Hertz is ditching even more electric cars
qz.com
qz.com
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.
Hertz would charge for the dongle and then refund upon its return. The car itself was good!
Whoever they rented the car from (likely Hertz but I didn't ask) had done absolutely nothing to describe the charging procedure to these unfortunate customers.
It’s no surprise that an actually important message gets lost in that stream of junk.
Average Joe has 16932+ unread emails. IF they have an idea they have an email account and email app.
Granted most of the 300k emails were in tabs like social, forums, updates, promotion.
After a bit of spring purging the inbox is down to more managable 91,078 unread emails.
Then again, I've seen the first sentence for these emails so I expect I am not missing out on much.
But again, the main purpose of Gmail is to harvest your behaviour data, not providing you a good email service.
Perhaps these women did the same thing as me but they did need to charge the car.
Perhaps other people ignore those emails?
Lol
Send them to an auto parts store and have them ask for a supercharger for their Tesla just to confuse the clerk.
Obligatory: I wouldn't actually do this but it's amusing to think about.
Of course we're not innocent here. What does gate mean in electronics? What does persistent mean in computer science? What does memory mean in computer engineering?
Context matters.
Dojober (noun): A handcrafted thing that makes it possible to do a job (i.e., complete a task).
Synonyms: widget, contraption
Why should machinery that comes in a vehicle shape be different?
"You get to learn how to charge in an unfamiliar place with no help" isn't a welcome surprise for many people.
They should build recharging the car once into the price and only give the customer a fully charged vehicle.
In theory, I would love to try out an electric car and rent a Tesla. When I read the news stories about the hassles, I don’t want to add dealing with charging hassles to my busy trip.
Every car rental company I've used charges you $10 for every missing gallon when you return the car. But most don't actually refill it before they hand it off to the next customer.
I would love to rent a Tesla exactly as mentioned but waiting 30 minutes at the start or the end is just unacceptable to me.
I would need to be given a pretty good discount on the rental to even consider it.
At this point someone usually pipes up with "well you were going to be stopping for an hour somewhere anyway". No I was not. I stopped for less than 5 minutes at a rest stop to pee. And I stopped at a gas station to buy a quarter tank because that's all the room I had. Price seemed right and the milage estimate said I wasn't going to make it without. Turns out I filled up only 3/4 of a tank in San Jose before drop off so that stop wasn't needed after all.
However with electric vehicles, you pay more upfront to have a lower operating cost. Most people purchasing an ev don’t worry about charging infrastructure, because they intend to just charge it in their garage. The rental car company knows how much the electricity will cost to fill up their vehicle as the price doesn’t fluctuate and the cost is way lower than gasoline, and they can easily add some chargers to their locations.
Also, electric vehicle chargers often require you to have an account and download an app and really just aren’t designed to be used by someone renting a car.
I think the business model simply makes way more sense if the rental car company deals with the first and last charge for an EV.
> I think the business model simply makes way more sense if the rental car company deals with the first and last charge for an EV.
Totally agree with you there. I would be pretty pissed if I rented an EV and the battery was significantly less than 100% when I got it, and even more so if they demanded me to return it charged up. Suppose I don't have time to wait for it to charge before catching my flight. That's definitely something the rental place should be taking care of.
They definitely have several gas pumps on the premises. And car chargers. You are not getting a car without a full tank.
At the desk you are told to bring the car back filled to the same level or they will indeed charge you $10 a gallon. Alternatively, you can pay some extra fee upfront and not have to worry about bringing it back full. I didn't really pay attention to this offer but I suspect it could have been cheaper than the $50 of gas I had to put in at the end.
They don't assign you a car. You ordered a medium sedan? Those are in so and so section of the lot, head out there and jump into whatever car catches your eye. The keys are on the dash. If it's not full of gas, you hop out and get into the next car over.
I will ding them a bit for two of their shuttle busses driving past me at the airport. In the end I just hopped on an Avis bus without talking to the driver and walked the last few hundred meters from Avis to Thrifty.
I also strongly recommend not getting on a shuttle by terminal 1 at lax. You will sit in traffic in the airport for 30 minutes. Much faster to drag your bags across the road, across the middle of the airport and across the road again to the shuttle stop in terminal 7.
That 'eventually' just got longer: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-68935522
the idea of a rental car is a cheap shitty car that I can trash without too much concern. The car goes to shit in a year or two and gets pawned off for nothing. This is fine because the car was the cheapest possible option for its price point anyways. Also using gas is much more convenient than EV charging although it is more expensive but this is offset by the car being cheap
An EV is cheap over the long run through cumulative savings but the purchase price is higher and they have to pass this off to consumers. The car still goes to shit in the same time but this is worse for the environment because the expensive part of the car hasn’t really degraded in value.
Overall the model just doesn’t make sense. EV’s are perfect as a daily driver for those with commutes that allow them to charge at home and gas cars are great for occasions where an EV doesn’t work. Most rental car scenarios don’t make sense for an EV IMO
Economically the manufacturers often sell to rental agencies at less than the usual price to the public. This benefits the manufacturers as they get their cars test driven by people who may then buy one, and the agencies as they don't lose much when they sell.
I think EVs may not work as well economically due to depreciating faster over the first year.
And then there are those ski racks that I see on cars driving down the freeway in June. totally streamlined.
Just like they can make instrument clusters separate from the main infotainment touch screen.
Hyundai already sells EVs with cameras for side mirrors in regions of the world where it is legal to do so (it ain’t in NA) Those models have dedicated screens on the A pillars instead.
Tesla designers subscribe to the software school of design, where purpose follows form, rather than the other way around, and it shows.
The rental company (avis) charged market rate to recharge it when I returned. They also let me select EV ahead of time, and I confirmed it would work before selecting it. FWIW, I’d rented a tesla “or similar” and ended up with a bolt, so there weren’t any issues with charge dongles, etc.
The savings in gas meant the rental upgrade more than paid for itself.
I will purposefully not be selecting an electric car for my next rentals. Awful experience all around.
But reality right now is a bit different. We can't even know if the Teslas will have the J1772 adapters.
People who mostly return to their home with a driveway, and mostly use their car to drive around town, vs people who travel away from home. Each trying to convince the other.
It's the same as public transport advocates vs car advocates.
It feels like a kind of tremendous blind spot. I mean personally I've spent periods in which I've split my time between my place and my partner's place. I doubt this is particularly uncommon. Even if one of us had a charger, the other wouldn't, so suddenly it all falls apart.
It was in abysmal shape. Both tires on the left had been installed backwards, with the inside on the outside, and something was badly wrong with the front left wheel, I suspect the rotor was warped because it scraping, loudly, with every rotation.
I read about Hertz having problems with EV maintenance but experience leads me to believe that it's nothing to do with being EVs. They're simply not maintaining them. I told them about the problems on return, and the guy just shrugged.
When I complained upon return the Hertz employee was nice about it and gave me a voucher that covered the cost of the rental.
Maybe don't build a fleet of EVs if you're not equipped to at least charge them
Mandatory EVs will remove the access of freedom of movement that the lower and middle classes came to enjoy in a way that use to be impossible le
https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/airfare-infl...
If you think the imposition of Net Zero, Carbon Taxes, energy transition etc etc is going to make flights cheaper I'd be interested to see how you think this will be achieved [1]
Still, as the saying goes "In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges". All the FAANG employees and VCs and other tech bros will be able to fly to the Caribbean and Europe. It will only really effect your average blue collar employee, and who cares about them, right?
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-03-21/flights-a...
This isn't done grand conspiracy against EVs.
https://www.morningbrew.com/daily/stories/2021/10/28/hertz-b...
https://boardstewardship.com/hertz-ceo-stephen-scherr-steps-...
The car was clean, well maintained, fully charged and already parked in my hotel’s parking lot. Charging was free at any Tesla charger over the three days I had the car…I just had to plug it in and tell the car how much charge I wanted. When I was done with the car, I just had to snap a few photos and leave it in the same lot. And because the pickup/drop off point was at my hotel, I avoided paying for the car for the day I flew in and out since the hotel provided a shuttle to/from the airport.
It’s amazing that some guy named Marco who bought 6 used Teslas can do a more competent job of renting EVs than a multibillion dollar rental agency with huge economies of scale.
These companies seem horribly managed dumpster fires. I’ve never had a good experience. Acceptable most of the time but often bad.
But then again, Turo is a small fragment of the market, and the hosts care about renting them out. They are also selected by the renter intentionally.
The rental companies went too far on purchases and way short on support, and often gave them out to people that didn't even want them.
Also so many businesses have sufficient barriers to entry that there is a considerable under supply of service providers.
In the defence of people who don’t care right now, our culture is not conducive to caring whereas it seems it was more so in the past. There was more social and family cohesion. There were more readily available evidence and reasons to care on a day to day basis. Things appear objectively different for most people now.
On top of that there is increasing wealth disparity which people are confronted with on a hyper-frequent basis. Just take a peak at instagram and you’re reminded that you’re just a serf with every ad and every few posts.
In the 'good old days' a person could work their way up in a company from the sales floor into a leadership role. The company would encourage this to create a pipeline of experienced managers with first-hand knowledge of customer needs.
That era is long dead. Companies don't care about their customers, they care about maximizing shareholder value above all else. That means doing things like slashing staff to the point where 2 people have to run the entire store. How are they supposed to provide good customer service in a situation like that?
Jobs like that shouldn’t exist at all in my opinion. They’re the result of regulatory failure as far as I can tell.
So the solution is higher pay
Pay people well (aka enough to actually save and be able to afford property) and you might see something different.
But ShArEhOlDeR VaLuE!!!! means it’ll never happen.
You seem sheltered
EVs could work as rentals but it would have to be a total end-to-end experience, thought out with the actual customer in mind. An app for a specialized car already paired to your phone and easy to charge on the Tesla network by just plugging in.
All brands of car can charge on all brands of charger as Nature intended. It's just better infrastructure.
Incompatible, brand exclusive charging stations are dumb infrastructure and no good for anyone.
An open version of the Tesla system is now standardized as NACS and hopefully will take over. There is light at the end of the tunnel.
No. No apps, no charging network accounts, no brand lock in or lock out.
Contactless payment is the minimum acceptable standard (also having the ability to pay by cash would be even better). You can still have your app if you want to but everyone must be able to pay without signing up for apps and accounts from multiple charging providers just to put electricity in a car battery.
I don't have an app to fuel my ICE vehicle, I shouldn't need one to charge my EV.
Europe has mandated contactless payments. Even Tesla is following the rules on their new V4 dispensers. Tesla will need to fix up its old dispensers:
I think the traditional rental places are just incompetent or under investing.
I last rented in FL a good 10 years back, Coral Springs - I'm UK based so only have a couple of anecdotes to go on. I was treated courteously and upgraded because the car I ordered wasn't available.
Obviously back then EVs were largely off the menu.
However, how on earth do you mount a wheel backwards? What is a rotor in an EV? I own a Chinese "Morris Garage" marque car - it's not from 'round 'ere boy.
Your Polstar is from Norway. They do them.
Sure, quality has gone down, but, well, that's why it's not worth turning them anyway.
It probably strongly depends on driving styles. I also trust OEM metallurgy far more than anything you can purchase off Amazon.
Polestar is also a Swedish company, designed in Sweden but mostly manufactured in China. They're expanding production in the USA and Europe (Belgium).
Polestar is a Swedish company owned by Geely, the Chinese auto giant.
Put the side of the tire rim that has the car's company logo that normally faces out to the world so that it faces into the wheel well instead, with the tire itself sticking out far more then normal.
Assuming the wheel spokes doesn't grind off part of the brake calipers, it unfortunately can work. It'll drive badly mind you, and does significant cosmetic damage to the rim once you realize the mistake, but it does "drive".
Some wheels have a preferred direction and should be used only on left or right side.
The rubber is assymetric in those. But I don't think you would notice is any way if you get like 3% worse grip.
One of them had a service message that intermittently popped up related to the collision avoidance system (IIRC), and one had a slightly dodgy multi-way switch on the drivers seat that made it difficult (but not impossible) to adjust the seat position. Other than those they were all excellent: a really great car, with great software. One of the best I've ever rented from Hertz. I hope they don't sell all of them!
It's not so much that EVs require more maintenance/repairs (if anything, the opposite is true!), but the high costs of parts etc when repairs are needed. This is particularly a problem with Teslas, which also leads to higher insurance premiums.
On top of that, charging is still way less convenient than refueling an ICE car, and when you hire a car it's usually in a situation where you can't afford inconvenience.
I think electric cars are the future and hopefully I'll never buy an ICE car again, but car hire has got to be the last domain to transition surely?
The equivalent services in Copenhagen show the state of charge of the cars on the map, before paying anything. (There's also free minutes for leaving the car plugged in to a charger at the end, and perhaps because of that it's rare for them to be at a low charge.)
Here, there are many more cars, but it's not possible to reserve far in advance. You can reserve for free for enough time to walk to the car (20 minutes?) or pay to reserve for longer.
The charge state is shown prominently.
I think heavy loads, cross country, and extremely rural are likely to be among the holdouts.
Depends on how "extreme" extreme is.
Certainly affordable wouldn't work for rural because range is really needed. However, it's doable now with 300+ range EVs (assuming there's a city within 100/150 miles of your location).
One thing that would change this quickly is if V2H ends up taking off. Then you can ditch your backup generator and use your EV in the event of a power outage. For very rural places or off grid places that could be really valuable.
But totally agree about the other categories.
They are if you take car of them. Hertz notoriously did not have chargers in their lots and I've read plenty of stories of EV renters getting an EV with 20% of the battery.
If they are letting the cars sit and discharge to 0, yeah, that will look like them being "unreliable" and will ultimately wear the battery.
That also applies to ICEs.
>Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine.
>Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
It would work great with 2 things in place
1. The rental company has car chargers on the lot and keeps their cars charged at a reasonable level.
2. You are staying at a hotel/location with car chargers.
If those two things are in play, then electric rental cars make a TON of sense. Even shorter range ones as you are likely mostly puttering around the location where you are renting. In that case, you are likely to want to do the "drive around all day, charge while you sleep" that most EV owners do.
Unfortunately, while some hotels do have chargers, they tend to be the more expensive hotels and they tend to only have 1 or 2 slots for charging.
> On top of that, charging is still way less convenient than refueling an ICE car
Really depends. Charging is more convenient if you the place you park your car has a charger. Charging is less convenient if you are driving long distances or you need to recharge with no room for downtime.
Edit: and their hotel is a solid 45 minutes away from their work site.
I probably am, because I don't think that's super common. Airports are everywhere.
Even for my extreme rural hometown, there's a commercial airport 45 minutes away (Though, granted, we'd go to the airport 2 hours away because it's bigger and we'd have to fly there anyways to get to the 45 minute airport).
The full flights and large planes I've been on haven't been to Pocatello Idaho. Which is what gives me the impression that people aren't typically flying to rural destinations. On the other hand, a flight to Atlanta, Ronald Reagan, or Dallas are always filled to the brim.
Even when there are flights from departure city to arrival city directly, they might be avoided because of other reasons like cost or flight times.
Or you know, you might just be flying Ryanair who will fly you to Frankfurt Hahn airport (nearer Luxumburg than Frankfurt) or Paris Beauvais (nearer Normandy than Paris)
And why are you picking a 45 minute commute if work is picking up the tab for a hotel.
Your whole example smells of a strawman
I've had work trips where the only decent hotel was an hour away from where I needed to be.
Edit: my straw man smells like dry, arid, desert. The cacti are unbelievable.
Edit 2: the amount of willful ignorance in your response is absurdly enlightening, thank you.
So if you're flying into Yuma for work and you're flying into an airport 4 hours away and staying in a hotel 45 minutes away, you are really doing something wrong.
Edit: it’s not worth dying on this hill, you’re just wrong.
Regardless, even if you fly into phoenix, that's not a 4 hour drive away.
Regardless, even if a few underserved locations in the US are a 4 hour drive away from their nearest airport, it doesn't mean that EVs don't make sense as a rental car.
That’s not true everywhere. I’m currently on holidays: the car rental for 6d was 130euros, insurance 40, and gas will be about 60 for 10-15h of driving. Gas doesn’t dominate the price but it’s far from insignificant, and it only gets worse as price increases
Also, charging at public chargers isn't that cheap or frictionless. At home yeah, but at stations not so much. Not compared to filling up with gas and being on your way in less than 5 minutes.
While I'm sure it happens, that's never been my experience. You plug your trip into the car's navigation system and it'll plan out the charge stops for you. It's quiet frictionless. Tesla's is really good as it will even plan on sending you to less busy charging stations vs more busy ones (and reroute if that changes).
> Also, charging at public chargers isn't that cheap or frictionless.
Depends on the network. Tesla's isn't terribly expensive and is extremely frictionless. Electrify America is horseshit, both on cost and ease of use.
This is a solvable problem.
> Not compared to filling up with gas and being on your way in less than 5 minutes.
Behavior ends up changing here if you road trip with an EV. Rather than just getting fuel then going somewhere else to eat you'll usually charge while you eat, use the restroom, or go for a walk. If you really don't have anything else to do, you'll probably just catch a tv show on your phone.
That coveted 5 minutes ends up just not being a big deal because you are multitasking with the charging. (Which for me is typically 20->30 minutes).
>Tesla's isn't terribly expensive and is extremely frictionless...
I'm sure Tesla is great, but my ICE is excellent in both those categories and cost me 6000 Euros used in mint condition with only 4 years and 40k KM of usage. Which used Tesla can I get in that budget?
If I were to advise someone for the best EV to buy, I'd probably suggest holding off for 5 or 10 more years. Even if I were suggesting a new EV to buy, I'd suggest holding off for 1 maybe 2 years in north america because everything is switching over to NACS.
If we are talking about someone in the EU, I'd still probably suggest waiting a couple of years if you can, but if you can't you can probably grab a Nissan leaf for roughly that 6000 euros and that mileage. If you can wait a few more years, especially in the EU, then the used market options are going to explode. I'd probably look at some of the Chinese second hand EVs as they are already pretty cheap and will likely be super cheap used in a few years. And if you are in the EU, EVs that are roughly the same prices as an ICE are going to make a lot of financial sense because of the high petrol prices.
Would I suggest someone get a Tesla today? Eh, depends. I probably will not get one for my next vehicle, but I plan on running this one into the ground (currently at 130,000 miles and I plan to keep going until something gives). In the US, I'd suggest today you take a good look at the iconiq if you are buying new. But again, in the US, I'd strongly suggest waiting for a couple of years at this moment.
Well, EV growth and adoption is all about economics (can you afford them in your business/lifestyle to replace your ICE or not?) Herz's decision to drop EVs is about economics (is it profitable for them or not?). So yeah, Economics are very important in this discussion so why not talk about it?
You pointing out Tesla, the most premium EV brand with the best chagrin network, as the competition to cheap ICEs is like telling peasants who can't afford bread that they should eat cake. EU voters aren't gonna be happy with this come 2035 if the EV market isn't full of cheap models with long range by then and we might see an exertion of the ICE life, especially since the post 2022 conditions has decimated the purchasing power and disposable income of the average European. We might have counted our chickens before they were hatched on this one.
>you can probably grab a Nissan leaf for roughly that 6000 euros and that mileage
Unfortunately, the Leaf's range is pitiful compared to even the most econobox ICE. And range is very important to EU buyers.
I pointed out 2 very specific aspects of tesla, the charge network and the ability to route plan with charging stops. 2 things any EV brand can pull off.
And, particularly in the case of the EU, 1 thing that affects all EV brands as there are public charging access laws which mean anyone can use the tesla charging network. It's not just for the uber wealthy. I did not say or suggest in my post that "lol, the poors should just buy teslas" as you suggest. Rather, I rebutted 2 specific points you made, that you have to search for charging stations which are far apart (not true in the EU, btw) and that the charging experience is always terrible.
You then went on a wild tangent about how much it costs to buy EVs, which was completely out of scope of the prior discussion and goalpost moving.
> as the competition to cheap ICEs is like telling peasants who can't afford bread that they should eat cake.
Like, sorry, I did not nor have I suggested that the peasants need to go out and buy EVs. Nor am I suggesting that owning one isn't something that today requires more money (as I outlined in my previous post). Owning an EV is not the right move for everyone yet every EV debate is framed as "If it's not good for everyone it's not good for anyone".
> EU voters aren't gonna be happy with this come 2035 if the EV market isn't full of cheap models with long range by then.
I agree. It's still a relatively young industry. My suspicion is that by 2035 things will be a lot more competitive as battery manufacturing has been growing exponentially and we are starting to see EV sales lag. Exponential growth in a supply with a lag in demand translates to lower prices. I can't predict exactly when (or if) this will happen. It's my best guess that it will.
> Unfortunately, the Leaf's range is pitiful compared to even the most econobox ICE. And range is very important.
Important to some, not to all. I wouldn't buy it as a primary car because range is important to me. As a secondary car, sure, it'd work great as a commuter.
But again, in case you want to reframe what I'm saying in a less charitable way, I'm not saying "EVs are for everyone and everyone should own them". Nor am I saying "everyone should buy a tesla". I'm not even saying "Used EVs are fine and there's no reason why someone shouldn't buy them."
We can both agree that ICE boxes aren't without their drawbacks right? We can both agree that there are pros and cons to EVs and ICE right? Or do you just want to say that there is never a good reason to buy an EV?
All these combined are a far-cry from frictionless. And good luck if you venture out of the trodden path.
My family lives out of the trodden path. I visit them often in my EV. I've been all over rural Idaho and Oregon in my EV.
There are certainly some places too rural for an EV, but there's not many places more rural than rural Idaho and oregon.
That's not changing behaviors, that's distracting yourself because refueling takes forever for an EV
Changing behaviors would be like breaking the trip into shorter days, charging at night while sacrificing some days in the man destination
If you are renting a car with the intention of traveling long distances, you are free to pick the most suitable one though.
Business traveler who just needs to go between the hotel and the airport? Great; may not even need to charge.
If I'm flying into Vegas to do a roadtrip to the Mighty 5? Nope.
Rental companies already have lots of different categories, so it's fine to have a mixed fleet. Just requires some extra infrastructure and consumer education. Which, I know, is in short supply, but can be done.
Is there any insight regarding the primary reason for that loss? They cite EVs being expensive and unreliable but surely that can't be the primary factor behind a loss of 1/3 of a billion?
(Outdoor chargers don't work because thieves steal the copper wires.)
Last time I ran the numbers is was 8 to 10 years before I hit break for an ICE vs an equivalent EV (in feature set that I cared about) given my driving habits and operating costs for either. And there's some electrical work that needs to be done to properly support charging a BEV without juggling what's drawing power when all the time. Upgrades to happen either way but they'd have to be rushed if I had bought a BEV, vs taking the time over the next few years.
So at least to for my situation it makes more sense to stick to ICE for now. If the BEV evangelists are right and battery prices drop down to the point where the purchase price of a BEV is the same as an ICE, then it makes more sense to wait. Buy ICE now, get everything in place, evaluate everything again in a few years.
This foundered the entire rationale for "cash for clunkers" to switch to more fuel efficient cars, but facts didn't matter. Politics did.
That assumes your time is worth zero.
The best feature about having an EV or plug in hybrid is that if you can charge at home, you never have to waste time going to the gas station, except for road trips.
The gas station is right on the route home. Any which way I used to go home, it's on the route on the right side of the road. When I was commuting every day it I was refuelling roughly every 3 weeks taking 3 to 6 minutes depending on if I had to wait for a gas stall to open. I work from home now so it's not entirely valid but use this for the sake of easy comparison.
Let's say it takes 10 seconds to unplug/close door/stow cable when you leave, and another 10 seconds when you get back. 5 days a week plus weekend trip for errands or whatever, so 6 minutes every 3 weeks. In other words, about the same as buying gas.
But then that leaves out the issue of DC fast charging, which inherently does longer, even when everything is working. Right now, the fast chargers not named Tesla are a bit of a gamble and now you have to consider time spent looking for an alternative charger if the one you want is occupied or out of order. Then throw in that my problems with locating a fast charge are made more so because I don't have a data plan on my smartphone, which limits which chargers I can use and cuts me off from knowing chargers are working and well...
So I'm not overly keen on that argument.
Until we fix this, people without a house and garage to have their own charger are going get screwed badly by the forced EV transition.
Yet in reality thousands of people charge their cars in their driveways every day without this problem.
Also, how many charging stations are there compared to the number of parking spaces? The markets I've seen have 2 charging stations with about a hundred parking spaces. The stations are always in use, so they're fairly useless unless you want to hang around for most of the day.
Level 2 chargers that generally push 6kw of power and take hours to fully charge a car aren't very useful for brief charging stops like this.
Modern BEVs typically need 30 minutes to charge from 10 to 80% (it slows down asymptotically above 80).
I have 150kW chargers around here (southwest UK), which add 80 miles of range in 10 minutes. My weekly shopping usually takes longer than the car needs to fully change.
80 miles from 15kWh would be over 5 miles per kWh which seems quite high.
What’s the cost per mile compared to petrol?
How many 150kW chargers are at your local supermarket? How many car parking spaces in total?
I've had EVs since 2019, and in the meantime the infrastructure in the UK went from one broken charger per city, to every McDonald drive thru having a DC charger. In the western EU it's even better with a good 300kW charger coverage along all highways.
150kW * 10/60 = 25kWh. That's 80mi at 3.1mi/kWh.
Charging used to be dirt cheap before the Russian invasion. Rapid charging prices have increased 4x since then, and per mile they're unfortunately on par with petrol now.
It has a lower range than my now ICE car, like for like it costs more both to buy and to fuel, there are fewer charging points, and it takes longer to charge vs. fueling.
Some of these points are marginal, but for a rental company that's not specializing at the high end of the market the margins aren't huge and it doesn't surprise me that the model doesn't work.
How is this possible (the cost of charging vs purchasing fuel for an ICE vehicle)?
Superchargers also vary in price and can be non-competitive with home electric rates, depending on region, but they don't seem to gouge severely like their competition. At least their pricing for Teslas is good. And maybe the poster lives in a place with very cheap gas as well. It remains to be seen what kind of premium they will charge to non-Teslas which tend to charge more slowly. Because of this slow charging issue, when they roll out more third party charging, Tesla will make non-Teslas pay not only for power, but also for time spent, because taking up a slot for a longer time has an impact on everyone.
Assuming that you can't charge at home (true for a rental!), the UK rate for charging is between 55p and 80p or so.
Real world my EV got around 3-4 miles per kWh which works out between 14p and 26p per mile.
Source: https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/electric-cars/charging/electric-...
We can fiddle the numbers a bit back and forth but my real world experience was that it was more expensive in every way.
Mine takes six seconds to charge — three seconds to plug in, and three seconds to unplug — and costs far less than gas (depends on your area and local rates, I guess). I haven't been to a gas station in five years. Pretty happy with that.
I'm struggling to find actual statistics on what % of UK households have a drive or garage, but anecdotally, even amongst fairly well off people it's not that common unless you live on the outskirts of a city or rurally.
A large part of the UK is terraced housing and you can't easily park outside your house even if you wanted to dangle a cable out of a window or something.
If my house had a garage, I could probably quite easily rent it out for £500+ a month as living accommodation, so even the opportunity cost wipes out all of the savings.
I never rented an EV from them and never would because the charging logistics are a pain in the ass at return. Out of petrol? 10 minutes, run it through the car wash at the same time, sorted. Out of charge? Oh I'm right next to one of the biggest airports in Europe and all the chargers are rammed. No thanks.
They were pricing EVs at a discount for a trip I took through Atlanta last month. Still came out ahead with the recharge fee.
(Fortunately, last time I drove one on a dirt road there was a heavy rain storm the next day.)
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The only time I rent cars is for long trips, I'm about to rent one next month actually, 1200km, no chance I'll get an EV that at most will give me 400km of range
The fact that anything above a fender bender is almost always a total write off probably doest help either
I’m totally ignorant on this subject so do you mind saying why that is?
While on a time limited event, like a vacation, where I may need a rental car, I have no desire to sit and wait for my car to charge and waste my time, over a 45 second gas fill up. Hotels don’t universally offer charging ports (or enough of them, if it even does). EVs have a very long way to go to being generally useful for the non homeowner who doesn’t have a charging station in their own garage.
Where do you live? I live in a regular German town, nothing I would consider particular techie, and I see so many electric cars. If you only see one ev per day, I think that you might live more in a bubble than OP.
I could see even in different parts of the US wildly different EV adoption rates. They're very common in Seattle but I think I would be surprised if I saw too many of them in Boise. US states are often the size of European countries.
any company doing targeting based on just vaguely urban vs. rural would be in for a terrible return on investment
The EU as a whole has 1.68% EVs out of all passenger cars, though it's about 15% of new cars. [1]
Here in Denmark BEVs are 5.68% of all passenger cars, and I'm sure it's higher where I live in Copenhagen. Over half of the taxis and buses are EVs, plus a good proportion of private vehicle. I won't guess, but I do see many EVs every time I go outside.
[1] https://alternative-fuels-observatory.ec.europa.eu/transport...
And yet when I needed to rent a car, I rented a gasoline one.
Why?
Because car rental is pretty much the worst case for an EV.
If I rent a car I'm likely abroad, with zero knowledge of the recharge network and often not great options in terms of costs because most are national (at least, here in Europe, only notable exception being Ionity).
I'm also likely to drive long distances, with no routine, and little planning capacity.
And whatever other reason one would pick an EV for (noise, pollution, fuel cost, one pedal drive comfort etc.) they are all negligible when applied to a 2 weeks vacation.
Have they? It seems that when rubber meets the road, so to speak, it is not a simple one-to-one replacement for gas or diesel vehicles. The day-to-day ownership is more complicated, planning your itinerary and day around sparse public charging and owning property to have at-home charging. Also, the long-term ownership, having low resale value due to the high repair costs of the electric drivetrain and low overall repairability, makes ownership a poor proposition for most average people.
Electric cars have been on the market for over a decade. Show me one that someone has kept past 200,000 miles. Meanwhile, you can find Toyotas and Hondas well past that benchmark all day on Marketplace.
Even among gas cars, those who buy new rarely keep cars that long. The average is about 8 years. I've owned several Hondas and Toyotas, and I've never hit 100k on one. (even though I have no doubt any of them would still be on the road) (My current car is a Kia EV6)
I've owned Mercedes with over 300k and Hondas with over 250k.
I have a BEV as well, and I have to say - I don't understand why the PHEV market didn't take off. All the savings for daily trips, and the convenience of gas to never think about range anxiety.
There's heaps of Tesla cars that have done very significant mileage. And as battery technology improves, early generations have been covered by very generous warranties.
Here's one such story, finding others would be a low effort undertaking:
https://youtu.be/1m5gs8mki8o?si=jfDT9NyZTdCL5rmm
Those with 300-400k mileage cars, being earlier generations, a good number have had their battery replaced under warranty with new units. Reliability has only improved over the years, and again, the warranty time has been generous - unlimited km on earlier ones.
(My '22 LR3 is 8 year /192k KM, I've only done 19k KM over 2 years, so the limit won't be an issue. I plan on having it for at least that long. Oh and that's at least ~70% charged by rooftop PV).
Also: Other manufacturers are clearly playing catch up to Tesla, but they are getting there.
And yet you go into car forums and supposedly most Tesla owners are "tech bros". :shrug
And yet, there are some that have over 200k miles. It isn't uncommon to run across them.
Vacations are so time constrained that a huge % of ICE renters opt to just get hosed on gas up fees that rental companies charge instead of going to any ubiquitous gas station before dropping the car off. Car drop off with a flight to catch is always a race against time.
All of these things suck for EVs in general, and Teslas in particular. The recent price cuts have demolished the resale value way more than any other car, rented EVs get damaged more frequently because people are unfamiliar with their behaviour and torque curves and acceleration, and the cost of repair is atrocious for Teslas, since their service infrastructure is severely lacking, i.e. it takes forever to get parts.
And on top of that, rental customers do not want an EV in an unfamiliar place. Everyone can find a gas station and fill it up before returning, but having to schedule your entire trip around charging infrastructure is a complete waste of time.
The only rental customers it makes sense for is people who already have an EV, love it, and know how to live with. But the problem is that Hertz was throwing the Teslas at customers willy-nilly as some kind of "luxury upgrade", with crap results.
Its often the second biggest investment in one's life, after housing. But unlike housing you just throw money at it, expecting pure massive loss, while gaining service. Service new car offers is 100% of used one which is well maintained, minus all potential initial recalls. Its even better for peace of mind - small dents and damage on new car hurts mentally so one becomes a slave to freakin' piece of plastic and metal, on older one its meh category and I focus on important parts being in good state and high quality wheels connecting me to Earth, while driving much more premium equipped cars than comparable electric ones (granted, ie Porsche is better but at what crazy price).
What electric cars bring within same requirements is 2-4x more expensive just to purchase, and TCO are stratospheric for what I am willing to accept.
Another point is environmental impact on all that battery chemistry destroying ecosystems of some poor countries electric drivers often never even heard of nor visited, it ain't greener car to manufacture by any means, albeit greener to run for sure.
So there you have it, the reason 80% of ICE driver's reasons to stay where they are, at least for another decade or two. And that's just purely civilian family transport. What comes after those decades we can discuss at that time, nobody knows what situation will be at that time.
Last time I took my Taycan for a long drive (6 hours in -15C) we took a break half way, and it charged so much faster than expected - so I had to exit the restaurant and go and move it.
It’s the best family car I've ever had, much better than all the BMWs but yeah, it is expensive although the running costs are low.
And anything Porsche has massive TCO, wait till you start changing worn out parts. Manageable, but ROI is extremely bad to me and even best cars out there have to pass some logical checks.
I enjoyed how this sentence escalated suddenly. It felt like you got halfway through then worried that there were actually used electric cars suitable for families of four with big trunks, and then massively overcompensated to rule those out and managed to rule out basically every EV.
The transition to electric vehicles is planned over decades. People act like they're being forced into electric cars today at gunpoint. Since we're talking about second hand cars you have decades of ICE purchasing ahead of you. I think for most people, it won't be that long before it just makes sense to switch. But you've got your long winter journies and fast charger phobia so you're a special case.
Owning an EV requires some compromises, but you figure it out: you get a charger for home, you learn where the chargers are and what the waits are like, etc. For a traveler renting a car, this is bigger challenge. (I say this being a two-EV household)
In what world and in what way? I don't know anybody who would rent an electric car and I certainly would not
Nevertheless, there's definitely still a market here.