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How Hertz’s bet on Teslas went sideways

213 points by helsinkiandrew 3y ago

helsinkiandrew 3y ago
https://archive.ph/uyTuG https://archive.ph/uyTuG
KingOfCoders 3y ago
We have no car. We love electric cars. For convenience we only rent gas powered cars.
- janmo 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    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 3y ago
  Forgot "We only do road trips"?
  - KingOfCoders 3y ago
    We use a car for longer road trips, afternoon trips to the islands and for gardening supplies from Home Depot for our garden.
    - kreetx 3y ago
      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 3y ago
“ 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 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    This is mentioned in the article.
  - mannykannot 3y ago
    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 3y ago
  > 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 3y ago
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.
- climateactivist 3y ago
  [flagged]
- nradov 3y ago
  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 https://www.truedelta.com/Tesla/brand-reliability-Tesla
  - erupt7893 3y ago
    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 3y ago
      That is a sample size of 1
      - dzink 3y ago
        3
  - frumper 3y ago
    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 3y ago
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 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    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 3y ago
    ...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 3y ago
    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.
martini333 3y ago
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 3y ago
  But then you have to drive a fossil car for road trips.
bluedevil2k 3y ago
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 3y ago
  $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 3y ago
  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 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    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 3y ago
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 3y ago
  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.
- cogman10 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    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 3y ago
      I'm a bit confused, isn't the point of a PHEV that the battery charge is optional?
josefresco 3y ago
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 3y ago
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 3y ago
  I’ve had this experience with ICE (luxury) vehicles as well, but Tesla does take it to an extteme
- rekoil 3y ago
  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.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- tekla 3y ago
  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 3y ago
  To be clear, every single Tesla that Hertz owned/owns has a standard turn signal/drive, reverse stalk. Others I agree with.
- edude03 3y ago
  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 3y ago
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 3y ago
  But my MBA!
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > But my MBA! Scherr is a lawyer [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Scherr#Education https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Scherr#Education
    - lotsofpulp 3y ago
      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 3y ago
  This was not a pump and dump, it was merely poor performance.
kekeblom 3y ago
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 3y ago
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 950€. 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 3y ago
  > I received a letter for a missing cable in the car and I have been charged 950€. You didn't mistype an extra zero on the end?
  - titi75 3y ago
    No 950€ for a missing charging cable and Avis is one of the largest renters in France.
- frumper 3y ago
  That isn't a problem with EVs, that's a shady company being shady.
eclipsetheworld 3y ago
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 3y ago
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 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    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 3y ago
  >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 3y ago
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 3y ago
> 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 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    What were the main factors making the Model X feel so different?
    - atonse 3y ago
bdcravens 3y ago
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 3y ago
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 3y ago
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 3y ago
  A mountain of waste generated for a short term profit. There has to be a better way.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - malyk 3y ago
    The disposable economy is pretty shit.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > mountain of waste generated for a short term profit The vehicles are sold after use, not disposed of.
    - mschuster91 3y ago
      ... 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.
while_true_ 3y ago
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 3y ago
  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 3y ago
  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_ 3y ago
    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 3y ago
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 3y ago
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 3y ago
  I tried and failed to rent a Tesla from Hertz. Paid for the EV manager special, and got a crappy compact car instead.
- tootie 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    > 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 3y ago
      How’s the Tesla shipments going? The industry saturated the market, which will lower the prices. People will buy them cheap. Market at work.
dataminded 3y ago
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 3y ago
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 3y ago
  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 3y ago
  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 3y ago
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 3y ago
  Requiring a full charge on return is bonkers!
  - dawnerd 3y ago
    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 3y ago
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 3y ago
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 3y ago
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 3y ago
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 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    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 3y ago
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 3y ago
  Carplay is probably the deciding factor for me in my next car. Anything less is a non-starter.
- edude03 3y ago
  > 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?
deckard1 3y ago
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 3y ago
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 3y ago
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 3y ago
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 3y ago
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 3y ago
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 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    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 3y ago
    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 3y ago
Yeah Tesla preferred 60 Hertz
benced 3y ago
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.
MrMan 3y ago
[dead]
ScottBev 3y ago
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 3y ago
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 3y ago
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.

helsinkiandrew 3y ago

https://archive.ph/uyTuG https://archive.ph/uyTuG

KingOfCoders 3y ago

We have no car. We love electric cars. For convenience we only rent gas powered cars.

janmo 3y ago
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 3y ago
  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 3y ago
Forgot "We only do road trips"?
- KingOfCoders 3y ago
  We use a car for longer road trips, afternoon trips to the islands and for gardening supplies from Home Depot for our garden.
  - kreetx 3y ago
    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 3y ago

“ 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 3y ago
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 3y ago
  This is mentioned in the article.
- mannykannot 3y ago
  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 3y ago
> 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 3y ago

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.

climateactivist 3y ago
[flagged]
nradov 3y ago
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 https://www.truedelta.com/Tesla/brand-reliability-Tesla
- erupt7893 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    That is a sample size of 1
    - dzink 3y ago
      3
- frumper 3y ago
  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 3y ago

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 3y ago
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 3y ago
  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 3y ago
  ...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 3y ago
  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.

martini333 3y ago

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 3y ago
But then you have to drive a fossil car for road trips.

bluedevil2k 3y ago

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 3y ago
$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 3y ago
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 3y ago
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 3y ago
  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 3y ago

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 3y ago
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.
cogman10 3y ago
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 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    I'm a bit confused, isn't the point of a PHEV that the battery charge is optional?

josefresco 3y ago

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 3y ago

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 3y ago
I’ve had this experience with ICE (luxury) vehicles as well, but Tesla does take it to an extteme
rekoil 3y ago
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.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
tekla 3y ago
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 3y ago
To be clear, every single Tesla that Hertz owned/owns has a standard turn signal/drive, reverse stalk. Others I agree with.
edude03 3y ago
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 3y ago

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 3y ago
But my MBA!
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > But my MBA! Scherr is a lawyer [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Scherr#Education https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Scherr#Education
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago
    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 3y ago
This was not a pump and dump, it was merely poor performance.

kekeblom 3y ago

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 3y ago

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 950€. 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 3y ago
> I received a letter for a missing cable in the car and I have been charged 950€. You didn't mistype an extra zero on the end?
- titi75 3y ago
  No 950€ for a missing charging cable and Avis is one of the largest renters in France.
frumper 3y ago
That isn't a problem with EVs, that's a shady company being shady.

eclipsetheworld 3y ago

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 3y ago

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 3y ago
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 3y ago
  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 3y ago
>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 3y ago

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 3y ago

> 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 3y ago
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 3y ago
  What were the main factors making the Model X feel so different?
  - atonse 3y ago

bdcravens 3y ago

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 3y ago

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 3y ago

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 3y ago
A mountain of waste generated for a short term profit. There has to be a better way.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- malyk 3y ago
  The disposable economy is pretty shit.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > mountain of waste generated for a short term profit The vehicles are sold after use, not disposed of.
  - mschuster91 3y ago
    ... 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.

while_true_ 3y ago

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 3y ago
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 3y ago
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_ 3y ago
  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 3y ago

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 3y ago

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 3y ago
I tried and failed to rent a Tesla from Hertz. Paid for the EV manager special, and got a crappy compact car instead.
tootie 3y ago
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 3y ago
  > 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 3y ago
    How’s the Tesla shipments going? The industry saturated the market, which will lower the prices. People will buy them cheap. Market at work.

dataminded 3y ago

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 3y ago

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 3y ago
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 3y ago
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 3y ago

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 3y ago
Requiring a full charge on return is bonkers!
- dawnerd 3y ago
  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 3y ago

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 3y ago

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 3y ago

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 3y ago

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 3y ago
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 3y ago
  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 3y ago

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 3y ago
Carplay is probably the deciding factor for me in my next car. Anything less is a non-starter.
edude03 3y ago
> 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?

deckard1 3y ago

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 3y ago

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 3y ago

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 3y ago

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 3y ago

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 3y ago

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 3y ago
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 3y ago
  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 3y ago
  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 3y ago

Yeah Tesla preferred 60 Hertz

benced 3y ago

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.

MrMan 3y ago

[dead]

ScottBev 3y ago

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 3y ago

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 3y ago

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.