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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 ex

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.
    - Spooky23 3y ago
      They sell pretty quickly. They price a little bit lower than normal cars. People need cars, and don’t have cash.
    - CamperBob2 3y ago
      Not many people want to drive a car that has been used as a short-term rental, because they're a guarantee for needing a replacement clutch and engine at least Well, obviously not in this case. Battery health would be the only real concern, I suppose, and that hasn't proven to be an issue so far.
    - jandrese 3y ago
      From what I've seen the most desirable vehicles on used car lots are former rentals. Maybe slightly behind cars that fell off of a lease. There's always the stories about people who rent cars so they can thrash them in street races or whatnot, but really most rentals are for businesspeople who need to get around a city for a bit. The companies usually try to keep up on the basic maintenance items as well, which is not always the case for used cars. You get a fairly new car with higher than average but not crazy miles for a decent price. These Teslas should also qualify for the $4000 used EV tax credit as well, which could make them quite an affordable option.
nwellinghoff 3y ago
I for one would love a company that rents out “ragged out” vehicles for bottom dollar. A well maintained toyota etc. lasts 20 years. Rent me the fully depreciated vehicle and reap pure profit. Not to mention not worrying about every little dent or scratch. Sounds like a dream rental to me. Side note: when renting in other countries, I always ask for the worst looking beat up car that they have. Really is less stressful to drive around.
- mikeInAlaska 3y ago
  We rented from a place called SAD CARS in Iceland. The car... worked for our entire trip.
  - Filligree 3y ago
    The way you said that worries me... were there other issues?
- saalweachter 3y ago
  Isn't that the premise of Rent-a-Wreck?
- tech4all 3y ago
  Agreed! In the US there is a company that does this but they don’t have a nationwide presence: https://www.rentawreck.com/ https://www.rentawreck.com/. Also in Iceland there is “Sad Car” which was great for kicking around.
  - FireBeyond 3y ago
    There was one in Australia when I was there, Rent A Bomb.
  - avar 3y ago
    When did you rent with SADCars? I did once in 2014, and cheaply got some small old manual beater, which was just perfect. But I think they've "pivoted" to just another rental company since then. Looking at their website and Google maps reviews the cars now look new, and indistinguishable from what you'd get from Eurocar, Hertz etc.
MetaWhirledPeas 3y ago
> Fleet damage was more expensive to repair and took longer. Do car rental companies even bother to fix collision-damaged vehicles? I assumed they would just sell them off.
- gambiting 3y ago
  Most regular cars can still be driven after a (minor) collision, they might need some work to fix them up but usually they are fine. If you're ok with mostly cosmetic damage or replacing a body panel, then it's a great buy. A Tesla after a minor collision might disable itself entirely until inspected by a Tesla technician, and it might need a whole new (and very expensive) battery pack - no one would(or should) take a bet on such a car. So it's a lot less attractive thing to buy over regular cars.
  - KennyBlanken 3y ago
    Teslas do not "disable themselves"; it's done by Tesla HQ, using criteria they do not disclose, but it seems to be just a matter of whether the crash happens to come to their attention. Rich Rebuilds has covered this extensively. Sometimes he comes across a heavily damaged Tesla, still on their network that hasn't been disabled. Other times he comes across one with minor damage that has been disabled. I believe one of his rebuilds, he took some of the guts from a heavily damaged car that wasn't deactivated to transplant into the guts of a car that had easily repaired damage that had been.
    - gambiting 3y ago
      Interesting - it was my understanding that most collisions(and definitely collisions that activate airbags) cause the car to disable itself until inspected. Good to know that this isn't always the case.
      - talldatethrow 3y ago
        I've never heard this being the case, and I sure hope it isn't for most cars. Imagine being in a remote area.. you hit a deer after slowing down.. and now you're trapped at night? You're in death valley offroading a little too enthusiastically, airbags deploy and now you're stuck? A small fender bender in Baja Mexico and you're disabled? I once rolled a vehicle in Nevada being stupid with friends. Airbags deployed. The radiator was crushed and leaking. We strapped the radiator support to another vehicle and bent it back out. Took the other vehicle into town and bought a radiator at AutoZone. Installed it and drove it an hour home. The steering wheel was only slightly off center.
JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> Tesla lowered prices forcing them to recognize the depreciation I'm surprised Tesla and Hertz couldn't work out a deal, e.g. reimbursement or a large discount on additional purchases that would wipe out the accounting charge. Rental vehicles are a sales channel for new vehicles. And every Hertz Tesla being dumped on the secondary market is new-vehicle profit Tesla could have booked.
- LeafItAlone 3y ago
  In what way would that have benefited Tesla more than the current situation?
  - ado__dev 3y ago
    PR more than anything. Tesla growth story is pretty much over, many people turned off the brand for a multitude of reasons (Musk, terrible service, price, lack of innovation, more EV competition). So if anything a good opportunity for Tesla to win some PR, potentially expand partnership, sell more cars. Now they get more bad news "rental company dumps Tesla because of XYZ", the used market took a big hit as well pissing off existing owners, and I feel like this pushes newer buyers even more away.
    - jjulius 3y ago
      >PR more than anything. Tesla doesn't believe in PR[1]. [1]https://electrek.co/2021/04/28/elon-musk-no-new-tesla-pr-department-manipulating-public-opinion/ https://electrek.co/2021/04/28/elon-musk-no-new-tesla-pr-dep...
      - Spooky23 3y ago
        They didn’t believe in advertising either, but I’m getting alot of it.
      - CydeWeys 3y ago
        And yet Elon does massive PR stunts on the regular, including smashing a Cybertruck's windows at a launch event. Curious...
rurp 3y ago
I'm not sure why you think charging anxiety couldn't have been one of the factors. TFA calls it out as one. Charging is one of the main concerns with ownership and that would be even more of a challenge with a rental car in an unfamiliar area.
- czbond 3y ago
  I believe charging anxiety was. The base case for car rentals is generally "time bound, busy itinerary" of some sort.... think business trips, holidays, etc. Few want to spend that precious time becoming familiar with that cities charging network if charging is new to them. I recently rented a Mach-E over Christmas in a large Metro, and stayed in a populous suburb. Charging & the states of chargers was no fun and really added a cognitive load. However, I did realize I enjoyed EV's for some point in the future - somewhat curing range anxiety of my normal life routine.
  - _ea1k 3y ago
    TBH, I've experienced it where it can go either way. I've rented gas cars and ended up at a hotel with nice L2 stations. The EV would have been easier! :) But I've also rented EVs in metros with decent fast charging, but none at the hotel. It was fun, but charging was a notable downside.
  - mcguire 3y ago
    How many hotels have sufficient charging capacity to charge EVs while people sleep? A lot of hotels around here have 110v outlets in their parking lots for fishermen to charge their bass boats but I haven't heard that a similar ethic applies to EVs. :-)
    - wishfish 3y ago
      Here's something purely anecdotal: recently stayed in a motel in very rural Arkansas. In the morning, I noticed a Chevy Bolt (or similar) plugged in with an extension cord. Asked the clerk about it. She said it was a relatively rare situation but they didn't have a problem with someone using their outside outlet. I suppose I can't extrapolate this situation to everyone, but I have a feeling if you provide your own cord, most motels won't have a problem with you charging. Especially since it'll be uncommon. If everyone had EVs, then they might start putting a fee on it.
brk 3y ago
I know this is anecdata, but of a couple of friends that had Tesla rentals from Hertz, the number one issue was charging availability, or lack thereof. The fleet maintenance issues may have also been a factor, but from what I observed I would not take an EV as a rental car myself, solely because of the charging issue.
- jandrese 3y ago
  Charging issue being that they couldn't find any available superchargers using the in-car navigation? Or was the in-car navigation not working because it was a rental? That would be a serious problem on a Tesla where the software stack is critical to running the vehicle properly.
  - resters 3y ago
    The in-car navigation to the nearest supercharger worked, but: - some markets don't have an abundance of fast superchargers. It can take > 1 hour to charge. - vehicles would often get returned mostly discharged, which forces the next customer to deal with it. - I rented a few that appeared to have been driven really hard, leading the remaining charge calibration to become mis calibrated, which caused me to have to stop for some unscheduled charges. - the vehicles lose a few percent of charge per day even when not driven (worse in hot weather) - Hertz locations are typically not equipped with any kind of charging infrastructure -- if they were, EVs would be far more convenient to rent. I wish the program would continue, and I would still prefer to rent a Tesla over the other options, but I think the aforementioned things factored into the failure.
    - Rebelgecko 3y ago
      >the vehicles lose a few percent of charge per day even when not driven (worse in hot weather) Is that a Tesla thing? Or does Hertz have some sort of battery draining telematics? I have a non-Tesla EV and even in warm weather (100°F+) that hasn't been the case for me. If the weather changes drastically the SOC might change ±2%, but when I've left my car sitting for weeks it seems to average out
autoexecbat 3y ago
Is there a good place to look at these 1-year-old (specifically) RVs post-dumping?
ijijijjij 3y ago
when I rented a Tesla, by mistake, because they didn't have any other cars available, charging was definitely the problem. They charged me the same price as their cheapest cars, but it still ended up being more expensive because of charging (I paid about $900 for 3 weeks of charging at Tesla's stations, and it would probably would have cost me $300 with a small gasoline car) In other words, you gotta be stupid to rent a Tesla unless you do it just for fun.
- DFHippie 3y ago
  > I paid about $900 for 3 weeks of charging at Tesla's stations Huh. Did you rent a Tesla and then have to pay separately for the privilege of using Tesla's charging network? I've had a Tesla for years and what you paid for 3 weeks is comparable for what I've paid at superchargers the entire time I've owned the car (I mostly charge at home). It seems you did get ripped off, it just seems like it would be difficult to pay that much in three weeks at superchargers alone. There must have been some special surcharge (as it were).
  - ijijijjij 3y ago
    I always charged at Tesla's stations because I never was home, and the charges was a surprise at the end of the rental because they charged me only once when I returned the car... no clue if they ripped me off because it was the first time I used electric car chargers and didn't pay close attention to the receipt. I know it would have been a whole lot cheaper if I had my own charger though.
  - cruano 3y ago
    Not OP but you do have to pay separately. Although as you say, that's a crazy amount for just 3 weeks. In my experience I was charged about $100 for two weeks of regular use + one roadtrip from Miami to Orlando and back. Maybe it was just idle fees, that seems like it could go up by a lot if you leave the vehicle on the station: >For every additional minute a vehicle remains connected to the Supercharger, it will incur an idle fee. https://www.tesla.com/support/charging/supercharger/fees https://www.tesla.com/support/charging/supercharger/fees
HarHarVeryFunny 3y ago
> The real killer was no doubt depreciation. That breaks the whole rental car model. Yep. It's not just about rental income - it's about acquiring fleet at bulk/discounted prices and then reselling quickly before they lose too much money. Tesla's drastic price cuts have been annoying to consumers who just bought cars whose resale value plummeted overnight, but a complete deal breaker for a company like Hertz, only exacerbated by unexpectedly high repair costs. I'd imagine charging must have been a demand factor too - people might like to experiment with an EV rental if they don't own one, but on business or vacation the last thing you want to be worried about is finding a charger or range-anxiety. If you have an EV at home, then part of the convenience, and a mitigation for slow charging, is overnight charging. Many hotels (often used by rental customers) are starting to have chargers too, but it's not something you can depend on.
mintplant 3y ago
This is all in the article.
- theoldlove 3y ago
  Yes, the article discusses slow, expensive repairs and Tesla’s price drops
adam_arthur 3y ago
I was saddled with an EV from Hertz unexpectedly (they said it was the only car left), and had to drive from NYC to MD and back. Charging was absolutely the worst part. And most of the charging stations were full at any given time. Range was extra bad due to the cold as well. I understand the EV model for home use, but it makes 0 sense for rentals today. It's vastly less convenient, even ignoring the other factors like depreciation
resters 3y ago
How does one repair the chassis part that is one or two massive giga-pressed parts?
- resters 3y ago
  this was a serious question
mikepurvis 3y ago
I dunno about the back end business parts of it, but I've rented a few cars recently, and Hertz was not only 20-30% more expensive than Enterprise, but getting a Model 3 from them was over double the price of a comparable gas car. There's no way I was going to get enough miles in to make the fuel cost worth that differential.
- thinkling 3y ago
  Pricing is going to depend a lot on the dynamics of the local market and the number of cars each company has available. (Article mentions that rental companies will truck cars between markets and that anticipating demand is key to being profitable.) For a while last summer, EVs from Hertz were the cheapest cars you could rent in the Seattle area because they had many and customers didn’t want them. Sounds like they’ve been selling them off.
foobarian 3y ago
The thing that gets me is that the guys who lead this effort are go-getting ex-finance, ex-trading people who work their butts off and have attention to detail of a microscope. And the article mentions that they did in fact do detailed studies and make financial models of the venture and things looked good enough to push forward. So... clearly even their experience, hard work, and attention to detail was not enough to predict what would happen. I'm not sure what that means in the end :-). Maybe predicting the future is just hard? Maybe it was a 30-60 bet and they just got unlucky? In that case what they did was not unreasonable and had it worked the same journalists that cackle at them with schadenfreude would be singing their praises.
- throwway120385 3y ago
  Or maybe a background in finance is not actually enough to know how to launch a totally new product within your company. Maybe you need some people with engineering expertise to ask a different set of questions beyond "will the costs add up?"
- jordanb 3y ago
  My experience with Finance/PE people is that they don't really care about any details. They want all decks to be like three slides. If you can't represent something on a spreadsheet it doesn't count. And they're extremely good at working backwards from a conclusion. I'm sure they never asked "how fast can they be repaired?" "What will the customer experience be when a car has to be paired with your phone and you need a Tesla account?" "Are the maintenance claims put out by the manufacturer reasonable?" etc. etc.
- adamors 3y ago
  It seems to me that the finance guys were completely out of their element and when their models didn’t fit the reality on the ground they couldn’t adapt at all.
- jiqiren 3y ago
  The scenario of Elon aggressively cutting prices was likely not something they modeled as it is pretty unprecedented. Elon should have kept prices high while giving deep discounts and priority on parts to fleet purchases. That is what a sane car manufacturer does. To keep cars moving for retail you can have limited sales for holidays and seasons with "cash back" (not officially changing base price) and buying the loan APR to a lower rate. Instead Elon crashed the price of Tesla's entire lineup.
rqtwteye 3y ago
Last year Hertz gave me a Chevy Bolt. This was my first EV ever. I thought it’s pretty crazy to let people rent EVs without any training. It took me a long time to figure out how to charge the thing and how to find chargers. And the charger I found was super slow and would have taken hours to fully recharge. I assume things are better with a Tesla but if somebody reasonably tech savvy like me has problems, I can’t even imagine how difficult it will be for many less tech savvy and less tech interested people I know to deal with an EV.
- newaccount74 3y ago
  Our local Ikea rented out CNG vans to unsuspecting customers. And you had to return it with a full tank. That was fun :)
  - erik_seaberg 3y ago
    Wow. I used to drive CNG airport shuttles in Seattle, where there were two pumping stations in the entire county (one just off the airport, fortunately).
- jseliger 3y ago
  A few weeks ago I rented a Model 3 from Hertz in San Diego, and the car didn't come with an SAE J1772 Charging Adapter (this covers most level 2 stations). That's crazy. I was staying primarily at UCSD for cancer treatment, and there are a million level 2 chargers that I couldn't access without the SAE J1772 dongle. The Tesla my wife and I have always has a SAE J1772 dongle in the center console. I complained about the lack of this essential part.
  - thinkling 3y ago
    I ran into this. Desk staff said they had initially provided travel chargers but that so many got stolen that they stopped. Seems to me that this could have been fixed by making them optional and requiring a deposit, but when you read in the article that Hertz had major IT issues it seems safe to assume that they didn’t have the capacity to make such process changes quickly.
dtnewman 3y ago
Eh... The charging is an issue. I have been in a position to rent EVs before but opted not to. If I own a Tesla, then I likely have a charger at home (and possibly at work), so dealing with charging is only an issue on my rare long haul trips (and if I frequently make long-haul trips, I probably own a gas car), which I'd be willing to put up with. If i'm renting in a city i'm visiting though: 1) I'm likely driving more than I do at home 2) I don't know if my hotel/s will have chargers 3) I am cognizant of my time and don't want to drive out of my way to sit in parking lots while my car charges 4) I might be travelling to rural areas where chargers are infrequent Not saying that the issues you brought up are invalid, but I do think there's a demand problem.
wolverine876 3y ago
Why do you think that? Do you work in that industry?
skmexyz 3y ago
Not sure why you think charging is not the problem. I am a very heavy user of rentals (300+ rentals last year, 200+ the year before - max status on National / Enterprise, Hertz and Avis) and I've rented an EV (Tesla Model 3) exactly once. Most users don't have the time to think about places to charge and even more so, to bring it back at 80% Not to mention, outside of major metropolitan areas (US and Canada), charging infrastructure is spotty at best (esp. if you don't plan for it). This makes charging an added hurdle that takes away from the experience. If you're a business user - you don't do it because you don't have the time and if you're a leisure user - you don't do it because your vacation time is valuable and spending time at charging stations that are usually out of the way is not ideal time spent for an expensive vacation)
- aeternum 3y ago
  Yes, I think this was the primary reason actually. It only takes 1-2 times renting it before you realize that returning at 80% is a major hassle. It's also a ridiculous stipulation since Hertz could easily charge the cars themselves. Instead they invested heavily in the EVs while keeping their archaic rule about returning at 80%. I wonder how much they could have made without this. If they allowed returning at 20% it becomes less hassle than a gas car because many trips wouldn't require any charging at all and a much better user experience. Filling up and then expensing gas while running late for a flight is super stressful, trying to charge an EV in that same scenario is like 10x worse.
- klyrs 3y ago
  I own an EV, I wouldn't rent one except: single day, and don't make me recharge it. The infrastructure sucks. I don't install charger apps on my phone; the number of chargers that just take a credit card and don't require an account -- even my local power utility requires a special card to access their network! With my own car, in my home town, it isn't a problem. My garage has a lvl1 charger for grocery getting; I know a few account-free fast chargers around town, and that's all I need. A multi-day trip, or a rental company putting the onus on me to return it full, just isn't worthwhile.
  - fasa99 3y ago
epolanski 3y ago
> The article posits charging as the problem but that's not actually true. How isn't it? It's literally the first reason why people avoided renting electric cars according to pretty much every poll out there. Not even the polls, it's literally what Hertz that commissioned studies on their low rental rate found out. And you can count me as one, I would never rent an electric car in a place I don't know, especially when on vacation/work, where I don't know where and when I will be able to charge and I'm busy already. I'm more prone to owning, but renting will be a no for quite some time.
idontpost 3y ago
[dead]
m463 3y ago
I think you're right. The actual rental car model is to garner large discounts from the auto manufacturer, rent the car for a time, then sell it via the rental car used-car lot. The purchase discount (maybe fleet rate) is usually wrapped in a contract - the car must NOT be sold within a certain time or under a certain mileage - and in this way does not compete with the manufacturer's car dealers. Hertz and Tesla did not have any sort of contract like this. This means that Hertz did not have any concessions from Tesla. Instead of Tesla having a special relationship with Hertz - a car discount, guaranteed quick repairs, possibly special rental-car software helping renters onboard with the car - Hertz got NOTHING. It should have gotten something, at minimum some sort of fleet rate. It was a VERY good customer. Instead Tesla gave nothing and got a lot of bad PR in the end.
incomplete 3y ago
the primitive state of charging in the US was a very large factor in the decision. i own an EV (egolf), so i'm already used to how terrible charging can be. last year i went on a trip to LA and got a polestar for 4 days! car was fine, but finding a working and available charger was a nightmare. after spending 10m on one charger that would take my CC but not connect to the car, i moved to another spot and tried again. that charger would actually connect to my car, but it wouldn't take my CC. a few minutes after that, i called chargepoint tech support but neither of us could understand as i was in a parking garage. after 15m on the phone before giving up and about to punch something, someone left and a new charger spot opened up. that one worked, but it wasn't chargepoint so i had to download a new app. so, it took over 45m for me to get the car plugged in and a ton of stress for the ONE charge i needed to perform. i can guarantee that my experience is far from out of the ordinary, and i will never rent an EV again.
hackernewds 3y ago
How do you say so confidently without stating your sources? Charging and long drives, both tough conditions somewhere that isn't my home city both would be major issues. They sold off the cars at a low cost so not sure how they amended depreciation doing that.
go88faxme 3y ago
I suggest you read up EV charging in New York city. At any one time at least a third is faulty. Charging is HUGE problem. When you have it at home, with your home charging, it doesnt seem so much of a problem for you. But when you have masses running EVs, a handful of Tesla super chargers CANNOT compete agains a handful of gas stations which is way way way more efficient servicing their ICE cars than the same for EVs by supercharger. You literally have to have gas triple in price and solar/fusion supplying electricity to get masses to wait extra 30mins for their cheap charging. And now, USA is in conundrum, if they support EVs, Chinese will wipe clean all American manufacturers worst than peak Japan auto. Of they dont, Americans will stuck in their stone age ICE. Look forward for Joe and Trump to declare Chinese EVs and batteries are national security threat. You can only buy expensive Model 8000 from Elon.

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.
  - Spooky23 3y ago
    They sell pretty quickly. They price a little bit lower than normal cars. People need cars, and don’t have cash.
  - CamperBob2 3y ago
    Not many people want to drive a car that has been used as a short-term rental, because they're a guarantee for needing a replacement clutch and engine at least Well, obviously not in this case. Battery health would be the only real concern, I suppose, and that hasn't proven to be an issue so far.
  - jandrese 3y ago
    From what I've seen the most desirable vehicles on used car lots are former rentals. Maybe slightly behind cars that fell off of a lease. There's always the stories about people who rent cars so they can thrash them in street races or whatnot, but really most rentals are for businesspeople who need to get around a city for a bit. The companies usually try to keep up on the basic maintenance items as well, which is not always the case for used cars. You get a fairly new car with higher than average but not crazy miles for a decent price. These Teslas should also qualify for the $4000 used EV tax credit as well, which could make them quite an affordable option.

nwellinghoff 3y ago

I for one would love a company that rents out “ragged out” vehicles for bottom dollar. A well maintained toyota etc. lasts 20 years. Rent me the fully depreciated vehicle and reap pure profit. Not to mention not worrying about every little dent or scratch. Sounds like a dream rental to me. Side note: when renting in other countries, I always ask for the worst looking beat up car that they have. Really is less stressful to drive around.

mikeInAlaska 3y ago
We rented from a place called SAD CARS in Iceland. The car... worked for our entire trip.
- Filligree 3y ago
  The way you said that worries me... were there other issues?
saalweachter 3y ago
Isn't that the premise of Rent-a-Wreck?
tech4all 3y ago
Agreed! In the US there is a company that does this but they don’t have a nationwide presence: https://www.rentawreck.com/ https://www.rentawreck.com/. Also in Iceland there is “Sad Car” which was great for kicking around.
- FireBeyond 3y ago
  There was one in Australia when I was there, Rent A Bomb.
- avar 3y ago
  When did you rent with SADCars? I did once in 2014, and cheaply got some small old manual beater, which was just perfect. But I think they've "pivoted" to just another rental company since then. Looking at their website and Google maps reviews the cars now look new, and indistinguishable from what you'd get from Eurocar, Hertz etc.

MetaWhirledPeas 3y ago

> Fleet damage was more expensive to repair and took longer. Do car rental companies even bother to fix collision-damaged vehicles? I assumed they would just sell them off.

gambiting 3y ago
Most regular cars can still be driven after a (minor) collision, they might need some work to fix them up but usually they are fine. If you're ok with mostly cosmetic damage or replacing a body panel, then it's a great buy. A Tesla after a minor collision might disable itself entirely until inspected by a Tesla technician, and it might need a whole new (and very expensive) battery pack - no one would(or should) take a bet on such a car. So it's a lot less attractive thing to buy over regular cars.
- KennyBlanken 3y ago
  Teslas do not "disable themselves"; it's done by Tesla HQ, using criteria they do not disclose, but it seems to be just a matter of whether the crash happens to come to their attention. Rich Rebuilds has covered this extensively. Sometimes he comes across a heavily damaged Tesla, still on their network that hasn't been disabled. Other times he comes across one with minor damage that has been disabled. I believe one of his rebuilds, he took some of the guts from a heavily damaged car that wasn't deactivated to transplant into the guts of a car that had easily repaired damage that had been.
  - gambiting 3y ago
    Interesting - it was my understanding that most collisions(and definitely collisions that activate airbags) cause the car to disable itself until inspected. Good to know that this isn't always the case.
    - talldatethrow 3y ago
      I've never heard this being the case, and I sure hope it isn't for most cars. Imagine being in a remote area.. you hit a deer after slowing down.. and now you're trapped at night? You're in death valley offroading a little too enthusiastically, airbags deploy and now you're stuck? A small fender bender in Baja Mexico and you're disabled? I once rolled a vehicle in Nevada being stupid with friends. Airbags deployed. The radiator was crushed and leaking. We strapped the radiator support to another vehicle and bent it back out. Took the other vehicle into town and bought a radiator at AutoZone. Installed it and drove it an hour home. The steering wheel was only slightly off center.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

> Tesla lowered prices forcing them to recognize the depreciation I'm surprised Tesla and Hertz couldn't work out a deal, e.g. reimbursement or a large discount on additional purchases that would wipe out the accounting charge. Rental vehicles are a sales channel for new vehicles. And every Hertz Tesla being dumped on the secondary market is new-vehicle profit Tesla could have booked.

LeafItAlone 3y ago
In what way would that have benefited Tesla more than the current situation?
- ado__dev 3y ago
  PR more than anything. Tesla growth story is pretty much over, many people turned off the brand for a multitude of reasons (Musk, terrible service, price, lack of innovation, more EV competition). So if anything a good opportunity for Tesla to win some PR, potentially expand partnership, sell more cars. Now they get more bad news "rental company dumps Tesla because of XYZ", the used market took a big hit as well pissing off existing owners, and I feel like this pushes newer buyers even more away.
  - jjulius 3y ago
    >PR more than anything. Tesla doesn't believe in PR[1]. [1]https://electrek.co/2021/04/28/elon-musk-no-new-tesla-pr-department-manipulating-public-opinion/ https://electrek.co/2021/04/28/elon-musk-no-new-tesla-pr-dep...
    - Spooky23 3y ago
      They didn’t believe in advertising either, but I’m getting alot of it.
    - CydeWeys 3y ago
      And yet Elon does massive PR stunts on the regular, including smashing a Cybertruck's windows at a launch event. Curious...

rurp 3y ago

I'm not sure why you think charging anxiety couldn't have been one of the factors. TFA calls it out as one. Charging is one of the main concerns with ownership and that would be even more of a challenge with a rental car in an unfamiliar area.

czbond 3y ago
I believe charging anxiety was. The base case for car rentals is generally "time bound, busy itinerary" of some sort.... think business trips, holidays, etc. Few want to spend that precious time becoming familiar with that cities charging network if charging is new to them. I recently rented a Mach-E over Christmas in a large Metro, and stayed in a populous suburb. Charging & the states of chargers was no fun and really added a cognitive load. However, I did realize I enjoyed EV's for some point in the future - somewhat curing range anxiety of my normal life routine.
- _ea1k 3y ago
  TBH, I've experienced it where it can go either way. I've rented gas cars and ended up at a hotel with nice L2 stations. The EV would have been easier! :) But I've also rented EVs in metros with decent fast charging, but none at the hotel. It was fun, but charging was a notable downside.
- mcguire 3y ago
  How many hotels have sufficient charging capacity to charge EVs while people sleep? A lot of hotels around here have 110v outlets in their parking lots for fishermen to charge their bass boats but I haven't heard that a similar ethic applies to EVs. :-)
  - wishfish 3y ago
    Here's something purely anecdotal: recently stayed in a motel in very rural Arkansas. In the morning, I noticed a Chevy Bolt (or similar) plugged in with an extension cord. Asked the clerk about it. She said it was a relatively rare situation but they didn't have a problem with someone using their outside outlet. I suppose I can't extrapolate this situation to everyone, but I have a feeling if you provide your own cord, most motels won't have a problem with you charging. Especially since it'll be uncommon. If everyone had EVs, then they might start putting a fee on it.

brk 3y ago

I know this is anecdata, but of a couple of friends that had Tesla rentals from Hertz, the number one issue was charging availability, or lack thereof. The fleet maintenance issues may have also been a factor, but from what I observed I would not take an EV as a rental car myself, solely because of the charging issue.

jandrese 3y ago
Charging issue being that they couldn't find any available superchargers using the in-car navigation? Or was the in-car navigation not working because it was a rental? That would be a serious problem on a Tesla where the software stack is critical to running the vehicle properly.
- resters 3y ago
  The in-car navigation to the nearest supercharger worked, but: - some markets don't have an abundance of fast superchargers. It can take > 1 hour to charge. - vehicles would often get returned mostly discharged, which forces the next customer to deal with it. - I rented a few that appeared to have been driven really hard, leading the remaining charge calibration to become mis calibrated, which caused me to have to stop for some unscheduled charges. - the vehicles lose a few percent of charge per day even when not driven (worse in hot weather) - Hertz locations are typically not equipped with any kind of charging infrastructure -- if they were, EVs would be far more convenient to rent. I wish the program would continue, and I would still prefer to rent a Tesla over the other options, but I think the aforementioned things factored into the failure.
  - Rebelgecko 3y ago
    >the vehicles lose a few percent of charge per day even when not driven (worse in hot weather) Is that a Tesla thing? Or does Hertz have some sort of battery draining telematics? I have a non-Tesla EV and even in warm weather (100°F+) that hasn't been the case for me. If the weather changes drastically the SOC might change ±2%, but when I've left my car sitting for weeks it seems to average out

autoexecbat 3y ago

Is there a good place to look at these 1-year-old (specifically) RVs post-dumping?

ijijijjij 3y ago

when I rented a Tesla, by mistake, because they didn't have any other cars available, charging was definitely the problem. They charged me the same price as their cheapest cars, but it still ended up being more expensive because of charging (I paid about $900 for 3 weeks of charging at Tesla's stations, and it would probably would have cost me $300 with a small gasoline car) In other words, you gotta be stupid to rent a Tesla unless you do it just for fun.

DFHippie 3y ago
> I paid about $900 for 3 weeks of charging at Tesla's stations Huh. Did you rent a Tesla and then have to pay separately for the privilege of using Tesla's charging network? I've had a Tesla for years and what you paid for 3 weeks is comparable for what I've paid at superchargers the entire time I've owned the car (I mostly charge at home). It seems you did get ripped off, it just seems like it would be difficult to pay that much in three weeks at superchargers alone. There must have been some special surcharge (as it were).
- ijijijjij 3y ago
  I always charged at Tesla's stations because I never was home, and the charges was a surprise at the end of the rental because they charged me only once when I returned the car... no clue if they ripped me off because it was the first time I used electric car chargers and didn't pay close attention to the receipt. I know it would have been a whole lot cheaper if I had my own charger though.
- cruano 3y ago
  Not OP but you do have to pay separately. Although as you say, that's a crazy amount for just 3 weeks. In my experience I was charged about $100 for two weeks of regular use + one roadtrip from Miami to Orlando and back. Maybe it was just idle fees, that seems like it could go up by a lot if you leave the vehicle on the station: >For every additional minute a vehicle remains connected to the Supercharger, it will incur an idle fee. https://www.tesla.com/support/charging/supercharger/fees https://www.tesla.com/support/charging/supercharger/fees

HarHarVeryFunny 3y ago

> The real killer was no doubt depreciation. That breaks the whole rental car model. Yep. It's not just about rental income - it's about acquiring fleet at bulk/discounted prices and then reselling quickly before they lose too much money. Tesla's drastic price cuts have been annoying to consumers who just bought cars whose resale value plummeted overnight, but a complete deal breaker for a company like Hertz, only exacerbated by unexpectedly high repair costs. I'd imagine charging must have been a demand factor too - people might like to experiment with an EV rental if they don't own one, but on business or vacation the last thing you want to be worried about is finding a charger or range-anxiety. If you have an EV at home, then part of the convenience, and a mitigation for slow charging, is overnight charging. Many hotels (often used by rental customers) are starting to have chargers too, but it's not something you can depend on.

mintplant 3y ago

This is all in the article.

theoldlove 3y ago
Yes, the article discusses slow, expensive repairs and Tesla’s price drops

adam_arthur 3y ago

I was saddled with an EV from Hertz unexpectedly (they said it was the only car left), and had to drive from NYC to MD and back. Charging was absolutely the worst part. And most of the charging stations were full at any given time. Range was extra bad due to the cold as well. I understand the EV model for home use, but it makes 0 sense for rentals today. It's vastly less convenient, even ignoring the other factors like depreciation

resters 3y ago

How does one repair the chassis part that is one or two massive giga-pressed parts?

resters 3y ago
this was a serious question

mikepurvis 3y ago

I dunno about the back end business parts of it, but I've rented a few cars recently, and Hertz was not only 20-30% more expensive than Enterprise, but getting a Model 3 from them was over double the price of a comparable gas car. There's no way I was going to get enough miles in to make the fuel cost worth that differential.

thinkling 3y ago
Pricing is going to depend a lot on the dynamics of the local market and the number of cars each company has available. (Article mentions that rental companies will truck cars between markets and that anticipating demand is key to being profitable.) For a while last summer, EVs from Hertz were the cheapest cars you could rent in the Seattle area because they had many and customers didn’t want them. Sounds like they’ve been selling them off.

foobarian 3y ago

The thing that gets me is that the guys who lead this effort are go-getting ex-finance, ex-trading people who work their butts off and have attention to detail of a microscope. And the article mentions that they did in fact do detailed studies and make financial models of the venture and things looked good enough to push forward. So... clearly even their experience, hard work, and attention to detail was not enough to predict what would happen. I'm not sure what that means in the end :-). Maybe predicting the future is just hard? Maybe it was a 30-60 bet and they just got unlucky? In that case what they did was not unreasonable and had it worked the same journalists that cackle at them with schadenfreude would be singing their praises.

throwway120385 3y ago
Or maybe a background in finance is not actually enough to know how to launch a totally new product within your company. Maybe you need some people with engineering expertise to ask a different set of questions beyond "will the costs add up?"
jordanb 3y ago
My experience with Finance/PE people is that they don't really care about any details. They want all decks to be like three slides. If you can't represent something on a spreadsheet it doesn't count. And they're extremely good at working backwards from a conclusion. I'm sure they never asked "how fast can they be repaired?" "What will the customer experience be when a car has to be paired with your phone and you need a Tesla account?" "Are the maintenance claims put out by the manufacturer reasonable?" etc. etc.
adamors 3y ago
It seems to me that the finance guys were completely out of their element and when their models didn’t fit the reality on the ground they couldn’t adapt at all.
jiqiren 3y ago
The scenario of Elon aggressively cutting prices was likely not something they modeled as it is pretty unprecedented. Elon should have kept prices high while giving deep discounts and priority on parts to fleet purchases. That is what a sane car manufacturer does. To keep cars moving for retail you can have limited sales for holidays and seasons with "cash back" (not officially changing base price) and buying the loan APR to a lower rate. Instead Elon crashed the price of Tesla's entire lineup.

rqtwteye 3y ago

Last year Hertz gave me a Chevy Bolt. This was my first EV ever. I thought it’s pretty crazy to let people rent EVs without any training. It took me a long time to figure out how to charge the thing and how to find chargers. And the charger I found was super slow and would have taken hours to fully recharge. I assume things are better with a Tesla but if somebody reasonably tech savvy like me has problems, I can’t even imagine how difficult it will be for many less tech savvy and less tech interested people I know to deal with an EV.

newaccount74 3y ago
Our local Ikea rented out CNG vans to unsuspecting customers. And you had to return it with a full tank. That was fun :)
- erik_seaberg 3y ago
  Wow. I used to drive CNG airport shuttles in Seattle, where there were two pumping stations in the entire county (one just off the airport, fortunately).
jseliger 3y ago
A few weeks ago I rented a Model 3 from Hertz in San Diego, and the car didn't come with an SAE J1772 Charging Adapter (this covers most level 2 stations). That's crazy. I was staying primarily at UCSD for cancer treatment, and there are a million level 2 chargers that I couldn't access without the SAE J1772 dongle. The Tesla my wife and I have always has a SAE J1772 dongle in the center console. I complained about the lack of this essential part.
- thinkling 3y ago
  I ran into this. Desk staff said they had initially provided travel chargers but that so many got stolen that they stopped. Seems to me that this could have been fixed by making them optional and requiring a deposit, but when you read in the article that Hertz had major IT issues it seems safe to assume that they didn’t have the capacity to make such process changes quickly.

dtnewman 3y ago

Eh... The charging is an issue. I have been in a position to rent EVs before but opted not to. If I own a Tesla, then I likely have a charger at home (and possibly at work), so dealing with charging is only an issue on my rare long haul trips (and if I frequently make long-haul trips, I probably own a gas car), which I'd be willing to put up with. If i'm renting in a city i'm visiting though: 1) I'm likely driving more than I do at home 2) I don't know if my hotel/s will have chargers 3) I am cognizant of my time and don't want to drive out of my way to sit in parking lots while my car charges 4) I might be travelling to rural areas where chargers are infrequent Not saying that the issues you brought up are invalid, but I do think there's a demand problem.

wolverine876 3y ago

Why do you think that? Do you work in that industry?

skmexyz 3y ago

Not sure why you think charging is not the problem. I am a very heavy user of rentals (300+ rentals last year, 200+ the year before - max status on National / Enterprise, Hertz and Avis) and I've rented an EV (Tesla Model 3) exactly once. Most users don't have the time to think about places to charge and even more so, to bring it back at 80% Not to mention, outside of major metropolitan areas (US and Canada), charging infrastructure is spotty at best (esp. if you don't plan for it). This makes charging an added hurdle that takes away from the experience. If you're a business user - you don't do it because you don't have the time and if you're a leisure user - you don't do it because your vacation time is valuable and spending time at charging stations that are usually out of the way is not ideal time spent for an expensive vacation)

aeternum 3y ago
Yes, I think this was the primary reason actually. It only takes 1-2 times renting it before you realize that returning at 80% is a major hassle. It's also a ridiculous stipulation since Hertz could easily charge the cars themselves. Instead they invested heavily in the EVs while keeping their archaic rule about returning at 80%. I wonder how much they could have made without this. If they allowed returning at 20% it becomes less hassle than a gas car because many trips wouldn't require any charging at all and a much better user experience. Filling up and then expensing gas while running late for a flight is super stressful, trying to charge an EV in that same scenario is like 10x worse.
klyrs 3y ago
I own an EV, I wouldn't rent one except: single day, and don't make me recharge it. The infrastructure sucks. I don't install charger apps on my phone; the number of chargers that just take a credit card and don't require an account -- even my local power utility requires a special card to access their network! With my own car, in my home town, it isn't a problem. My garage has a lvl1 charger for grocery getting; I know a few account-free fast chargers around town, and that's all I need. A multi-day trip, or a rental company putting the onus on me to return it full, just isn't worthwhile.
- fasa99 3y ago

epolanski 3y ago

> The article posits charging as the problem but that's not actually true. How isn't it? It's literally the first reason why people avoided renting electric cars according to pretty much every poll out there. Not even the polls, it's literally what Hertz that commissioned studies on their low rental rate found out. And you can count me as one, I would never rent an electric car in a place I don't know, especially when on vacation/work, where I don't know where and when I will be able to charge and I'm busy already. I'm more prone to owning, but renting will be a no for quite some time.

idontpost 3y ago

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m463 3y ago

I think you're right. The actual rental car model is to garner large discounts from the auto manufacturer, rent the car for a time, then sell it via the rental car used-car lot. The purchase discount (maybe fleet rate) is usually wrapped in a contract - the car must NOT be sold within a certain time or under a certain mileage - and in this way does not compete with the manufacturer's car dealers. Hertz and Tesla did not have any sort of contract like this. This means that Hertz did not have any concessions from Tesla. Instead of Tesla having a special relationship with Hertz - a car discount, guaranteed quick repairs, possibly special rental-car software helping renters onboard with the car - Hertz got NOTHING. It should have gotten something, at minimum some sort of fleet rate. It was a VERY good customer. Instead Tesla gave nothing and got a lot of bad PR in the end.

incomplete 3y ago

the primitive state of charging in the US was a very large factor in the decision. i own an EV (egolf), so i'm already used to how terrible charging can be. last year i went on a trip to LA and got a polestar for 4 days! car was fine, but finding a working and available charger was a nightmare. after spending 10m on one charger that would take my CC but not connect to the car, i moved to another spot and tried again. that charger would actually connect to my car, but it wouldn't take my CC. a few minutes after that, i called chargepoint tech support but neither of us could understand as i was in a parking garage. after 15m on the phone before giving up and about to punch something, someone left and a new charger spot opened up. that one worked, but it wasn't chargepoint so i had to download a new app. so, it took over 45m for me to get the car plugged in and a ton of stress for the ONE charge i needed to perform. i can guarantee that my experience is far from out of the ordinary, and i will never rent an EV again.

hackernewds 3y ago

How do you say so confidently without stating your sources? Charging and long drives, both tough conditions somewhere that isn't my home city both would be major issues. They sold off the cars at a low cost so not sure how they amended depreciation doing that.

go88faxme 3y ago

I suggest you read up EV charging in New York city. At any one time at least a third is faulty. Charging is HUGE problem. When you have it at home, with your home charging, it doesnt seem so much of a problem for you. But when you have masses running EVs, a handful of Tesla super chargers CANNOT compete agains a handful of gas stations which is way way way more efficient servicing their ICE cars than the same for EVs by supercharger. You literally have to have gas triple in price and solar/fusion supplying electricity to get masses to wait extra 30mins for their cheap charging. And now, USA is in conundrum, if they support EVs, Chinese will wipe clean all American manufacturers worst than peak Japan auto. Of they dont, Americans will stuck in their stone age ICE. Look forward for Joe and Trump to declare Chinese EVs and batteries are national security threat. You can only buy expensive Model 8000 from Elon.