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Right. The key takeaway for me, they being wall street people - customer empathy was missing. 101 of salesmanship - understanding of customers needs, desires

by achow 3y ago

Right. The key takeaway for me, they being wall street people - customer empathy was missing. 101 of salesmanship - understanding of customers needs, desires and then selling solutions for those. Here their customers were out of town weary travelers wanting to have a hassle free quick ride to a hotel or a meeting; have not used EVs before (perhaps never intend to), now have to focus on a new problem - how to learn a new skill of handling EV, how to plan for charging during their multi day trips.. etc.

wlesieutre 3y ago
Stealing a recent comment from reddit on someone's Hertz EV experience. It's a Solterra (Subaru's first EV in collaboration with Toyota) which made it even worse than the Teslas, but I think a good illustration of this idea that you can just roll out EVs to rental customers and act like it's the same as a gas car: > Hertz gave me a Subaru Solterra for a one way trip from Temecula to Vegas because it was their last car. Couldn't tell me how to start it or anything because they just got it the day before... and they didn't bother plugging it in so it had 20 miles of range. Couldn't tell me where to charge it so I wasted much of it driving around the mall looking for the charger. > Four hours later I had enough charge to get to Barstow. Or so I thought. Had to charge in Victorville. Then get a hotel room because it was midnight. Put it on a fast charger in the morning and a full charge should have gotten me all the way back. Hit Baker and I knew it wouldn't. > My five hour drive ended up taking 25 hours. > Fuck Hertz. https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/1bi99tk/hertz_ceo_out_following_electric_car_horror_show/kviyoe9/ https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/1bi99tk/hertz_ceo_out...
- monknomo 3y ago
  My god, not having enough on site fast chargers for both charging the fleet and reassuring renters that if nothing else they can come back to the airport and top up is really stupid
  - sandworm101 3y ago
    >> My god, not having enough on site fast chargers for both charging the fleet and reassuring renters Take a look at a major airport. They could average a hundred rental cars arriving, with peaks into the hundreds. Even assuming every can arrives at a half-charge, the power requirements would be immense. At 50kwH per car, charging up 100 cars every hour would require, at an absolute minimum, a 5000kw/5mW connection.
    - fnbr 3y ago
      That's a great reason not to have electric rental cars, but not a great reason to not charge rental cars.
    - yummypaint 3y ago
      Airports are massive pre-planned industrial facilities with utility connections to match. Getting chargers there should be easy mode compared to most businesses.
      - mulmen 3y ago
        They also don’t offer automotive refueling services at the airport. This is the same reason they charge a premium to fill the tank. The constraints are the same for ICE and EV in this case.
        smeej 3y ago
        What's your source for this? I'm just realizing I might be way off-base, but I thought airport car rental places all had their own fueling stations, and just overcharged you because they can and there's nothing you can do about it, and I'd thought of it as one of those "everybody knows" kinds of things. So now I'm very surprised to hear otherwise.
        mulmen 3y ago
        I don’t have a source. It just seems obvious to me they wouldn’t bother with the cost of maintaining that infrastructure. Do you have any reason to believe car rental companies maintain onsite fuel stations? Have you ever seen one? Why don’t they let customers use it? There are already gas stations near airports. If a car needs gas they pay someone to drive it there and fill it up. That’s the source of your inflated prices.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  You almost can; just put in the same cost of 20 miles' worth of petrol in electricity and the thing will go for ages.
  - wlesieutre 3y ago
    I thought I'd run the numbers on this for a Solterra in my area. Assume 35 MPG for reference since that's my car's EPA highway mileage, so 20 miles of gas is 0.571 gallons. At $2.85/gallon that costs $1.63. EA's charging here is priced at $0.44 per minute, so with that budget you can charge for 3.70 minutes. Assume it spends that whole time at 80 kW. This is probably optimistic, it will take time to ramp up to that. But we'll forget about that, and assume the car starts from near empty because the Solterra's charging curve is trash and will begin throttling the speed down when it's about 35% charged. 3.7 minutes at 80 kW gives us 4.93 kW of charge. EPA rates the vehicle at 3.23 miles/kW, so for the equivalent price of 20 miles of gas we've added... drumroll 15.9 miles of charge. With other vehicles or in an area with different gas/charging pricing, your mileage my vary. And if you look at a straight ICE competitor of the same size as the Solterra as the MPG reference it will be worse than 35 MPG (requiring more gas and giving you a higher charging budget), so basing this on my smaller car did limit that. But regardless, fuel price isn't necessarily a huge advantage for a rental EV. If I were talking price for L2 charging at home in my garage then I'm sure the EV would be way cheaper, but that's now how anyone will be using a rental.
  - mulmen 3y ago
    I’m a big proponent of EVs but nothing about the current state of chargers can be described as “just put in money”. I have never had an EV charger work the first time.
    - IncreasePosts 3y ago
      Tesla superchargers do but that is about it.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]

by achow 3y ago

wlesieutre 3y ago

Stealing a recent comment from reddit on someone's Hertz EV experience. It's a Solterra (Subaru's first EV in collaboration with Toyota) which made it even worse than the Teslas, but I think a good illustration of this idea that you can just roll out EVs to rental customers and act like it's the same as a gas car: > Hertz gave me a Subaru Solterra for a one way trip from Temecula to Vegas because it was their last car. Couldn't tell me how to start it or anything because they just got it the day before... and they didn't bother plugging it in so it had 20 miles of range. Couldn't tell me where to charge it so I wasted much of it driving around the mall looking for the charger. > Four hours later I had enough charge to get to Barstow. Or so I thought. Had to charge in Victorville. Then get a hotel room because it was midnight. Put it on a fast charger in the morning and a full charge should have gotten me all the way back. Hit Baker and I knew it wouldn't. > My five hour drive ended up taking 25 hours. > Fuck Hertz. https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/1bi99tk/hertz_ceo_out_following_electric_car_horror_show/kviyoe9/ https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/1bi99tk/hertz_ceo_out...

monknomo 3y ago
My god, not having enough on site fast chargers for both charging the fleet and reassuring renters that if nothing else they can come back to the airport and top up is really stupid
- sandworm101 3y ago
  >> My god, not having enough on site fast chargers for both charging the fleet and reassuring renters Take a look at a major airport. They could average a hundred rental cars arriving, with peaks into the hundreds. Even assuming every can arrives at a half-charge, the power requirements would be immense. At 50kwH per car, charging up 100 cars every hour would require, at an absolute minimum, a 5000kw/5mW connection.
  - fnbr 3y ago
    That's a great reason not to have electric rental cars, but not a great reason to not charge rental cars.
  - yummypaint 3y ago
    Airports are massive pre-planned industrial facilities with utility connections to match. Getting chargers there should be easy mode compared to most businesses.
    - mulmen 3y ago
      They also don’t offer automotive refueling services at the airport. This is the same reason they charge a premium to fill the tank. The constraints are the same for ICE and EV in this case.
      - smeej 3y ago
        What's your source for this? I'm just realizing I might be way off-base, but I thought airport car rental places all had their own fueling stations, and just overcharged you because they can and there's nothing you can do about it, and I'd thought of it as one of those "everybody knows" kinds of things. So now I'm very surprised to hear otherwise.
        mulmen 3y ago
        I don’t have a source. It just seems obvious to me they wouldn’t bother with the cost of maintaining that infrastructure. Do you have any reason to believe car rental companies maintain onsite fuel stations? Have you ever seen one? Why don’t they let customers use it? There are already gas stations near airports. If a car needs gas they pay someone to drive it there and fill it up. That’s the source of your inflated prices.
robertlagrant 3y ago
You almost can; just put in the same cost of 20 miles' worth of petrol in electricity and the thing will go for ages.
- wlesieutre 3y ago
  I thought I'd run the numbers on this for a Solterra in my area. Assume 35 MPG for reference since that's my car's EPA highway mileage, so 20 miles of gas is 0.571 gallons. At $2.85/gallon that costs $1.63. EA's charging here is priced at $0.44 per minute, so with that budget you can charge for 3.70 minutes. Assume it spends that whole time at 80 kW. This is probably optimistic, it will take time to ramp up to that. But we'll forget about that, and assume the car starts from near empty because the Solterra's charging curve is trash and will begin throttling the speed down when it's about 35% charged. 3.7 minutes at 80 kW gives us 4.93 kW of charge. EPA rates the vehicle at 3.23 miles/kW, so for the equivalent price of 20 miles of gas we've added... drumroll 15.9 miles of charge. With other vehicles or in an area with different gas/charging pricing, your mileage my vary. And if you look at a straight ICE competitor of the same size as the Solterra as the MPG reference it will be worse than 35 MPG (requiring more gas and giving you a higher charging budget), so basing this on my smaller car did limit that. But regardless, fuel price isn't necessarily a huge advantage for a rental EV. If I were talking price for L2 charging at home in my garage then I'm sure the EV would be way cheaper, but that's now how anyone will be using a rental.
- mulmen 3y ago
  I’m a big proponent of EVs but nothing about the current state of chargers can be described as “just put in money”. I have never had an EV charger work the first time.
  - IncreasePosts 3y ago
    Tesla superchargers do but that is about it.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]