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Comment by quantified | Hacker News Reader

When you bring a gas car back empty, you get charged heavily.

Wonder how the pricing and will be affected by the juice left in when you return it. And how their scheduling manages it.

Also, will “FSD” be enabled or disabled? There’s an interesting liability chain.

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Their TOS just came out. Apparently they will only ask for a minimum of 10% charge level:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28996234

When you bring an electric car back empty, it will get charged heavily :)

Right, because bringing it back empty means the car is out of commission for ~12h.

The last three times I've rented a car it's been turned and burned and I've had to wait a few minutes for a clean/wash to be complete from the last renter.

I am sure Hertz can afford a 50KW charger at their locations => 1-2h for full charge.

Not to mention that if the charger is on-premise, there is no longer a personnel need to drive gas-depleted cars to an offsite refueling station. That may add up to significant labor savings.

If agency on-site charging is fast enough, that’s a win, like a pump at every stall.

> there is no longer a personnel need to drive gas-depleted cars to an offsite refueling station

Rental car depots have their own on site gas stations. Fuel on return is one of the highest profit margins rental companies have.

This varies. Laws on safely storing fuel frequently mean Hertz doesn't want to take on the risk (a small leak tends to cost millions in fines). Instead they'll pay staff to drive cars to a nearby station, where they'll have a discount.

Above-ground storage tanks for gasoline are quite safe and reliable. The laws aren't that tough, and most of the compliance requirements are satisfied by having double walled tanks. I struggled to find an instance of fines above $50k that didn't also involve gross negligence.

I know it sounds scary, but most of the fire stations, hospitals, business parks, and schools you drive past will have a few hundred gallons of diesel or LNG stored on site for backup generators. Your city or county public works, taxi yards, and larger post offices will have on site fueling. Large construction sites will usually have on site fuel, or a truck that comes every day or two.

In the last couple of months I've rented cars from about 10 (Enterprise) locations in the UK, only Heathrow had it's own fueling station.

The smaller locations you are using are retail fronts, not depots. When you return the car it is taken to an offsite location anyway to get washed, vacuumed, inspected, fueled, and returned.

They aren't charging you for labor, they are charging you just because they can. In most cases where fuel is not returned full, it's probably a business trip where the renter's company is paying and the renter therefore does not take a shit about it.

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