Featured Hertz is selling 20,000 electric vehicles to buy gasoline cars instead

I bet 40 years from now we'll look back on this and realize this has more to do with the challenges of the early stages of the EV transition and not a problem with EV vehicles in general. I mean renting an EV to someone for the first time over and over again probably leads to all kinds of increases in insurance claims compared to renting an EV to someone who's always driven Evs.

 

As a very frequent car renter- when you get that loss damage waiver for $22/day you're good to return that car's ashes in a dustpan and walk away.

About the worst that can happen is that they'll put you on a do-not-rent list and you have to go to Avis or Fox instead.

i think what we are really seeing is rideshare operators renting these for work, and driving them a lot harder than a typical owner would. And because they are rideshare operators, they have less experience and poorer road manners than many other professional drivers.

Result? those cars were getting ground up.

There may be more to it than that. Plenty of rideshare operators got into the habit of renting these cars fully charged and then returning them as depleted as possible without incurring an extra charge. So they had to spend a lot of time dead on the lot to be ready for the next rental.

There's also the demand angle- One of my bigger corporate clients has recently issued an edict- when they rent us cars we are not allowed to select EVs, because they aren't willing to accept charging service fees added to the bill if you don't "pay cash" for the charge.

 

I think you are right on with your analysis.

 

In other words the rental companies failed to protect their EVs with additional restrictions because they thought they were the same investment numbers as non EV cars.

 

I'll go with what Hertz reports:

it said on Thursday, citing higher expenses related to collision and damage for EVs​

My speculation is Hertz should have minimized the make and models and built their own maintenance organization. One that established a parts supply service with that manufacturer who might not have been Tesla. Then Hertz technical staff and logistics could prioritize their EV fleet. But this is the benefit of hindsight.

Maintenance (i.e., service shops) remains a problem for every EV manufacturer(*). Since I'm retired with a 5 year old, 123,000 mi, Model 3 and 11 year old, 65,000 mi, BMW i3, I can handle the maintenance puzzles. But Hertz (and others) have not realized it, yet.

Owning an EV is an applied IQ test that isn't for everyone. Keeping them running is an emerging challenge. Mark this one up to lessons learned.

Promising, Tesla appears to be putting maintenance into their engineering teams. Partially driven by Tesla Insurance, making the cabin filter easily accessible on the Cybertruck is evidence of this better approach. Said to say, such changes take time, measured in years, to reach the manufacturing line. But that is the right way to go.

Bob Wilson

* - Not just EVs but all car repair services and shops are hampered by abysmal design screw-ups. I remember a V8 that had only seven easily changed spark plugs. The seventh . . . well it only got changed every other spark plug change. Folded cardboard and plywood sheet to lay on using a U-joint wrench. Then there is the abysmal service tech treatment. They really need a union.

 

There is a side discussion on this in the EV credit thread.

Hertz has more than Teslas, and all the EVs were popular with rideshare drivers through Hertz's program. It is cars going to that group that are coming back with more damage. So Tesla specific speculations on why can be ruled out. The reports don't state what type of damage it is, just that they cost more. According to Hertz, whose accounting will likely include time spent parked. Short parts supply will also inflate those prices.

They weren't seeing increased damage from the leisure side; the side most of us would deal with. The issue there was simply less interest from customers. Consider many of those are the like of out of towners on vacation, they probably didn't want to deal with charging in a strange place. Specially if they don't own a plug in back home.

Hertz also sites depreciation, but I suspect they didn't fully consider how that pertains to EVs at this point. The influence of incentives, and price drops in a new, growing segment.

 

I would imagine there's a big difference in cost and turnaround time between somebody bringing back a dented Equinox vs. a Bolt.

And on the leisure side, you're absolutely correct: the rideshare drivers pioneered this, and have shown than there is demand for renting a fully charged vehicle in the morning and turning it in depleted at the end of the day.

As a frequent traveler, I'd love to get away from renting cars at the airport at the start of the trip and returning them at the end.

I'd much rather take a shuttle van or rideshare from the airport to the hotel, and then rent the EV from the hotel with the understanding that it will be going back into a reserved charging stall each night until I check out.

 

The one comment I got from people who rented an EV was that they couldn't find a place to recharge. The last one didn't rent a Tesla, so that would probably have left them more difficulty finding a charging station.

Most EV charging is done at home. When traveling, people don't have that available. For someone that's only used to ICE refueling, looking for recharging in a different city, when they've got other things to do is just not a good combination.

 

Once again ... I take it the opp didn't notice this topic was already brought up?

 

One caution is EV technology is rapidly advancing. So my two cars are frozen with the technology of their manufacturing date:

• 2017 BMW i3-REx - a modular battery pack with battery management practices of 2017. The aluminum frame and carbon fiber body significantly reduces weight to compensate for low battery density. So it started with a 28 kWh battery that measured in 2023, about 27 kWh including charging losses of AC-to-DC. The 630 cc, two cylinder, unoptimized engine drives a generator which solved the abysmal charging networks of 2017. Benchmarked 106 mi range, 97 mi EPA range.
• 2019 Tesla Model 3 Standard Range Plus - started with an ~50 kWh battery, 240 mi EPA range, down to 210-215 mi range, ~45 kWh battery. I've already replaced the heavy wheels and tires with lighter rims, longer lasting, lighter Bridgestone tires. Recently added pizza pan wheel covers and replaced two of the shredded, underbody panels.
• 2023 Tesla Rear Wheel Drive - 272 miles EPA range.

So I can buy a 55,000 mi, used 2017 BMW i3-REx in August 2023 knowing the technology and price for a bargain $15,000. My first 2014 BMW i3-REx was just under $30,000 with ~7,000 mi. So there is a tradeoff:

• New - high price, current technology, warranty (for infantile problems)
• Used - depreciated price, aged technology, residual warranty if any.
  • Good approach to 'low cost' learn if EVs are for you.

Bob Wilson

 

It was buried in another thread. So others may not have seen it.

 

Realizing it's not the first the OP has been late to the party .... & Maybe I'm imagining it but isn't there another thread going over the Hertz issue of dumping some of their electric cars?
Stil-l never estimate @gokham ability to emphasize the anti tesla issue at hand. I'm guessing it brings no end to his personal satisfaction

.

 

oops ...looks like we almost simultaneously already crossed over the point

 

@hill good of you to offer a link into the other thread without cluttering this one, anyway...

 

Sounds like you've got some pro experience on the topic?

 

Regardless of drivetrain generally…

The most dangerous cars on the road have been in the owners hands less than 6 months

Cars with more power and acceleration, generally crash more often with more damage than “dangerous “ old slow lightweight vehicles.

Downright ancient low value cars generally get into fewer serious accidents that result in the car getting totaled.
As compared to expensive new cars with more safety tech, generally speaking the more safety tech a car has and the more expensive the more likely it is to get into a serious accident that totals the car.

Everything I have stated is true across models and has been true a long time so long as you don’t try to compare across vehicle classes (AKA Truck vrs Motorcycle or coupe)

Could read between the lines why new, overpowered , expensive vehicles in general total out more often, but it isn’t a new phenomenon or an EV only characteristic

 

Could a contributing factor be the one pedal driving and then needing an emergency stop and not having that repetitive motion used recently?

 

I reckon that merits more study.

Personally that's exactly why I would disable one-pedal mode in a car so equipped. I drive a lot of different cars- the two we own and many random rentals. There's a lot of safety in having standardized controls.

I could see retraining myself for one-pedal if I was going to be in the same car all the time.

When innovation gets ahead of standardization, there's a lot of waste created.

 

If anything one pedal driving means the breaking starts if you mail a seconds quicker