Hertz CEO Resigns After Blowing Big Gamble On EVs (thegatewaypundit.com) 214
Press2ToContinue quotes a report from the Gateway Pundit: Stephen Scherr, chief executive officer of Hertz Global Holdings Inc. and a member of its board of directors, will step down on March 31, following the car rental company's largest quarterly loss since 2020 after a risky bet on electric vehicles. According to Fox Business, Scherr is working with Gil West, former chief operating officer of Delta Airlines and General Motors' Cruise unit, to ensure a smooth transition. West will officially start his new role at Hertz on April 1.
Scherr, 59, joined Hertz two years ago as the company was emerging from bankruptcy and putting a big focus on EVs during that time. Hertz soon discovered that EVs are more expensive to maintain than they had initially thought. Scherr reportedly told investors that Hertz's profits experienced a $348 million loss, which he blamed EVs for. In January, Hertz announced its plan to offload 20,000 electric vehicles from its U.S. fleet throughout 2024, and switch back to gas cars.
In November, the Associated Press reported on a Consumer Reports survey that found EVs from the 2021 to 2023 model years are significantly less reliable than gasoline-powered vehicles. A whopping eighty percent less reliable, according to the AP, particularly with battery and charging systems, as well as fit issues with body panels and interiors. Car dealers and manufacturers are reportedly also struggling to sell EVs despite using deep discounts and promotional tactics. In 2021, Hertz announced plans to order 100,000 Tesla vehicles by the end of 2022. It later said it would buy "up to" 65,000 Polestar EVs for its rental fleet over the next five years.
Scherr, 59, joined Hertz two years ago as the company was emerging from bankruptcy and putting a big focus on EVs during that time. Hertz soon discovered that EVs are more expensive to maintain than they had initially thought. Scherr reportedly told investors that Hertz's profits experienced a $348 million loss, which he blamed EVs for. In January, Hertz announced its plan to offload 20,000 electric vehicles from its U.S. fleet throughout 2024, and switch back to gas cars.
In November, the Associated Press reported on a Consumer Reports survey that found EVs from the 2021 to 2023 model years are significantly less reliable than gasoline-powered vehicles. A whopping eighty percent less reliable, according to the AP, particularly with battery and charging systems, as well as fit issues with body panels and interiors. Car dealers and manufacturers are reportedly also struggling to sell EVs despite using deep discounts and promotional tactics. In 2021, Hertz announced plans to order 100,000 Tesla vehicles by the end of 2022. It later said it would buy "up to" 65,000 Polestar EVs for its rental fleet over the next five years.
Hertz jumped the gun (Score:5, Interesting)
EVs as rentals might start to make sense after the charging infrastructure in this country has been built out further and most people are familiar with EVs. I recently made a trip from Orlando to Jacksonville in my Bolt EV and while I was charging for the trip back, I ended up helping someone with a rental figure out how to use the Electrify America charger, since they were only familiar with ICE cars.
Re: Hertz jumped the gun (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed, rental is the last market for ev.
For a lot of people, owning an ev is great, of they can and facilitate at home charging. The public ev infrastructure is... Ok for road trips but not great to use regularly.
But a rental? Only as a loaner for an ev owner. Otherwise charging is just too big a pain.
Re: Hertz jumped the gun (Score:5, Interesting)
Indeed, rental is the last market for ev. For a lot of people, owning an ev is great, of they can and facilitate at home charging. The public ev infrastructure is... Ok for road trips but not great to use regularly. But a rental? Only as a loaner for an ev owner. Otherwise charging is just too big a pain.
Agree.
I love my Tesla, but I rented a (non-Tesla) EV last trip I took, and the charging infrastructure just wasn't there.
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Indeed, rental is the last market for ev.
There's a learning curve to driving an EV. You need to plan ahead. You can't just pull into a gas station when you're nearly empty. An ICE person renting an EV for the first time doesn't yet have that mindset.
Another problem is the rent-a-car employees. I rented a car last year. They asked me if an EV was ok, and I said yes. So I got in the car ... and the battery was at 25%. A gas car at 25% just means a five-minute stop at a gas station. But an EV at 25% is a big problem, especially since there were no ne
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Re: Hertz jumped the gun (Score:5, Insightful)
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Indeed, rental is the last market for ev.
There's a learning curve to driving an EV. You need to plan ahead.
Yes, if you can't clear Green River [wikipedia.org] by the fall, you are in big trouble. There is also dysentery to worry about.
Re: Hertz jumped the gun (Score:5, Insightful)
And that is the problem.
I don't want a vehicle that I have to 'plan ahead' for....
Until the charging infrastructure is as prevalent, and charging times get closer to parity with refueling an ICE vehicle....I'm just not interested, and I can't imagine I'm in the minority here in the US.
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Well, from my perspsective, it requires "planning ahead" like once every few months. Most of the time I don't think and just plug in the garage and I don't have to plan a gas station stop.
It's nice not having to go to a gas station every single week anymore, and for me it was worth the extra headache on the occasional roadtrip for my everyday commute to be easier.
But given the likely use case for a rental is right in the context of awkward charging situation, I think I'd be reluctant to rent an EV if I'm o
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As others said, it depends on if you have home charging or not.
If you can charge at home, EVs are great for commuting, it does require some additional planning for long trips, but it's getting much better.
Also cost to charge at home is 1/3rd or less than cost for gas. Cost to supercharge is often very similar to the cost for gas, sometime even more than gas.
Rentals are generally for people away from home, so EVs for the rental market mostly doesn't make sense right now.
Driving a rental EV right now as main
Re: Hertz jumped the gun (Score:4, Insightful)
The stupid thing is they coulda charged it with an extension cord
And this is why the Hertz plan failed - lack of systems thinking. You can't just throw 100,000 EVs into their standard system and expect it to work. They need to invest in training, chargers, better information for drivers, guidance when selecting a car, etc. etc. Just throwing a bunch of EVs into a system designed for ICE won't (and didn't) work.
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Indeed, rental is the last market for ev.
Possibly second to last - I think that the taxi market may be harder to service with a general purpose EV. The only way to do 8h (almost) continuously on the move would be a specific model that can swap out the entire battery pack for a freshly charged one.
Re: Hertz jumped the gun (Score:3)
There's a very large fleet of uber/lyft drivers using EVs. It's not rare at all.
Re:Hertz jumped the gun (Score:5, Informative)
Non Tesla chargers are a shit show. You want to pay with a credit card? Nope you have to install the shitty app on your phone first. Absolutely no reason for that. Imagine pulling into a BP station and not being able to buy gas because their app decides to not work today.
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Ironically, the appity apps thing is exactly how supercharging will be implemented for non-Tesla EVs with a NACS to CCS1 adapter. It's really only Tesla owners who get the plug-and-play experience, since the software is all built into the car and you're billed to your Tesla account.
Electrify America does have credit card readers, at least at every charger I've been at so far. It's another situation entirely whether the reader is functional, and I've also ran into a few of the touchscreens not working eith
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I don't think the app thing would be so negative if there was in fact a universal app that you know would work with every charger. Or is there and it sucks?
I mean in a way that's called a "credit card" but I can see the advantages of the app based system. Maybe as long as there was an NFC terminal as well for card taps that's enough to cover all bases?
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a universal app that you know would work with every charger. Or is there and it sucks?
There are dozens of charging apps. I have three on my phone: ChargePoint, Blink, and GreenLots.
Some of them have compatibility agreements. For instance, ChargePoint's app now works with Blink chargers and vice versa.
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If you need three of them then it's not universal.
Yes. That was my point. It's not universal.
I do 95% of my charging at home. On road trips, I mostly use Telsa chargers. But I occasionally use the others when I'm off the beaten track.
Re:Hertz jumped the gun (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, I'm not going to install an unfamiliar app on my phone and load my credit card info into it just so I can make a one-time charge up of a rental EV. I don't care to have a different app for every store, every utility, every restaurant, and every payment type. Credit cards are meant to be a universal payment method, and for those rare occasions they can't accept them, I still carry cash.
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What you said isn't true.
Tesla is partnering with automakers to make the experience plug-and-play. Ford is the first. Ford owners do not need to use the Tesla app to use superchargers, you just plug it in and charge just like any other charger in the BlueOval network.
Re:Hertz jumped the gun (Score:4, Insightful)
It's more like having to use an app to buy gas only during long road trips, which for me is like a twice-a-year thing.
Which means that when you do launch the app, your mobile OS has revoked all its permissions and the servers have canceled your auth tokens.
Thus you need to set it up and sign into it all over again, which is where the failure points lie.
Re:Hertz jumped the gun (Score:5, Informative)
Non Tesla chargers are a shit show.
Hertz operates in more than one country. In every other country non-Tesla chargers are perfectly fine.
You want to pay with a credit card? Nope you have to install the shitty app on your phone first.
If you hire a Hertz car in Europe and it's an EV you get Shell Recharge RFID tag attached to the car key. That allows you to charge on virtually every charger be they large fast chargers, Tesla superchargers, or the small little things attached to lamp posts.
Imagine pulling into a BP station and not being able to buy gas
It's an imaginary scenario since virtually every charger >=75kW accepts credit card including every single charger at any gas station or highway truck stop. Just swipe your credit card.
You only need to register for a charge card to use the small low power chargers, and even then one card covers most chargers since they all have a universal agreement. I've never once used an app.
Funny story: I have a Hertz Polestar right now. The first time I charged it was at a BP charger using that Shell RFID tag. It was completely painless.
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Actually even a single charger type can behave differently depending on how it has been set up by its owner. Alpitronic chargers are pretty common here in Germany, but sometimes they accept only some weird application, sometimes they accept only very specific RFID chips, sometimes they accept all kinds of payment methods -
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Non Tesla chargers are a shit show.
This is at least in part due to subsidies for charger installation - they are not contingent on uptime operation after install is completed.
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Nope you have to install the shitty app on your phone first. Absolutely no reason for that.
There absolutely *IS* a reason. You essentially install a tracker when you install the app. Additionally, they probably help themselves to your contact data and messages. No, the app has every reason to exist: to gather your personal information "so they can make a better user experience" (lol, they just want to find new ways to take more of your money).
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I definitely would not rent an EV in an unfamiliar place or country, that's for sure. Eventually when charging stations are as common as gas stations it will make sense. But I think EVs will primarily be private car purchases for a long time before it makes much sense for rental agencies to buy them en mass.
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EVs as rentals might start to make sense
Bro, they make tons of sense for rideshare rentals and Hertz saw increasing demand for them. That's what they bought most of them for. Their problem was repair costs and insurance, not demand.
Re:Hertz jumped the gun (Score:4, Insightful)
If the demand was truly there, they could raise the rental prices to where offering EVs would still be profitable. When your business can't raise prices to cover its operating costs offering a specific product, the problem is a lack of demand.
Disney ran into exactly the same problem with their Star Wars hotel.
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If you raise the rental prices higher than the rental cost of ICE vehicle plus cost of gas used, there's nobody going to grab an EV.
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That same argument can be said: if EV rentals were cheaper than ICE rentals, nobody would grab an ICE car.
I often hear that EVs are cheaper to own than ICE cars due to lower maintenance cost, among other things. It looks like this theory was tested at scale with unexpected results, at least to the Hertz CEO.
Personally my car is from 2009, with less than 89k miles on it. It gets me from home to the office and on the occasional long trip with no issues, and keeping the old car is better for the environment th
Re:Hertz jumped the gun (Score:5, Interesting)
I think the whole Hertz experience was a failure of the actuaries, IE the people who figure out how many accidents there are going to be and how expensive it'll be to fix things.
Here, they got hit with a double whammy: The crowd renting the EVs were getting into more accidents than expected (drive it like it's a rental?), and said accidents were also more expensive than expected.
1.1*1.1= 1.21, after all. If you have 10% more accidents and they cost 10% more on average, that's a 21% increase in cost. If it's actually 1.2 and 1.5, then you're looking at an 80% increase in the expected cost.
Not much different if they bought a bunch of BMWs rather than boring econoboxes.
The "EV" part is only a minor amount of the problem.
Hell, the rental company didn't even get to enjoy the real benefit of EVs: Lower fueling costs, because that's the renter's responsibility.
Re:Hertz jumped the gun (Score:5, Insightful)
Every Tesla taxi driver I've asked has said they've had to get fixed several times, and their car isn't 3 years old yet. It seems high utilisation kills off Teslas pretty quickly - not something perhaps seen by normal-mileage Tesla owners who maybe get a couple of parts fixed during the annual service and think that's perfectly fine.
Accidents are probably much higher in rentals, but if the rental is actually doing what it should and getting high utilisation, it seems Tesla's terrible build quality will have an effect too. We'e heard plenty on slashdot about how Teslas tend to get written off for relatively minor accidents, so I'm sure that adds to the costs too. Hertz bought a lot of Teslas because that's the car people want to rent - the crappy Leafs probably don't have as many problems, but no one wants to rent them.
My take is Hertz bet big on *Tesla* (rather than EVs in general) and that didn't work out so well for them. That's not necessarily a reason to avoid Teslas for self ownership, it's perhaps more of a statement about Teslas limitations though.
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What is REALLY funny is that dude didn't have to lose his job. He could have run a few trials to see if EV rentals is a thing that could be useful. Instead, he went all in. Fucking moron. He deserved to lose his job from incompetence. 380 million dollars lost. Chump change, but a very significant amount of chump change.
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Another problem was that Hertz at the time was a bankrupt car rental company. They were literally in bankruptcy, and this was a hail-Mary attempt to recover.
Turns out it didn't work so well, but that doesn't necessarily extrapolate to other rental companies or cars in general.
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A typical rental for me, actually almost all of them, might be 5 days duration and in that time I might use 5 or 6 gallons of gas driving airport-hotel-office-restaurant-office etc. then back to the airport.
I return it full of gas, but if the recharge were reasonably priced at Hertz (ha - probably not) then it would have suited me just fine to keep the car for a work week and never need to use a charger and woudl have saved me the stop on the way back to the airport to refuel.
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They should have built a charging network as well. Discounted for people renting their cars.
It's surprising that the US doesn't have a huge rush to build chargers. That's already happened in Europe, because everyone can see that EVs are the future and now is the time to get your stake in the ground with the infrastructure that is going to replace petrol stations.
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You need to change the mentality first. I have rural family members with two vehicle households, who typi
Arresting customers (Score:5, Informative)
Coming from the company who kept reporting vehicles stolen and getting customers arrested. https://www.npr.org/2022/12/06... [npr.org]
Why Rent from Hertz? (Score:4, Informative)
The only reason I've rented from Hert (twice in the last year) is because they had Teslas rentable whereas others did not. Once you're used to EVs, you don't really want to faff around with ICE cars.
Hertz's problems go deeper than EVs. They have had well publicized episodes of getting honest customers arrested and they excel at adding on hidden fees that 10X the price compared to the advertised price. Given an alternative, I would use anybody else.
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Once you're used to EVs, you don't really want to faff around with ICE cars.
Just curious what is such a major difference in the operation / driving of ICE vs EV? Are you talking about an ICE with a manual transmission? Or maybe like a model T you have to crank to start? Just wondering exactly what faffing around you're having to do with an ICE vehicle. Besides vastly more places to refuel and in a much shorter amount of time, I really don't know what extra difficulty you have driving a modern ICE vehicle.
If you're saying you prefer a Telsa's entertainment system, ergonomics, contro
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There are a few reasons. First, the driving experience. The acceleration is so linear and the throttle response is so incredible, it's nothing that you will find in any ICE car. Second is one pedal driving. It works like a golf cart. You take your foot off the accelerator and the regenerative brake slows the car rapidly. I use the brake pedal maybe twice a mo
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Gas stations are frankly disgusting and it's nice to never have to stop at one. I have no interest in filthy gas pumps and drug addicts begging for money.
You must be living in a really shitty place. Sucks to be you!
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Thanks. Austin Texas is a shitty place. Noted!
No intention to live there. Keep living at high standards!
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I only use Costco gas stations, and avoid rush hours. They are fine and far from gross. The rare times I need gas at other stations, yep, you want to avoid them. What do you do for bio-breaks on longer trips? Most highway fast food places will be equally gross.
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I don't have a car, and I totally avoid the weird gas station areas. I don't have any issues with EVs charger areas. One factor is the several annoying smells: gas, oil, compressed air, people vacuum cleaning or washing their cars. It's just not a nice place to be. For EVs the chargers look like a parking lot. You can stay inside your EV if you want. You also sometimes need to go to the smelly places with an EV as you also have the same needs (add air, wash...) but most of the times you don't have to.
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Even the nicest petrol stations are pretty horrible. It's a smelly liquid that inevitably drips out of the jumps. They have disposable gloves for a reason.
You also get to use the payment terminal that has been touched by thousands of other people, because they don't accept contactless or have a web payment system like some chargers do. There was a test of McDonald's touch screen ordering stations a few weeks ago that found basically all of them had multiple people's faeces and urine on them, because it only
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So for you the entire world is a shitty place full of nasties. Mommy's basement is your final refuge!
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It's mostly just touch screens. Hate the damn things because they are usually unresponsive, so you end up mashing your finger into them until they work. s It's not like you can just wipe them down either, because then they go nuts.
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It's mostly just touch screens. Hate the damn things
No Tesla for you!
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Then you go other places in the US and EV's hardly even seem real.
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Just curious what is such a major difference in the operation / driving of ICE vs EV? Are you talking about an ICE with a manual transmission? Or maybe like a model T you have to crank to start? Just wondering exactly what faffing around you're having to do with an ICE vehicle
Manual transmission is something else, I'll come back to it.
Do you know what a CVT is? I wouldn't even go back from a CVT to a regular automatic transmission, they feel so laggy and jerky. You can't put a lot of torque through a CVT so I hear, and throttle response still isn't great, but they are smooth.
Electric is smooth like a CVT, but with tons of torque and instant response. Same two things that make a manual transmission with powerful engine fun, but you know, automatic, so you can drive it in slow tra
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>Just curious what is such a major difference in the operation / driving of ICE vs EV?
It's a few things that add up to it mattering.
1) The driving. EVs are nicer to drive. Not just Teslas. They are all nicer to drive. The power curve feels good. This intersects a bit with your mention of manual transmission - in ICE cars I preferred manual transmission, maybe because it's what I started with but it feel more because there isn't something else switching up the gear ratios. In EVs there's nothing interferi
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and they excel at adding on hidden fees that 10X the price compared to the advertised price. Given an alternative, I would use anybody else.
If you did use anybody else you'd find that is actually quite standard practice unfortunately. It took me 3 months to get my money back from Avis after they charged me a price that was explicitly different and significantly higher from the signed contract. (Seriously do not throw these things out).
I've good experience with Sixt, but then I've only used them twice. Give them time I'm sure they'll come around.
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It was baked into the up front fee. It wasn't significantly different to normal car rental insurance. This was in the UK, where the insurance rules are somewhat different to where I live in the US.
I have two EVs and have owned three. The Tesla insurance is in the same ballpark or a bit lower as any similarly priced car. The crash rates with Teslas are a bit lower than the averages, so that figures. The 2015 Nissan Leaf insurance is cheap. It's a cheap, old car.
Range anxiety arguments (Score:3)
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That was an argument back before superchargers littered the side of highways. Range anxiety is just that, a mental condition. Take a Xanax and pull into a gas station, plug your EV in, and go get a drink and chill. You'll be on your way as soon as you've finished your piss.
Re:Range anxiety arguments (Score:4, Interesting)
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[...] if you do run out of fuel on a road a small can of fuel can save the day.
I gotta admit, I've been curious about this...
If I run out of gas, I can call AAA or someone to come over and they'll give me some gas--at least enough to get to the nearest gas station. Is there such a thing for EVs?
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You can mount a fast charger and a big battery on a truck, but charging trucks are expensive and they need to just sit there the whole time they're charging the car.
Since you still need tow trucks for breakdowns and accidents, it makes more sense to just have tow trucks and take dead EVs to a charger.
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The closest thing to this seems to be the RAMCharger... an EV with a V6 for a generator, which not just can top its battery off, but act as a level 2 charger for another EV.
Maintenence cost (Score:4, Informative)
I rented a Model 3 at John Wayne airport. Best rental I ever had and I have rented hundreds of cars over the years. I have a hard time imagining this being a bad call.
On the maintenance issue, I wonder where that is coming from. Hertz paid full price for the cars so the warranties will defray the manufacturing-related failures. So the cost will be body repair and the like.
What I have heard is that the EVs and particularly the Teslas get beat up by the renters more than any other cars. Some percentage of customers drive them like maniacs. My guess is many of those guys never drove an EV before and just get totally buzzed on the performance and just can't help themselves. So they wreck them and go full speed over speed bumps and the like. Can anyone here corroborate this?
Charging network (Score:3)
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There is an adapter to go from CCS1 to NACS, and then there is also another adapter to go from J1772 (the L2 chargers you'll typically find at hotels which have them) to NACS. I'd imagine including them with a rental would just introduce another element of complexity to the rental process, but it would mean the only situation where you really wouldn't be able to charge a Tesla is if you somehow ended up at a charger with only a CHAdeMO cord, and those are going the way of the dodo.
Why 20,000? (Score:3)
If they had done a pilot program with one-tenth the number of cars, they still would have had an average of 40 cars per state. Wouldn't that have been enough to qualify customer interest and demand? Did they really need to gamble a third of a trillion dollars just to test the market?
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If they had done a pilot program with one-tenth the number of cars, they still would have had an average of 40 cars per state. Wouldn't that have been enough to qualify customer interest and demand? Did they really need to gamble a third of a trillion dollars just to test the market?
You're forgiven because the article and summary are clickbait garbage, but these Teslas were primarily for Uber drivers, and the demand is there. The problem is with high repair costs, and rideshare drivers specifically. They downsized that side despite the demand, to limit costs, and the other side of business that you're thinking of wound up with too many spilled over. Some were supposed to go back after insurance changes for the rideshare side, and a bunch were to be sold off.
The real story (Score:5, Informative)
Our recent progress is reassuring as earlier in 2023 and occasioned by higher incidents of damage among EV rideshare drivers, we took steps to moderate our rideshare growth and re-underwrite the rideshare driver base. This meant purposefully slowing the supply of EVs into rideshare and moving more electric vehicles into the leisure channel to facilitate their ongoing utilization. With hindsight, this left leisure over fleeted with EVs. As a result, RPD for our electric vehicles in leisure dropped, which contributed to the lower RPD performance for the company in the quarter. As you would expect, we have been parsing the data on damage and actively remediating the causals.
SOMEHOW (guess) this story is turning into just an EV problem. The EVs are ~50,000 Teslas according to reports.
Rideshare is basically Uber, this is not regular walk in from the airport stuff, it's a different program.
That's where their problems came from, to the point of re-underwriting rideshare drivers specifically, and filtering less profitable ones.
Their EV purchase was sized for the rideshare side. They tried to protect the cars by moving them out of the rideshare and into leisure, but leisure just ended up with too many and made it less profitable on paper, so they are moving some back to rideshare and selling a bunch to right-size supply and demand in leisure and tighten it up a bit.
Entering Q4, we are more confident in the quality of demand in rideshare, buffeted by enhanced processes to better underwrite drivers and to improve the mix of more experienced higher length of keep drivers. This is enabling us to return confidently to a strategy of growing the level of our existing electric fleet that is allocated to this business. Over the next several quarters, we expect to move an increasing number of our current electric vehicles into the rideshare fleet, supplementing the several thousand EV on rents made in just the last several months.
As we pull these cars from leisure, we are simultaneously tightening the EV supply in that channel and more accurately matching the fleet to demand in effect seeking to reverse the issue that pressured the quarter and adhering to our ROA mentality. We're also continuing to take steps to rectify the issue of elevated EV damage costs broadly, which we had thought would come down more quickly than they have.
Let me share a bit more context on the damage equation. First, while conventional maintenance on electric vehicles remained lower relative to comparable ICE vehicles in Q3, higher collision and damage repairs on EVs continue to weigh on our results and negatively impacted EBITDA. For context, collision and damage repairs on an EV can often run about twice that associated with a comparable combustion engine vehicle.
Emphasis added. IDK, to me, that sounds like the problem is with Uber drivers wrecking their Teslas and someone screwed up their insurance? Only with a bunch of hand waving it turns into an EV problem.
good to see him go (Score:2)
good to see that guy step down. hopefully the company will have a chance to heal after his tenure.
dude would be CEO today if he allowed the EV market to grow organically. maybe he could have made sure all locations were ready for EV, but concentrate the electric vehicles in California and large cities in other states.
also, betting on Tesla guarantees huge repair bills. Chevy Bolt is a cheap car that is cheap to fix. they should have started there.
so long, and thanks for setting the EV market back by years.
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Chevy Bolt is a cheap car that is cheap to fix. they should have started there.
The Bolt is a great commuter car if you can charge at home every night, and it's really not so bad for road trips where you'll be making one stop to eat and use the bathroom anyway. Its DCFC rate is probably too slow for most people to tolerate it as a rental though, and of course as a rental you'll get people who won't realize they should try to coordinate their charging stops with food/bathroom breaks. They'll pull into a McDonalds, eat, and then take the car to the charger and complain about how misera
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Rental EVs are great... (Score:3)
I was recently ona holiday here in Australia where someone else on the trip rented a BYD Atto 3 EV and it worked great, even though we were traveling over 300km each way. We had to stop and charge for maybe 15-20 minutes at a fast charger in both directions (the cost of which was apparently included in the rental) but overall it was great.
Just ship them to the European branch (Score:2)
Enough 'green' legislation to make a good profit off these EV's
Only in America (Score:4, Interesting)
Isn't it weird how EVs in Europe manage to fall into the middle of the pack or better when it comes to comparing reliability with gasoline cars, while EVs in the United States apparently have nothing but problems.
It appears the current problem with European EVs is that the upper part of the market is reaching saturation, while the low end is still waiting to be serviced by a really cheap, basic model. According to Forbes, European suppliers expect EV sales to be around 60% of the market by 2030 in any case.
Here's a look at Europe's most reliable and least reliable models. Note that the Hertz choice, the Polestar 2, is down at #9...not in the "Least Reliable" category, but a long way from the top:
https://www.whatcar.com/news/reliability-survey-most-reliable-electric-cars/n26158 [whatcar.com]
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Isn't it weird how EVs in Europe manage to fall into the middle of the pack or better when it comes to comparing reliability with gasoline cars, while EVs in the United States apparently have nothing but problems.
No there's nothing weird about it. Hertz is backing out of EVs in Europe as well. They just don't make good rental cars. People don't treat them well, they fully charge them causing increased wear, the rental company's usual garages can't service them, and then there's the whole Tesla being Tesla thing which is not fun if you rent a Tesla without having been in one before. Just because EV fleets are reliable doesn't necessarily make them a good choice for rental cars.
Fun anecdote time: American colleague vi
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This not an EV problem, this is a management one (Score:4, Insightful)
Like SVB taking on too much money, young "investors" running into crypto, the troubled Hertz tried to ride the new "Tesla" bandwagon. The problem was, they did not prepare themselves to do it.
As others suggested, they expected to rent these to rideshare (Uber) crowd, which makes sense. However there was not enough demand for them. Nor not enough demand when they moved the vehicles to regular customers.
Worse? They did not properly prepare for the EV needs, like destination chargers at their rental locations, nor they tried to adopt existing business practices. The "full tank" on return with gas is not a big issue, as most fuel meters lie and give some slack at the top. With EVs, they give an exact value. They could have easily solved this by saying "return with 80% charge", and then they would have their own chargers (again) on standby to help. No, they have to continue to milk, which led to their downfall.
My fear is, other rental companies might read this incorrectly, and react too much against future EV adoption. Hopefully they will have smarter management.
Eighty percent less reliably (Score:2)
I have serious doubts that they really mean 80% less reliable or I simply don't understand what they mean.
Let's say gasoline-powered vehicles are reliable 96% of the time. When they say EVs are 80% less reliable, does that mean that EV are reliable only 19.2% of the time? I can't image this to be true.
Trouble getting to charge.... (Score:2)
It's not the EVs. It's their policies. (Score:4, Informative)
I recently rented an EV from Hertz in the USA. And I understand what is wrong. It's not the cars, it's their policy/organization. And lack of charging infrastructure in the USA.
First, you would expect that you rent an EV by getting it fully charged (or close enough) and that you just bring it back empty. That would be convenient for anyone who plans to do less than 400 km with their rental car. No need to waste time filling with gas close to the airport.
I was wrong.
You get it at a random charge level, the car is parked like any ICE car, and it doesn't look like they have charging stations and the rental location.
You have to bring it back with the same charge level. So you might get a car which is at 50% and you have to bring it back at 50% or more to avoid fees. Who wants to hunt for a fast charger after getting out of the airport?
Now the charging fee is $35, or $25 if you are a member of their loyalty plan (which you can get for free). $25 is not bad if you get a car with 100% charge and bring it back empty. But it sucks if you get a car at 50% and you bring it back at 40%.
You may not have a level 1 (120V) charging cable in the trunk. It seems they don't track those. So most probably people steal them. So charging slowly using a regular outlet might not even be an option. My first car didn't have one, but they told me to take one from another car.
And last, it looks like most hotels in the USA don't even have chargers. Mine had a very large parking and was next to a major highway. No charger. And I didn't even find a regular outlet, even though nightly level 1 charging would have been enough for me.
When I bring back the car, they just put them in lines with the ICE cars for cleanup. So they are not being charged right away when they receive them back. They may stay for hours parked there with 5% battery. I don't know how they charge them for the next customer.
Amazing, it's like no one read TFS (Score:3)
Hertz soon discovered that EVs are more expensive to maintain than they had initially thought. Scherr reportedly told investors that Hertz's profits experienced a $348 million loss, which he blamed EVs for.
And
In November, the Associated Press reported on a Consumer Reports survey that found EVs from the 2021 to 2023 model years are significantly less reliable than gasoline-powered vehicles. A whopping eighty percent less reliable, according to the AP, particularly with battery and charging systems, as well as fit issues with body panels and interiors
Everyone seems to argue that the charging infrastructure is the issue, when the company says the issue is straight-up cost to maintain the vehicles. They aren't selling 20,000 vehicles at a loss because people can't find chargers, it's because of cost & reliability expenses that make them more expensive for fleet owners than ICE vehicles.
Re:EVs ended up just like Impossible Foods (Score:5, Interesting)
I was just on the phone earlier today with a friend I hadn't kept in contact with much since he'd removed me from Facebook over a political disagreement during Covid. He's coming into town for a mutual friend's wedding and I'd mentioned to him that yes, through some quirks in used car values and that $4k tax credit, I'd traded in my ICE econobox for a used Bolt EV because I absolutely love the Bolt EUV that my partner bought new towards the end of last year. Yeah, that makes two EVs in our household.
At any rate, I told him, "Look, you might not agree with the politics behind it, but my car runs on 100% domestically produced energy. I think we can both agree, that's a good thing."
Re: EVs ended up just like Impossible Foods (Score:4, Interesting)
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Nah I prefer to send more money to Mr Bone Saw.
Re:EVs ended up just like Impossible Foods (Score:5, Insightful)
Does that make it a GUV?
As hilarious as you probably find the whole "Oh, another gay guy driving an EV" thing, I do also own a rather large work van which does an absolutely abysmal job of turning dinosaur juice into forward motion (but it sure gives it the old college try). Everything is just weirder here in Florida, including us gays.
Re:EVs ended up just like Impossible Foods (Score:5, Interesting)
Huh? How do you figure that?
From here: [fpl.com]
FPL currently obtains most of our electricity from clean-burning natural gas. Nuclear power, which produces no greenhouse gas emissions, is responsible for another significant portion of power production. In addition, FPL has begun operation of three commercial-scale, emissions-free solar energy facilities in the Sunshine State.
And here: [fpl.com]
Utilizing cleaner-burning, U.S.-produced natural gas frees us from using imported, foreign oil.
Since I happen to know that the plant nearest to me is natural gas fired and that electricity takes the path of least resistance, yes, I can say with a rather strong degree of certainty that the electricity I'm using to charge my car is 100% domestically produced. Neat, huh?
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So only 35% pixie dust and farts. I stand corrected.
I realize that you're probably used to people who talk about EVs playing up the green aspects, but I specifically wrote "domestically produced energy". Or in other words, the money I'm spending to buy the power isn't going to someone in the middle east who wants to kill me.
Even Musk, who is pretty big on renewables, Tweeted awhile back [twitter.com] that we should increase domestic fossil fuel energy production when the alternative to meet present energy demands is supporting countries who are enemies of democracy.
Re: EVs ended up just like Impossible Foods (Score:2)
There are approximately zero oil producers in the Middle East who want to kill you.
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Ah yes the time honoured trope, "they hate our freedoms". Thank you for letting us know you're a Musk nut hugger.
Re: EVs ended up just like Impossible Foods (Score:3)
Banned doesn't mean what it used to mean - back in the day, when something was banned, that meant you couldn't buy it, and possession of it was illegal. Nowadays, banned means someone in government decided not to buy something, while you are still able to buy it for yourself and possession of it is NOT illegal.
For example, if a government school chooses to not shelve a book describing anal sex in a "how-to" format (as opposed to in the context of a literary novel) in a middle school library, that gov't is a
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Oh ,heavens, you have exposed me to a different viewpoint, I am getting the vapors!
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I visited that site and the first thing I see is them selling Trump shoes. https://proudpatriots.com/page... [proudpatriots.com]
Right wing fake news is an appropriate label.
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Re:Gateway Pundit, seriously? (Score:5, Informative)
Oh ,heavens, you have exposed me to a different viewpoint, I am getting the vapors!
It's not the viewpoint, it's that the article rambles from maintenance costs, reliability, and demand when not one of those is or was a problem.
hertz.com [hertz.com]
Read it, maintenance costs are lower, demand is high (we're talking renting Teslas to Uber drivers, figure it out), and they make no mention of reliability while calling out damage caused by rideshare drivers, specifically, and collision repair. The problem was high repair costs for EVs coupled with higher incidence of damage from rideshare, and their insurance wasn't a good fit for that so they lost money.
If your viewpoint is that EVs suck and whatnot, then at least go with the repair cost angle, it's fucking hanging there easy picking lol, but bro seriously that's a shit internet news site. Learn to read maybe. This is all getting boiled down to "EV bad" when it's all of high Tesla repair costs, fucking Uber drivers, and car insurance problems. There's so much meat to pick from but that garbage article wasn't written to be read, it was written to pad the space between the ads.
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There's a reason Trump rallies look like the super bowl, and poopy-pants Joe can only draw 45 people to his talks. But you blame brain-washing on a massive scale. Do you even hear yourself?
And all you can scream is "reeee reeee media bad."
They couldn't even fill all the chairs when they spaced them out and drew circles for a "vote for Joe" rally. But you still don't question it.
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The issue appears to be collision repair costs. This is probably in large part to Teslas use a lot of aluminum which is harder to repair, so body components are more likely to be swapped out entirely rather than be hammered back into shape.
I have to wonder if reluctance of repair shops to work with EVs thanks to all the fear mongering is also a factor, though you'd think Hertz would have enough clout to work around that.
=Smidge=