Thankfully I'm not a noob. (Also not that I expected
| winter tires from a rental, even in Boston, but cmon Hertz.)
|
| My biggest takeaway is that if where we stayed had a charger
| for overnight charging it would have been fine. Without that it
| was undeniably worse than renting a gas car. We basically had
| to plan our days around the rental which is a bit insane. I
| don't doubt that having one to whip around local with a charger
| at home would rule but for anything more than short drives I
| don't think a rental electric makes sense.
| aftbit wrote:
| >Rented Model Y. Show up and no Model Y.
|
| I don't understand how this isn't considered fraud. If you
| try to cancel your trip, they want to charge a crazy fee, but
| if they don't have the car that you reserved, sorry maybe we
| can offer you another one. Rental car companies need a good
| lashing from a government regulator.
| FourHand451 wrote:
| It's been a while since I've rented, but I assume this is
| covered in the agreement when you make a booking. I'd guess
| their butts are covered from the fraud perspective. Maybe
| misleading advertisement though?
| threeseed wrote:
| As Jerry Seinfeld once said:
|
| They know how to take the reservation. They just don't know
| how to hold the reservation.
| ilikepi wrote:
| Generally you don't rent a specific model, you rent a "So-
| and-so or similar". And undoubtedly the rental agreement
| specifically gives them permission to make substitutions.
| It's unlikely this scenario has not been fully mitigated by
| corporate legal and risk management.
| alkonaut wrote:
| > with snow
|
| Isn't the 3 and Y mostly equivalent, one just slightly
| larger? There is big difference in clearance, 2/4wd or
| anything else that would make them different in a cold
| climate drive? Or am I missing something?
| code_runner wrote:
| I had an almost opposite experience and ended up buying a tesla
| a handful of months later when it was time for a car.
|
| the UX was a bit of a pain at first and I didn't understand the
| regen braking, but I felt that I at least had menus instead of
| buttons with symbols in weird places. I have a theory that I'm
| not as good at remembering where my buttons are as other people
| because i've never thought twice about the buttons being on a
| screen instead.... I always have to glance at what i'm setting
|
| All that said: I would never want to drive or own one of the
| teslas without the turn signal stalks on the steering wheel and
| all that.... just seems like asking for trouble
| robbyiq999 wrote:
| > The UX of most of the basic car functions was much harder to
| learn than a typical rental car ...
|
| Strange there is no voice control, I mean the car is smart
| enough it can drive itself .... right?
| RandallBrown wrote:
| There is voice control.
|
| https://www.tesla.com/support/voice-commands
| dataminded wrote:
| The renting experience absolutely sucked. You were expected to
| pay a premium, there is meaningful variance in the quality of the
| different cars and they needed you to bring it back charged (as
| if everyone has an extra 30-90 minutes on their way to the
| airport).
|
| They should have treated these like any other car in the same
| class and done a market price fee for the battery.
| otikik wrote:
| I rented with Hertz once.
|
| I was extra careful because I heard stories. I took pictures of
| the car from all sides and notified the Hertz employee about
| super minor scratches that I found just in case. I drove it very
| carefully through my stay in Switzerland and returned it to the
| airport.
|
| Unfortunately it did not occur to me to take pictures of the
| interior of the car.
|
| They charged me 800 euros for missing rear trunk cover. I am 100%
| sure that I did not take that piece off, I simply failed to
| notice it was missing (I was not familiar with the brand of car
| they gave me, it was different than the one I requested) when
| took the car. They charged me 800 euros for that piece. The
| missing piece's price in Switzerland is around 100 euros. I
| offered to buy it and to organize a transport company to get it
| to them, to no avail. I felt scammed.
|
| So I will be watching how this develops while relishing the
| schadenfreude.
| ghaff wrote:
| I've never used Hertz specifically much because companies I've
| worked for have typically had relationships with different
| major car rental companies so those were cheaper.
|
| I guess I've been lucky over the years. I've managed to avoid
| an actual accident but I've always gotten away with the odd
| scrape here and there. Never too bad but multiple things I
| could have been dinged for.
| thebruce87m wrote:
| Huh. I do the video thing on the outside but I'll now do it on
| the inside too.
|
| Doing it on the outside saved me last time from Enterprise
| claiming I damaged TWO tyres. Nope mfrs, here is the video
| evidence it was like that when I got it. Oh, and does that mean
| you sent my family out on tyres you deem illegal too?
| dawnerd wrote:
| In the early days it was nice: being able to supercharge and be
| charged the actual cost, return the car with any SoC so long as
| it was enough the return facility could get the car to a charger,
| had the adapter included.
|
| But it all changed when typical greed came to play and they
| started requiring a full charge on return which is frankly
| impossible. Rentals stopped having the adapter either from the
| facility not putting it in the car or simple theft.
|
| The other problem is app access. They really needed to work out a
| deal with Tesla to make it easier to grant temp access.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| Requiring a full charge on return is bonkers!
| dawnerd wrote:
| should add that it might not be a requirement at every
| location, but the last one I rented at it was. Plus side they
| did make sure the car was fully charged when I rented it at
| least.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I hope this isn't too meta, but journalist's _absolutely love_
| starting stories like this, and it 's pretty nauseating:
|
| > ... the members-only Manhattan social club frequented by Kim
| Kardashian and New York City Mayor Eric Adams, were greeted with
| flutes of Champagne. Offerings of sliced raw tuna on crispy rice
| and roasted maitake mushrooms awaited them as heads turned to
| admire an Andy Warhol and a Keith Haring, while New Order
| throbbed in the background.
|
| These "gasp, look at the fancy menus!" intros always serve the
| same purpose, which is to caricaturize the people involved as
| "out of touch rich guys".
|
| There is plenty in what happened here to simply highlight the
| mistakes these people made. Plus, as other commenters have
| mentioned, the bigger issue which the article doesn't quite grasp
| is depreciation. I tend to immediately discount stories that
| start with "look at these fancy things rich people do" because it
| almost always indicates the article author is trying to get the
| facts to fit their predetermined narrative.
| dboreham wrote:
| As a former Hertz customer, this felt like a product management
| failure.
|
| You'd just get an option: among the 20 different vehicle types
| listed, one would be an EV. I'd look at it and think "yeah that
| might be interesting", but as a non-EV-owner I have quite a few
| questions. Do I need to bring it back charged? Do they have an
| agreement with charger-folks to use their charger? Am I going to
| be gouged on electricity the same way they gouge me on bridge
| tolls? Can I even drive an EV? (I guess -- probably, but who
| knows?). I therefore conclude that the EV option is only for
| someone who already drives an EV, and has rented one before.
|
| It had the feel of some bean counter or senior executive decided
| on a whim to stick a bunch of EVs into the fleet, but no person
| with a brain at Hertz had done anything whatsoever beyond parking
| them and adding some records to a database table.
|
| They could have had content on the web site "click here to learn
| more about the EV rental experience". They could have had an "EV
| concierge" experience where someone walks you to the vehicle and
| answers questions. A dedicated 1-800 number to call if you need a
| charger. They could have sent out offer emails in advance "we'd
| love you to try an EV on your next rental, here's a discount and
| some FAQ answers and we'll make it really easy". Nope, none of
| that.
| kleiba wrote:
| A big part of a car rental's business model is selling off the
| fleet after a short amount of time. Except if the rest of the
| world is anything like car country Germany, then there is
| basically no market at all for used EVs. Well, given Germany's
| traditional tech xenophobia, it might not quite be as bad in the
| rest of the world. But even without Tesla's price cut that is
| mentioned in the article, I'm not sure whether this part of the
| traditional business model would have upheld after changing the
| fleet over to all electric.
| fencepost wrote:
| Worth being aware that not all Hertz locations are really set up
| for charging. I rented one way to a fairly small town where the
| local Hertz was in a body shop and was very happy to receive a
| car. If I'd had the Bolt EUV I was originally going to use (had
| low charge out the door and slow charging) they'd have been stuck
| plugging it into an adapter on a 110 outlet in the shop, or would
| have needed to leave it elsewhere to charge.
| trillic wrote:
| I had a Hertz telsa rental out of BWI and stopped by a charging
| station as they asked me to return it above 3/4's full. When I
| arrived at the charger, there were 3 hertz employees with 3
| Tesla's in line charging rental cars.
|
| They let me cut in front of them to charge it up but I can see
| why they ditched the concept, lot of labor in charging vs gas
| fill ups if that's what they're doing.
| fencepost wrote:
| The Bolt EV/EUV are apparently very slow chargers, and I got
| it with maybe 1/3 charge. Around town would have been no
| problem but it was evening and I was headed for an 80+ mile
| drive through national forest with +4000 foot elevation
| change. When it didn't get enough charge for comfort while I
| stopped for dinner it was time to swap it out.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| I was hopeful for Tesla but my experience renting permanently
| turned me off.
|
| The technology is unusable. I spent an inordinate amount of time
| trying to figure out simple tasks like how to lock the doors,
| open the trunk, or use the windshield wipers. The cars don't
| support Carplay, so I had to figure out how to log into some app
| on a touch screen. Eventually, after much frustration, I could
| get bluetooth to work so it could function like a car head unit
| from 2007.
|
| Then the charging experience.
|
| I was in Tucson, a metro area with a population of over a million
| people. There were two Tesla chargers TOTAL. What they don't tell
| you is those chargers don't support full charging speed when they
| are congested, so prepare for hour-long charging sessions. Which
| makes sense because the laws of physics, they don't have a
| nuclear power plant on standby to charge dozens of cars at 200KW.
|
| The driving experience, was huge regression. I used to own a Bolt
| EV so that's my reference point for "cheap, utilitarian EV". I
| expected Tesla would be some kind of luxury vehicle. Wrong. These
| cars have the suspension of a base model mid-90s corolla, and the
| road noise too. The Model 3 was the loudest car I've ever driven,
| louder than modern pickup trucks.
|
| Of course they failed. Anyone who has ever rented one of these
| things would pick up on it pretty fast.
| halfmatthalfcat wrote:
| Carplay is probably _the_ deciding factor for me in my next
| car. Anything less is a non-starter.
| edude03 wrote:
| > The cars don't support Carplay, so I had to figure out how to
| log into some app on a touch screen. Eventually, after much
| frustration, I could get bluetooth to work so it could function
| like a car head unit from 2007.
|
| Coming from a place of genuine curiosity, why would you prefer
| CarPlay over logging in on "some app"?
|
| I currently have two cars with CarPlay and a Tesla and I
| _personally_ find the Tesla infotainment system works better
| than CarPlay (probably because of the integration).
|
| On the other hand, I can imagine on a rental car it'd be easier
| to just plug your phone in via USB and have all your apps &
| whatever on your phone ready to go. I guess CarPlay is better
| if you switch cars a lot and (potentially?) the Tesla system is
| better if you have the same car all/most of the time?
|
| For a counter anecdote - my tesla went in for some minor
| service the other day and they gave me a loaner, the loaner
| worked exactly like my personal car, logged into all my apps
| and whatever, seat, mirror temperature, drive mode etc all
| synchronized. I wonder if more people owned Teslas as their
| personal vehicles switching to another Tesla would feel more
| normal?
| 2sk21 wrote:
| I will never buy a car without CarPlay - it's that simple. I
| will likely buy an EV at some point but I will never buy a
| Tesla, Rivian or GM EV since they lack this essential
| feature. I like that all of my phone's relevant data is
| accessible and I don't have to do any sync. I listed to
| podcasts with the Overcast app on my iPhone - the CarPlay
| interface is excellent. I like having access to a choice of
| maps on the display.
| deckard1 wrote:
| EVs are the worst proposition for a car rental. When you rent a
| car, you're planning on driving it. Much more than the car that
| sits on your driveway and only takes you to work and back every
| day.
|
| But it doesn't help that Tesla is a tech company and their
| product is sold as a tech product. No one wants to buy a 3 year
| old used iPhone, either.
| renewiltord wrote:
| I rented a Chevy Bolt through the EV Manager's special and it was
| perfect for what I wanted it for: easy drive to my friend's place
| where I was staying and a few other friends I wanted to visit. I
| returned it with 10% or so, for which they charge $25 to charge
| it up. That's a great deal.
|
| If I needed a longer trip or more travel I wouldn't have done it,
| but it was perfect for this.
|
| On an earlier occasion, I wanted to try out a Tesla Model X and
| so I rented one through Getaround/Turo (I forget which) and
| honestly I disliked spending all this time at the charging
| station. It's possibly user error but the charge rates at the
| supercharger were inconsistent and I had to spend 30 minutes
| there. So for occasional use where I need to charge, I wouldn't
| do it because I clearly don't know how to charge these well. For
| occasional use where I don't need to charge, it's great.
| steviedotboston wrote:
| I had to rent a car earlier this year and it was kind of
| difficult to find a gasoline powered car. All of the rental
| companies seemed to be pushing EVs. I have nothing against them,
| and they are obviously the future, but I don't want to rent one
| for a variety of reasons.
|
| That will probably change in the future, but it feels like it's
| too soon for EVs to be the default rental option when they aren't
| the default purchase or lease option.
| Animats wrote:
| Auto rental is a bet on used-car futures.
|
| There was no real reason electric cars had to be more expensive
| than gas cars, other than market positioning. Tesla does not get
| to have Apple-sized margins, just car-company-sized margins. Once
| reality set in, electric car prices started to come down. That
| Hertz's finance-type CEO didn't see this coming is his fault.
|
| The other big problems seem to be that "Hertz's Teslas got into
| accidents four times more often than the company's other
| vehicles", and getting Teslas fixed takes far too long and costs
| too much. Maybe Hertz should have had a software change installed
| to limit acceleration at slow speeds, or at least a more
| conservative pedal effort curve.
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| Electric car makers of all stripes are absolutely taking the piss
| and the check has come due with their shenanigans:
|
| Price. The combination of the covid supply chain dislocation and
| resulting car inflation, combined with mainstream early adopter
| enthusiasm fooled EV makers into thinking they don't have to be
| super tight on price just like every other car in what has always
| been a super competitive market. EVs are superior to ICE cars in
| almost every way including cost to build, but you'd never know
| it. EV makers need to wake up quickly before the Chinese eat
| their lunch and dinner. Without a strong EV product now in 10
| years time you'll be out of business.
|
| Mis-features. After Apple introduced the iPhone everyone fell in
| line behind their design. But Apple largely got it right.
| Unfortunately car makers have done the same with Tesla but to
| their great detriment. Tesla's design swings wildly from being
| user hostile (no physical controls) to techno-wank (features that
| mostly serve as gimmicks or just Musk's whims). Now otherwise
| sensible car makers are putting huge screens in cars and shoe-
| horning everything they can into them. Tesla thinks that colored
| lights around the cabin are a more important feature than a stalk
| for indicators or wipers, or even engaging the drive train, just
| swipe on the screen instead! But if that doesn't work, you've got
| physical controls... on the ceiling. They built a truck with no
| rear visibility most of the time, so use the screen way down
| below the rear vision mirror. Perfectly natural! Your average
| buyer wants their EV to be familiar to their ICE car. They don't
| want "the future" they just want a good car they like.
|
| After Sales. Some car makers seem to think that once they've got
| your money they're done. Tesla is the worst with their parts
| stinginess and remote disabling of features and lack of service
| and warranty support. More generally making cars repairable, be
| it due to panel design or parts availability is really important
| to the consumer and has a huge impact on costs, be it
| maintenance, repairs or insurance. Even price stability is very
| important since the used car market is key for all participants.
| This is the day to day reality for buyers and owners of cars that
| EV makers can't just pretend doesn't exist. You're not selling
| exotics to millionaires you're selling workhorses to ordinary
| people.
| damon_c wrote:
| I just wanted to say that anecdotally since I cannot see this
| perspective being shared here, that since Hertz started renting
| Telsas, I have _only_ rented from Hertz, and _only_ rented
| Teslas, and I have had nothing but positive experiences, and
| generally speaking have enjoyed renting these cars and felt much
| safer in them than I would have in the likes of the Toyota Yaris
| and Nissan Versa (or is that vice versa) type cars I have rented
| in the past.
|
| That being said, I would never rent or drive for more than an in
| town errand, any other brand of electric vehicle that doesn't
| allow the use of Tesla's superchargers and it is obvious why that
| would be a completely egregious breach of customer service to
| rent such a car to an unsuspecting customer.
|
| I am not looking forward to going back to Yaris.
| tmpz22 wrote:
| Whats the experience renting a Tesla for the first time after a
| long flight? Are the systems intuitive (charging, info-
| tainment, etc) enough for a driver whose never driven one
| before?
| damon_c wrote:
| I think if I was getting off a red eye flight and stumbled
| into a Tesla at 6:30am having never been inside one before I
| would probably spend 5 minutes fumbling around in the parking
| space and then go back inside the Hertz office complaining
| that I couldn't find the ignition switch and please help.
| code_runner wrote:
| in my experience getting to the car around 1am after a really
| long day on a last minute trip.... I didn't really have any
| trouble at all and car was fully charged. Most it honestly
| works about how you'd expect (pull down on the stalk to
| engage drive etc). Had enough charge to get me through my
| weekend without ever having to think about it.
|
| Honestly, its not that much worse than my prius with the
| goofy shifter. Knowing what to do with the keycard was
| confusing until the screen lit up to show me
| cat_plus_plus wrote:
| Yeah Tesla preferred 60 Hertz
| benced wrote:
| I thought about renting one but their policy is you have to
| return the vehicle charge to the same level they gave it to you
| (or they charge you for a full battery). I hate this policy with
| gas cars but at least filling gas is fast.
|
| With electric cars, is the expectation I charge my car 30 minutes
| while trying to make a flight? It just doesn't work. Hertz didn't
| try and make their policies work with Teslas.
| ScottBev wrote:
| My second hand experience is not from Hertz, but another rental
| company.
|
| The company bought a mixture of Teslas and misc. other EVs. In
| addition, they ignored installing any charging infrastructure at
| their smaller locations. The EV can't be rented below 80%, and
| the operator does not have the ability to charge the EV onsite.
| This takes the EV out of the fleet until either the company sends
| a driver to pick up the EV or the local operator takes the car
| somewhere to charge it. The location that I am very familiar with
| just let most returned EVs just sat unused.
|
| At one point this local operator had 10 EVs waiting to be
| charged. Eventually the company sent a driver to pick most of
| them up.
|
| This isn't the only problem with rental EVs, but the lack of
| forethought in deployment cost this rental company a fortune.
| acyou wrote:
| I have mixed views on this.
|
| Long Tesla: If prices are falling, costs must be falling. Surely
| the $4500 USD Chinese EV represents close to the true long term
| minimum cost of producing one of these. Margins compared to ICE
| are going to be awesome and only get better.
|
| Short Tesla: In 10 years, we'll look back at taxpayer funded
| lithium ion EV as policy failure, as well as an unmitigated
| environmental disaster from heavy metals mining and battery
| disposal, as well as a structure and vehicle insurance disaster
| due to adverse collision and fire risk. If the technology is so
| great, it should stand on its own merit, without the excessive
| subsidies. Failure of FSD isn't helping.
|
| As for Hertz, sucks to suck. Not much silver lining for the
| company. Sounds like they need to die and get replaced by
| manufacturers going direct with rentals.
| mlhpdx wrote:
| I have rented a lot of cars over the years, and wouldn't be
| opposed to renting an EV for a business trip where the driving
| was minor. Family vacation? No. It's a bit of a deal killer to
| force me to wait for charging. I allocate about seven minutes
| into any given car return for a visit to the gas station on the
| way back. That's all. How much would I have to allocate for
| charging if I was required to do it? Hours?
|
| There are a lot of questions that the general populace simply
| doesn't know the answers to. It's really easy for me to believe
| what was said about range anxiety as a serious contributing
| factor to the programs lackluster performance. It wouldn't have
| undone the damage the extra depreciation cost, but
| commercial/popular success would've come with rewards.
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