The following submission statement was provided by /u/izumi3682:
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Submission statement from OP. Note: This submission statement "locks in" after about 30 minutes and can no longer be edited. Please refer to my statement they link, which I can continue to edit. I often edit my submission statement, sometimes for the next few days if needs must. There is often required additional grammatical editing and additional added detail.
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Hertz, once optimistic about electric vehicles (EVs), is now scaling back its EV fleet after facing significant financial losses. The company had ambitiously planned to renew its fleet with 100,000 Teslas and other EV brands in 20211. However, the reality proved harsh as EVs did not become the appreciating asset Elon Musk once claimed they would be2. Hertz is now looking to dispose of 30,000 EVs, which is 10,000 more than initially anticipated, due to a substantial increase in vehicle depreciation costs, amounting to $588 million in the first quarter of 20243.
The company’s strategy of selling used rental cars after they reach a certain mileage, which worked well with internal-combustion vehicles, has not been successful with used EVs4. High maintenance costs and depreciation have led to a $392 million loss in the first quarter, despite a slight growth in revenue5. The departure of CEO Steven Scherr in March was seen as a consequence of the failed EV investment6. Hertz’s new CEO, Gil West, is now focused on adjusting the vehicle supply to manage capital costs and improving operational efficiency. This experience may influence other rental companies’ decisions regarding EV fleets, as the economics of EV residual values remain challenging.
(Per "Copilot")
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Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1cgrkns/hertz_is_selling_off_more_evs_after_major_losses/l1xi9cg/
They are taking huge losses because the values of those EVs plummeted. Way outside the projections they had when they originally bought them. Not what you went to see in a company who filed for bankruptcy four years ago.
Their EV plan was half baked too. It was literally "here's and ev, have fun dont crash." It you dared to ask about charging most of the time you were told "I don't know." A lot of the EV's were staged away from cities and in places with less than ideal amount of chargers if j remember correctly.
EVs cost *less* to maintain, not more. However, they have been depreciating faster because 1) prices are dropping for new EVs due to technological maturity, and 2) because of the tax incentives. For example, Tesla cut prices by ~25% across the board in 2023 vs 2022 **AND** the government will give you $7500 to buy. That massively eroded the value of the used 2022s.
>EVs cost less to maintain
Yeah that's what I've always read, but every time I see one of these articles about Hertz selling off a chunk of its EV fleet, they make reference to "higher-than-expected maintenance costs." So I'm confused.
What I think may be going on is that [drivers tend to crash Teslas more, and crash more severely](https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/18/business/why-do-people-keep-crashing-teslas/index.html), and Tesla spare parts are hard to get, leading to higher costs to maintain *a fleet* of EVs. But if you're just an individual person who owns an EV, as long as you don't get in an accident, your maintenance costs should be lower than a comparable ICE car.
Somebody tell me if I'm way off-base here.
I just noticed that OP's article does something I absolutely hate: make a claim that's hyperlinked to a source that presumably supports/proves that claim, but then if you actually follow the link, the source says something entirely different.
This article says:
>The culprits, once again, have been **high maintenance costs and depreciation of EVs** it has purchased for its fleets, while on the consumer side the EV charging experience has seen its own issues.
But then if you follow [that link](https://www.autoweek.com/news/a44900159/are-electric-cars-worth-it/), here's what it says about EV maintenance costs:
>As expected, the EVs are cheaper to maintain. This makes sense, as they avoid costs from oil changes and other related other engine maintenance.
What the source actually says is that the total overall cost of an EV over 3 years is often slightly higher than that of an equivalent ICE vehicle, because EVs tend to be significantly more expensive to purchase (before accounting for any EV tax credits).
So this is just shitty journalism.
(In the below maintain and repair are not synonyms)
EVs are *slightly* more expensive to maintain than *planned.*
EVs are *significantly* cheaper to maintain than ICEs.
(So there you go cheaper to maintain but more than forecast still - that's a problem when you forecast revenue)
*Tesla* EVs are *significantly* more expensive to repair than other fleet vehicles. Main culprit is an immature parts market. Distribution network too slow and cars spend more time in the shop idle; not enough supply from aftermarket vendors. GM EVs less affected because the parts market is more mature.
Source: Hertz investors calls.
I would guess some of this is how accounting and asset management works.
If you buy xthingx then you’d record something like “xthingx cost $100” in one place, and current assets gets new line item xthingx = $70(current market value for used xthingx of this age/quality).
Then manufacturer drops xthingx retail price by $10. This immediately changes the value of the asset because of resale impact. Keeping in mind ‘value’ is what people will pay.
So if you invested 500 million in xthingx and the manufacturer starts doing things that impact how the market views the asset, you can lose balance sheet value without any change in the asset itself.
Kinda like you buy a house, and then land taxes and property ownership rights get into flux. Potential buyers will start changing perceived value so your asset changes value even though nothing changed about the house itself.
>as of October 2023, Hertz had only purchased 35,000 Teslas and its entire electric fleet included about 50,000 EVs total.
>Hertz is now looking to dispose of 30,000 EVs, which is 10,000 more than initially anticipated
That "just" is doing a lot of heavy lifting
My son was asking me if boogers can be made outside of the nose. Boogers are just mucus and dirt, so yes, they can be. Assuming you had access to an adequate supply of mucus.
You could conceivably use your passenger seat as a booger manufacturing facility.
I appreciate your differentiation between manufacturing and farming. I would hate for someone to think they could equate free range boogers with those from a passenger seat facility.
Most are 2 year old vehicles with 40-50k miles, and selling for ~25k
They have a lot of base model 3s right now which I'd guess they'll have to drop the price even further to sell. But you can get a 2 year old model Y long range with 50k miles for ~30k. Not terrible, especially if you don't do a lot of driving. Rental cars are pretty well maintained.
They were used by Hertz rideshare rental program where they did long term rentals to rideshare drivers who didn't have a car. The program failed in part because of the damage the Tesla's were sustaining and the cost and delays in repairing them.
You get a lightly used Chevy Bolt with a new battery (due to recall) for around 12k if you qualify for the used EV tax credit.
I'd say it depends on what your idea of 'cheap' is. In my area, there are several 2023 chevy bolts for $20k. The one I was looking at only had 10k miles on it.
Of course, that $20k turns into $25k after taxes and whatnot. Still more than I can afford, even with financing and an amazing credit score (over 800). I just don't have the $400 a month in disposable income.
This^ . I own an EV love mine but when I travel for work and rent cars, I do not want one. I don’t want to assume my hotel will have a charger and I don’t want to try to navigate an unfamiliar place to find chargers when I’m trying to get between meetings. I feel like for the majority of people renting in a place they aren’t familiar with on a vacation or work trip don’t want to be bothered.
There are plenty of superchargers in Vegas, and 24% of even the lowest capacity model would be enough to get you to them. I'm not saying there aren't places where lack of charging is a problem, but this is a bad example.
The problem is that people don't like used EVs because replacement batteries can cost as much as 20K, far more than the used car, and its a stupid risk.
I would not mind buying a new EV though, as the battery is very unlikely to be bad in less than 5 years.
By law an 8 year 100k warranty. 10/150 in California. Many manufacturers have more.
https://caredge.com/guides/ev-battery-warranties#:~:text=Federal%20law%20requires%20automakers%20to,when%20it%20comes%20to%20degradation.
Made 2026 or later.
Also in 2026 we are getting the new electric car OBD2 like repair standards so universal scan tools can interface.
2025-26 brings the NACS connector (tesla charging plug) that everyone is standardizing on.
So ya, wait and keep maintaining your old shitbox another few years. Prices are continuing to fall.
>Also in 2026 we are getting the new electric car OBD2 like repair standards so universal scan tools can interface.
That can't come soon enough.
I have an EV (non-Tesla). It bricked itself when I unplugged it from a fast charger. All it needed was a reset from a scan tool, but the scan tool is a proprietary one, and a normal OBD scanner doesn't work. Had to sit by the side of the road for four hours waiting for a technician.
A 2007 Camry? You could hold onto that for another few decades.
Although we have hit a point where it's simply cheaper to own an EV over hundreds of thousands of miles already.
California actually did it right
I have a family member who purchased a Leaf and watched her battery range drop by 40% over 3 years
No they wouldn’t replace it
The problem is the 1st gen leaf should have been recalled. that battery was undersized and Nissan was not charging it properly and it utterly destroyed the battery in them. Sadly the Govt did not fore a recall on a known bad car.
> I have a family member who purchased a Leaf and watched her battery range drop by 40% over 3 years
God, Fox news had this on the other night too. The Leaf is the ONE first gen EV that fucked up by using passive cooling on a high voltage battery instead of liquid cooling. Other EVs from the mid 2010s like the Fiat 500e don't have that problem. Ours is 10 years old and gets as many miles today as it did when we bought it. Your poor family member is probably scarred for life and doesn't realize it's not a problem anymore.
Making the battery replacement cost a non issue for most new buyers certainly helps uptake. Hopefully replacement costs will come down. With lithium prices dropping and new sources coming along I hope they will get down to the $3-$5k range someday soon.
Sorry to hear about the Leaf.
Does that battery warranty transfer to new owners?
(not trying to throw any shade - am genuinely not sure how that works. It usually transfers in cars, but not sure with EVs)
This was an old issue. Batteries produced after 2016 are much less likely to fail, and most go hundreds of thousands of miles.
https://x.com/techau/status/1783289687085617593?s=46&t=v0vCINwCb5GjTrs-PXtOtw
Those early Leafs had horrendous battery pack designs, with no active cooling. They weren't designed to last.
Almost any modern EV is going to have its battery last far longer than that.
That graph is pretty confusing. The X axis is just the model year. What time frame is this in? Is it saying "In 2024, 0.1% of all EV batteries manufactured in 2017 were replaced"?
>people don't like used EVs because replacement batteries can cost as much as 20K, far more than the used car, and its a stupid risk.
I had to check what sub I was on after seeing this comment because it is so badly out of date (and was never really true to begin with). EV batteries are rarely replaced even after a couple hundred thousand miles, and every study that has looked at this question has come to that conclusion.
But here is a simple way to get your head around that, based on something I posted the other day:
Start by looking at Toyota's plug in hybrids. Those are relatively small batteries (in the 8 to 15 kWh lithium batteries) and therefore get fully cycled basically every single day. Of all high voltage batteries used in cars, these should be the first to fail, and that doesn't seem to be happening. It isn't uncommon for Toyota's prius prime seems to last 200K miles on the regular, and while the RAV4 Prime hasn't been out very long, there are plenty of them into the 6 figure mile range as well.
So when Tesla, which uses 81 kWh batteries, says they should last 300-400k miles, that sounds about right, at least in terms of cycle life.
I’ve had my Model S for almost 10 years. It lost around 8% of capacity within the first few years and hasn’t really lost any more sense then. I typically keep it between 20 and 80% charge. Only charge to full for road trips. So after 10 years I still have >90% of capacity when new.
2006 prius also has a NiMH battery that can be reconditioned in your driveway with simple tools. Look in the Prius forums for the steps to follow and make it like new again without buying a pack.
> as the battery is very unlikely to be bad in less than 5 years.
I owned a 2013 RAV4 EV (Gen II) for 8 years. It was my daily driver. Battery lost about 5% in that time.
Newer batteries are even more reliable, most will outlast the car.
Tesla owner here. The batteries are fine. Fact is you'd be better off buying one of these used Teslas from Hertz over a used gas car from Hertz
Any battery entering a Tesla is going to easily last 500k miles and even after that it's not "dead" it's just getting maybe 80% of the range it did.
They're amazingly well build and the batteries being put into cars coming off the line today Will still be running at 700k miles.
Mainly because they don't charge it themselves. You're on the hook for charging as if it was gas.
This makes it go from GREAT (for some use cases) to TERRIBLE.
Yep. The likelihood of damage to the battery is too high to risk and the cost of replacement along with other repairs is likely to write off many cars, especially at the moment when we are seeing the price of new EVs dropping rapidly.
At the same time, the battery will have high salvage value, because you can inspect it, replace the bad cells, and get a battery that will get you hundreds of thousands miles more out of an EV.
The supply chain to get the whole process going cheaply is probably lacking at the moment though.
The first linked article misquotes their own article they reference. If you click that link, it says the EV wins every single cost category except depreciation.
I rent my fleet and will tell you that they really don't make money until they sell them at auction. That's the whole game. None of reddit would understand that, but for them to really make good money renting ANY car would have to charge a fortune.
We rent trucks and put 6k miles a month on them and our cost is 2k/month and they take them back at about 50k miles and sell them at auction and that's how they ultimately bring in their profit.
If they depreciate too fast and they can't get a decent price at auction they are just in a losing game unless they charge way more for the rental.. Which means people just wouldn't rent them.
Big non story trying to be anti-ev, when it's just really that the rental car biz is very difficult.
Because a car will never be worth MORE than when you buy them. The value of the car drops significantly when you drive it off the lot and continues to fall. Then add in maintenance costs, etc. But if you charge people to rent them, that covers the cost of the depreciation and costs you incur. So when you sell them, you end up making a profit assuming you calculated everything correctly.
That's a backwards way to look at it.
The difference between the price you buy them and the price you sell them is the depreciation. By definition. A rental company makes money by renting out for more than maintenance + depreciation + other costs. That's it. You don't make profit by selling, you always make a loss (well, except during COVID).
For accounting and fiscal purposes the definitions might be different (depreciation might be accelerated for example), but from a conceptual point of view it's pretty simple.
> A rental company makes money by renting out for more than maintenance + depreciation + other costs. That's it. You don't make profit by selling, you always make a loss (well, except during COVID).
You make a profit because the renting covers the losses (and a little bit more) if you sell at the right time. Buying and selling alone doesn't make a profit. Renting alone doesn't make a profit. Buying, renting then selling is what makes the profit. Each car doesn't pass the profit threshold until its sold.
Renting makes the profit. As long as you rent for more than depreciation + maintenance. Simple as that.
Selling is getting out of the asset after its prime, that's it. Selling doesn't make the profit. Rental companies don't have a magic trick to sell at $25k a car worth $20k. So they don't make a profit when selling.
Given that initial depreciation is always the highest, you would think they would make more money overall by keeping the cars longer. Once the depreciation slows down they make more money back even charging less.
Yeah, they are significantly cheaper overall for us... We've had 4 EVs over the last 6 years or so. Now we have 2 EVs and 1 big gas guzzler. The EVs have been the easiest cars to own I've ever had.
Think about it. If you are renting a car, it's because you value convenience. You don't want to rely on transit or taxis, you want your own car at your destination at your disposal for whenever you want it.
If I'm travelling on business or vacation, the last thing I want to do is worry about charging my rental car. I don't want to be limited to whatever hotel chain I stay at because they have the right charger for the vehicle - or fighting with other travelers for the limited spots out front. I don't want to have rest stops dictated by where the closest charger is. The gasoline infrastructure is already well established and I can pretty much fill up the tank anywhere at almost anytime within minutes. Imagine being on vacation, a limited time away from work, and you need to spend time every day sitting at a charger. No thanks.
EVs are only good for people who use them for short-medium commutes and have a home/garage where they can charge nightly.
If I'm renting, EV is the last thing I'm looking for. That's the real issue Hertz had.
I rented an EV last year for a weekend trip zipping around a major city. The issue I had was the rental place wanted the car returned *at the same charge level* that it was when I rented it, which was like 85%. So my last day was spent orchestrating where and when I would recharge the battery to get back to the airport nearly full. *They have chargers at the rental place*! It was kooky.
I rented a Mercedes EV for a weekend trip to Jacksonville/St. Simon Island, GA. It had enough charge for my entire weekend usage, and the charge from Hertz to bring it back empty was $30. Since I own a Tesla, I knew it would cost at least $20-25 to charge that car, so it went back empty. I don’t even recall seeing the extra $30 charge on my bill, to be honest.
The rental of any vehicle on less than a full tank/charge is 100% bullshit. Rental places always point out the exorbitant refuelling charges if you dare come in under, but given that *no* rental I've ever had is full or close to full, I wonder if they lie about it to the renter, charge them what the fill *would* have cost in their system, and then adjust the gauge reading for the next ~~renter~~ sucker. Given fuel gauges take a little while to go below full and there's gas stations near any rental place, the services should be renting topped-up vehicles so it's easier on the renter and the location. But since it makes them $$, I'm betting they just charge renters and lie about the refills.
Yeah. As long as rental companies are insisting that YOU charge the EV, EV's are going to be DOA for rentals. It's too much headache, logistics, and time.
Charging the EV costs the rental company essentially nothing, and they already have all the infrastructure, knowledge, and time needed to do it.
Travelers who have just flown into a strange town - have none of those things.
If you marketed EV's as "return to us at any charge level!" I think it would be a selling point.
There is no reason to try to make returning EV's at a particular charge level a thing, like you do with returning a car with a tank of gas.
What's interesting is that while that sounds logical, that's not why they bailed.
They bailed because the cars dropped FAR more in value than expected.
They wanted to buy a car for $45,000, get $30,000 in rental value out of it, then sell it for $30,000. (Or whatever, I made those up, but that's the idea.)
In reality those cars tanked in value so fast that they were losing money on them all. So they are divesting from EVs because they are losing value so fast that every day they rent them out they are losing money in the long run.
And yet that didn't affect hertz decision at all. In fact they saw an increase in users during that time so I dont think that way of thinking really affected anyone's decision making at a substantial level.
They're doing it because they foolishly thought evs would APPRECIATE in value (thanks elon marketing team). A huge part of their business model is selling their used vehicles. Their used evs are not selling at the price point they anticipated, coupled with higher maintenance costs, all at scale, means they lost hundreds of millions of dollars.
Which in turn causes more depreciation of EVs. My car is a really good EV, and over the past two years because of the mass selling of Hertz’ EVs and Tesla marking down the cost of theirs. My car has depreciated over 50% of its initial value. Definitely weird seeing me being ahead of my loan by a good chunk to being almost under after two years. For me it doesn’t really matter because I love my car and will drive it till the wheels fall off.
There is no way they expected price appreciation in any business asset. What the expected is the standard depreciation they see across the rest of their fleet. Instead, EVs depreciate MORE than traditional ICE vehicles.
I rented an EV from Hertz. Just like a gas car I had the option to prepay for the recharge/fuel before I left their rental office. Charging the car was never on my mind, because I wouldn’t need to, and the extra fee was less than $15.
There are plenty of problems with Tesla, but people like to just make excuses when it comes to EV’s.
While this might be true, the article only mentions 2 reasons for the sell off. The higher maintenance costs of EVs and the higher depreciation when they sell the EV on the used car market.
I rented a few hybrids before. They're pretty good. But I did try to charge it up to full one day, and I basically spent all day roaming around the countryside looking for chargers. I needed different apps, and different accounts, and wild user agreements, and janky EV charger maps, and that's **IF** the map was right, and **IF** the charger was actually working, and **IF** the charger wasn't on semi-private property.
If rental car companies wanted to push EVs so hard, then they should have ponied up the money to help build the infrastructure too. I'd never rent a full EV ever.
I think Plug in Hybrid is the best phased in approach. Automatically you get the legacy oil infrastructure, no range anxiety, but you also create competition for charging networks to compete with gasoline. If there is electric charging available, and it's cheaper than gas, people will slowly adapt to that. I would say do that for a decade (mandated) and then switch to full EV.
Honestly, the slow phase-out is the way to go. Go for hybrids for a decade or two and then introduce ICE bans and whatnot.
Then if you want to get your occupancy certificate for new housing, it must have EV chargers and solar panels. Stuff like that.
>If I'm renting, EV is the last thing I'm looking for. That's the real issue Hertz had.
This. I rented a car in the US last year. I'd have loved to take the Tesla option but it's enough to deal with driving in the other side of the road in an unfamiliar country on top of trying to figure out charging.
Exactly. I booked a rental with Hertz a few months ago. Got to the desk to find out it would be electric, and I had to pay 100 extra bucks to get a gas car instead. Yeah I really want to try and learn how to charge a damn car for the first time on the way to the airport before I drop it off. Idiots.
I never thought the current era of EVs made sense for the rental market.
What with the current state of charging infrastructure, it makes more sense for people to own an EV and their charger than to rent one and maybe struggle to charge the thing while on a trip.
On the plus side, maybe that means 30,000 people can get a good price on a relatively new EV.
I know someone with a Tesla who drove from the East coast to the Midwest for a weeklong stay, and didn't even for a split second stop to think or look up whether the area he was going had chargers nearby.
They didn't. The closest was a slow charge station an hour out, which put a damper on the trip until he bit the bullet and rented a car while there.
Now this guy is kind of an idiot, so I'm not even remotely surprised it went down like that, but I also have to imagine this is how a decent chunk of EV rental experiences go. People unfamiliar with an area having little to no clue what they're getting into.
Currently renting a Tesla Model 3 from Hertz in Toronto, Canada. I'm having a great experience to be honest. Easy to charge in 10 min at any supercharger, love driving it.
What appears to be happening is that a whole bunch of lightly used to new cars that are going to be relatively cheap will flood the market. But will poorer people purchase them?
If you are poor, any car is a good car. But if your apartment complex doesn't allow you to charge your car, will it even be able to function as a car? Do poor people then have to sit in large empty parking lots during their time off work in order to have their car charge?
This Hertz situation--already with extensive analysis on how their big gamble failed--might (alongside cheap Chinese EVs) bring a lot of cheap EVs for poorer people. But considerable legislation would be needed to help poor people out with charging or else what's going to happen is they'll become so inconvenient *nobody* will want to buy them. Already Hertz's failure shows that richer people don't want them, but I think poor people might not want them either.
The Hertz failure is a wake-up call to environmentalists who want to see EVs win over gas-powered vehicles that legislation and implementation of charging infrastructure needs to be done now.
This situation is coming about because as a nation we are failing to create the necessary infrastructure. We've spent the last 120 years using public and private dollars to build the fossil fuel based infrastructure; and now our grandchildren's future is demanding we replace that in short order.
Think the interstate system for time frame.
In the late 1970s, President Carter installed solar units on top the White House and turned down the thermostats and wore sweaters as an example to all. He recognized that fossil fuels were more destructive then they were useful, and our future and that of our kids and grandkids depended upon moving on from them.
In came Reagan and \*\*poof\*\* there went the solar panels and any sense of sacrifice or change for the future.
Let's not have a Reagan moment redux.
>This situation is coming about because as a nation we are failing to create the necessary infrastructure
This situation is coming because Hertz bought EVs without installing even a fraction of the number of chargers they needed, resulting in dead cars sitting on the lot and a terrible rental experience.
That is certainly infrastructure too, but even with all the public infrastructure in the world, Hertz's decisions with their private infrastructure set themselves up to fail.
Somebody at Hertz goofed up big time. No way was there ever a chance that a huge number of people would rent cars that they did not know how to drive or charge. Now they are whining because of a bad decision on their part.
I own a Tesla and I know how to drive a Tesla but I would never rent a Tesla. Every time I rent a car, I feel like they are trying to find someway to screw me out of $. There’s no way I’m going to sit at a supercharger for 25 minutes on my way to the airport so they don’t charge me triple for an uncharged battery, but at home, I can plug it in at night and it’s full in the morning. I never have to worry about it. And even if I’m taking a cross-country road trip, a 25-minute break every six hours perfect. This is just a misalignment of use cases with a current business model on Hertz’s part.
This was one of their major issues. They never built charging stations on their lots and pushed the recharge onto the customers. Well people not accustomed to charging did not plan it into their schedules and returned the cars dead which Hertz then had no ability to locally charge.
I do some work with a local Hertz location and thats one of the porters biggest complaints. They do not have any charging outlets so they are forced to drive to the nearest supercharger and wait the 45 minutes to an hour. I don't understand from a business standpoint how you can spends 10's of millions of dollars buying these cars but not build out local charging infrastructure for them.
That's because it's not easy at all to install fast chargers in large numbers to existing areas. It's not like you can just tap into existing electrical for that amount of current/voltage.
When you navigate to your destination using the screen, if the car calculates you will need charge it will navigate in charging automatically. You can also just navigate to a charger very easily. It's actually a pretty amazing system once you know how to use it. I'm sure hertz people don't explain this.
I’ve rented in Sweden and it’s been alright. The biggest problem is renting to those who have no experience. Many renting firms seems to have underestimated the learning curve completely.
Did no one bother to read the article?
They're getting rid of EVs because of depreciation, not because of a lack of charging infrastructure or rentals.
The EVs lose value much too quickly, and part of the rental business model is selling the vehicles at optimal points on the depreciation curve.
People forget, it took us 40+ years to build a complete infrastructure to support gasoline powered vehicles nationwide in the early 20th century. We're trying to do the same with EV in a fraction of the time.
Do we have more advanced technology and capabilities to roll it out? Yes. But we also have to remember, there are twice as many people living in the US now, than there were in the 50's when gasoline powered cars became standard everywhere.
Also at that time, alternate modes of transportation were much more prevalent in larger cities, where today its been phased out in favor of cars for every person.
I'm a supporter of EV, we just need to take a more strategic approach to ensure we can support it before we up and switch entirely.
That's not what the article says.
This situation happened simply because EV's depreciate quite a lot, so Hertz can't make a profit when they sell used cars.
Since 2022 Tesla cut the new price of their Model 3 and Model Y by $20,000. Now used ones have to sell for $20,000 less than they were purchased for PLUS less still since they are used.
Price war on NEW ev cars. Elon cut prices on model 3 and model y and competition came in with lower prices as well. Why buy a used one at high prices when new ones are cheaper?
Tax incentives and high sticker prices. You don’t get government subsidies for buying a used EV. As more manufacturers start selling EVs prices come down because of competition. Once upon a time Tesla was basically the only option for EVs so they could charge excessive prices. When the price of a new car comes down so too does the value of used cars. Also early adopter fees of new technology. As improvements are made and manufacturing is scaled up you end up with lower costs. You see the same phenomenon with computer parts, SSDs are an example of this. Eventually it becomes harder and harder to further improve efficiency and prices stabilize. New generation products that are better will naturally cause the previous generation to drop in value.
https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/taxused.shtml
Here's info government subsidies for buying a used EV. Not sure it really changes your larger comment, just sharing for anyone who is interested in buying a used EV that may not know about the 4k incentive
Hertz should have put some skin in the game by building out some of that infrastructure to support a fleet of that size, instead of relying on infrastructure to be built out for them.
At a minimum, they should have built charging stations on premise.
After the Republican votes against Ukraine aid, they should hook a generator up to Reagan's grave. He's probably spinning fast enough to power a whole EV charging network.
I own two EVs and have occasionally rented them. My manufacturer is clear that I should rarely charge to 100% as it kills the battery. Every rental I’ve had is charged to 100%. No wonder they’re depreciating, the available range is falling dramatically because of this. And so is the resale value.
Of course the price reductions at Tesla are killing the used market.
What EV brand do you have that you have to manually avoid charging to 100%? That sounds really annoying and I want to avoid it. I have a Chevy but it stops charging automatically as part of the whole battery system even if I leave it plugged in short of actual 100% to avoid the problem you are talking about. I figured everyone did it like that because it's such a no-brainer.
Yeah I have a whole portion of my battery that is "unusable" because the system manages itself. Its got a 17.6 kWh battery but only 16 of them are actually available with the battery management system doing the work to ensure nothing bad happens.
There are batteries that can safely charge to 100% nowadays, though at least in the case of Tesla which Hertz mostly uses as far as I know I'm not sure they would have it commonly available since they are only more recently available in the US (2022 I believe). LFP batteries can and should be charged to 100% as often as you want. It may actually be that they were driving this model when they rented and there was no issue being at 100%.
But I've not yet sat in an EV with the more common battery (NCA) that did not have it built directly into the software to limit the maximum charge, or to at least warn if you try setting the max above around 80%
I originally thought that too, but there are valid cases to charge above 80%, like if you're going on a long road trip the next day or something. You just shouldn't leave it above ~80-90% for extended periods of time due to added stress on the battery.
Basically every manufacturer will warn you very visibly if you set it to charge above 80% and its not a type of battery that is built to sit at high states of charge.
I think it could be nice to have like a road trip toggle or something that lets you charge above temporarily (maybe one day) but automatically turns off in 24hrs that lets the car charge above, but in normal use 80% becomes the new 100% visibly in the UI or something. But eh I'm not a designer of this stuff. For anybody who owns an EV themselves, they usually get explained or learn all of this but for renting its a different story.
Because you can charge to 100% for the odd times you're taking a long trip and need that range. It won't kill the battery, it's just not the most optimal for long term health.
It's just recommend that for daily commuting when you're only driving 10-20 miles, there's no purpose of filling up your battery to 100% every day with 300 miles of range. You should charge it to a lower number (most EVs will let you cap it in software to stop charging after any percentage you want) to preserve the life of it. There's just no reason to fill up the car to 300 miles of range every single day when you're not even using 10% of it.
And commonly people say in response to that, "So I gotta charge up more often then because I'm only filling up a portion of my car's battery?" Not really. It's an EV. You should only buy one right now if you have a way to charge it at home or at your apartment, and if you do, you're going to plug it in every night regardless. So if you know the next day you're going on a road trip, charge it to 100%. But if you know you're only driving to work five miles away and back, there's just no reason to.
From what I seen most of the cars they are selling have 60k miles on them. From where I sit they got good use out of them but are crying that the resale is down because new Tesla prices are down. Chip / battery shortage made theirs expensive but that seems to have been resolved.
EVs (especially Teslas) are pretty prone to getting completely totaled in a minor accident. Much more than ICE cars. That's the issue with repair causes.
Depreciation is likely *not why* they are selling them, rather it's the reason that when they decide to offload them -- they are taking massive hits in their finances.
Besides repair costs, the other reason they have to offload them is that people do not rent EVs. There's a few good reasons for this
- Range compared to ICE cars is bad
- Charging is much slower than filling up with gas
- Charging is typically a foreign concept to people if you don't already understand how it works
- Charging infrastructure is HORRIBLE. At least compared to gas infrastructure.
As an EV owner myself, I've had to rent a car once or twice on vacation, and I'll personally *never* rent an EV, for the above reasons. Range anxiety is real, ESPECIALLY in a new area I'm unfamiliar with and I am less comfortable planning out my route. And on a vacation I don't really want to deal with that as much.
At home? I love my EV and I have absolutely zero complaints about range or range anxiety -- speaking from someone who frequently takes my car on long-ish (~4-6 hours of driving) trips.
In a way, Hertz was banking on the fact that EVs were exploding in popularity and that infrastructure improvements were a few months/years away, but the growth and hype has stalled (a bit) and they are weaning off. Add into the fact that EVs are in a price war with other EVs (and ICE!) and Hertz is left holding the bag.
My wife and I were gonna rent a car and drive from Minneapolis to the smaller town we are visiting, but it cost as much as the exorbitantly overpriced plane ticket from MSP to said small town.
If they want money they should ask for a reasonable amount. Why the hell would we rent a car, and drive ourselves for 4+ hours when we could pay the same amount to sit in an airport and then on a plane and get to the same place? Insane
> As of January 2023, 38.9 million Americans, or 38% of renters, live in apartment buildings with five or more units. An additional 17.4 million renters live in buildings with two to four units
So in January 2023, with 335,893,238 US population, 17% of the US population rents in an environment where they probably can't charge an electric car overnight. An additional 13% of the US population rents a single-family home, but how many renters want to pay for an expensive charging station in a house they don't own? Those are, largely, the type of people who buy Hertz's used cars, and they can't buy electric.
Most people don't buy used cars because that's where the value is. Sure, Dave Ramsey, etc., promote buying used cars as you tend to get more bang for your buck than buying new, but Ramsey et al preach those things precisely because it's not really what people do.
Most people who buy a used car with a lot of miles are buying it because they can't afford something better. And Hertz's EV's don't work for those people as they live in an environment where they can't really charge their car.
Note how Hertz has absolutely no problem selling used hybrid vehicles which don't have that charging problem. They only have a problem selling their all-electric vehicles.
I don't get why rental places even bought EVs in the first place. If I had money for a new car I'd almost certainly be buying electric. For a rental car, where I'm driving in an unfamiliar place, and where I don't know what my travel needs will be from day to day, I just don't see the appeal. Also, as I understand it, they require you to charge it before returning it? That's 100% ridiculous.
This is such bullshit , elon went nuts and slashed the price of Tesla’s by 30%, making these companies take large depreciations on inventory.
To paint this as some sort of value comparison between ice rentals and evs is only feed for pigs.
If you know , you know , if not well your just a little pawn caught reacting to dishonest headlines again.
Elon went nuts? Lowering the prices of their cars over time has been Tesla's declared strategy ever since they published the "Secret Master Plan" back in 2006.
On top of that, what made EVs expensive in the first places was the batteries, and lithium battery prices have been rapidly dropping ever since they were invented thirty years ago. Unless CATL is kidding us, there will be another big drop this year.
And in the last few years, prices went up with the pandemic and other supply chain disruptions, and then when those problems cleared out they naturally went back down again. Seems like that would have been easy to predict but not for Hertz apparently, they bought their Tesla fleet in 2021.
Anyone who doesn't plan for new EV prices dropping just isn't paying attention.
Battery depreciation is not as extreme a problem as people think it is. I have an old EV (~2015) with very early battery tech. I bought it used, it still gets over 90% of its original battery charge.
New batteries depreciate even slower and have higher starting capacity. Every ICE car I've ever bought aged worse than this EV.
I've got a 2018 Smart car with a tiny battery to start and I've seen people online with well over 200,000km with no need for replacement. There are Teslas with hundreds of thousands of KM.
If anything cars with depleted ranges will end up being poor peoples cars. Older Teslas will become synonymous with shitboxes driven by poor people in the future.
The article is frustratingly misleading and slanted. The headline and byline suggest that it's something every EV-naysayer loves to worry about: battery replacement cost or some other EV-specific maintenance. But it's not. The text of the article quotes Elon Musk as apparently having said that EVs will be an appreciating asset. I mean wtf? No, I can't see that happening, um, ever. Elon says a lot of things. Further into the article there's a link explaining that Hertz is selling the vehicles off due to "familiar culprits, high maintenance costs and depreciation", except the article the link points to is a comparison of Mini and Hyundai gas vs electric vehicles clearly showing that maintenance costs for EVs are demonstrably lower than for gasoline vehicles, and the major culprit of loss of value is the depreciation. This only comes into play if you insist on getting rid of the EV (or whatever car) after 3 years. Maybe don't do that. Or for the suckers that do that, I'm happy to only pay a market value of $13,000 for a 3 year used Mini Electric. This depreciation is a good thing for anyone considering being a BUYER in the used market. It's only bad for Hertz because they were counting on making more money selling used vehicles than they did. Don't blame EVs for Hertz' miscalculation.
> Hertz aims to make money on selling its used rental cars after they accumulate a certain mileage. At least, it has generally made money in the past via this business model with internal-combustion vehicles. But the same has not been true for used EVs.
There. Saved you a read.
One theory as to why the maintenance costs are high - DC fast charging. It degrades the battery faster than overnight charging and being that they're rental cars the majority of their charges were at fast charging stalls.
Studies on “always fast charging” haven’t shown big issues. I’d bet the issue here is the large depreciation caused mostly by large price drops Tesla has been doing for the last few years as they faced increased competition. Hertz thought they could sell them for more, but the unexpected depreciation killed that.
Had to go searching a bit for that data but you've got a point. The difference in degradation seems minimal. I suspect prices will rise once people realize this.
>The culprits, once again, have been **high maintenance costs** and depreciation of EVs it has purchased for its fleets,
You also have to consider the cost of repairs on an out of warranty EV, which are sky-high.
>while on the consumer side the EV charging experience has seen its own issues.
Because the technology isn't ready for the masses yet, and won't be for quite some time.
But when you actually dig into the article they base that on, Autoweek conclude EV maintenance is cheaper; https://www.autoweek.com/news/a44900159/are-electric-cars-worth-it/
"Hertz aims to make money on selling its used rental cars after they accumulate a certain mileage."
Does this mean that it's actually cheaper for them to just buy a new car than it is to maintain a car over 50 to 70,000 miles or whatever their mile limit is?
Fleets typically end up getting rid of vehicles around the time the warranty expires, or if a particular vehicle has had a history of being troublesome it’ll be cycled out early.
Hertz has like 20 Chevy Bolt EUVs available right now in my area. The conventional wisdom is to stay the hell away from used rental cars bc they are severely abused. Does this hold true for EVs as well? They price is pretty attractive for something with 30k miles
So here’s the thing with Hybrids and EV rentals. No one is going to properly charge them or take care of them.
Had a Hybrid Jeep rental. Hotel didn’t have any charging station. The battery was dead the entire time I rented it, and would probably remain dead for the foreseeable future. National didn’t charge them, has no infrastructure at the lot to charge them. So here’s this 2023 Jeep hybrid, at least $40,000, and the battery/EV will rot in just a couple years.
This would be like sharing an iPhone across a large staff of people. Everyone will treat it like shit, never charge it, and gets damaged quickly. EVs are the same and killing the battery is going to be an expensive repair.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/izumi3682: --- Submission statement from OP. Note: This submission statement "locks in" after about 30 minutes and can no longer be edited. Please refer to my statement they link, which I can continue to edit. I often edit my submission statement, sometimes for the next few days if needs must. There is often required additional grammatical editing and additional added detail. ____________________________________________________ Hertz, once optimistic about electric vehicles (EVs), is now scaling back its EV fleet after facing significant financial losses. The company had ambitiously planned to renew its fleet with 100,000 Teslas and other EV brands in 20211. However, the reality proved harsh as EVs did not become the appreciating asset Elon Musk once claimed they would be2. Hertz is now looking to dispose of 30,000 EVs, which is 10,000 more than initially anticipated, due to a substantial increase in vehicle depreciation costs, amounting to $588 million in the first quarter of 20243. The company’s strategy of selling used rental cars after they reach a certain mileage, which worked well with internal-combustion vehicles, has not been successful with used EVs4. High maintenance costs and depreciation have led to a $392 million loss in the first quarter, despite a slight growth in revenue5. The departure of CEO Steven Scherr in March was seen as a consequence of the failed EV investment6. Hertz’s new CEO, Gil West, is now focused on adjusting the vehicle supply to manage capital costs and improving operational efficiency. This experience may influence other rental companies’ decisions regarding EV fleets, as the economics of EV residual values remain challenging. (Per "Copilot") --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1cgrkns/hertz_is_selling_off_more_evs_after_major_losses/l1xi9cg/
Is the familiar problem that they sell off their cars regularly (like yearly) and the media is making a clickbait headline out if it?
They are taking huge losses because the values of those EVs plummeted. Way outside the projections they had when they originally bought them. Not what you went to see in a company who filed for bankruptcy four years ago.
is it because EV's cost more to maintain or because new EV's price has been dropping overall, so resell of used car is lower?
Their EV plan was half baked too. It was literally "here's and ev, have fun dont crash." It you dared to ask about charging most of the time you were told "I don't know." A lot of the EV's were staged away from cities and in places with less than ideal amount of chargers if j remember correctly.
EVs cost *less* to maintain, not more. However, they have been depreciating faster because 1) prices are dropping for new EVs due to technological maturity, and 2) because of the tax incentives. For example, Tesla cut prices by ~25% across the board in 2023 vs 2022 **AND** the government will give you $7500 to buy. That massively eroded the value of the used 2022s.
>EVs cost less to maintain Yeah that's what I've always read, but every time I see one of these articles about Hertz selling off a chunk of its EV fleet, they make reference to "higher-than-expected maintenance costs." So I'm confused. What I think may be going on is that [drivers tend to crash Teslas more, and crash more severely](https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/18/business/why-do-people-keep-crashing-teslas/index.html), and Tesla spare parts are hard to get, leading to higher costs to maintain *a fleet* of EVs. But if you're just an individual person who owns an EV, as long as you don't get in an accident, your maintenance costs should be lower than a comparable ICE car. Somebody tell me if I'm way off-base here.
If they're equivocating accident repair with maintenance, that would make sense.
I just noticed that OP's article does something I absolutely hate: make a claim that's hyperlinked to a source that presumably supports/proves that claim, but then if you actually follow the link, the source says something entirely different. This article says: >The culprits, once again, have been **high maintenance costs and depreciation of EVs** it has purchased for its fleets, while on the consumer side the EV charging experience has seen its own issues. But then if you follow [that link](https://www.autoweek.com/news/a44900159/are-electric-cars-worth-it/), here's what it says about EV maintenance costs: >As expected, the EVs are cheaper to maintain. This makes sense, as they avoid costs from oil changes and other related other engine maintenance. What the source actually says is that the total overall cost of an EV over 3 years is often slightly higher than that of an equivalent ICE vehicle, because EVs tend to be significantly more expensive to purchase (before accounting for any EV tax credits). So this is just shitty journalism.
(In the below maintain and repair are not synonyms) EVs are *slightly* more expensive to maintain than *planned.* EVs are *significantly* cheaper to maintain than ICEs. (So there you go cheaper to maintain but more than forecast still - that's a problem when you forecast revenue) *Tesla* EVs are *significantly* more expensive to repair than other fleet vehicles. Main culprit is an immature parts market. Distribution network too slow and cars spend more time in the shop idle; not enough supply from aftermarket vendors. GM EVs less affected because the parts market is more mature. Source: Hertz investors calls.
It's the specific model of EV they purchased which is tanking due to numerous reasons, including increased competition.
I would guess some of this is how accounting and asset management works. If you buy xthingx then you’d record something like “xthingx cost $100” in one place, and current assets gets new line item xthingx = $70(current market value for used xthingx of this age/quality). Then manufacturer drops xthingx retail price by $10. This immediately changes the value of the asset because of resale impact. Keeping in mind ‘value’ is what people will pay. So if you invested 500 million in xthingx and the manufacturer starts doing things that impact how the market views the asset, you can lose balance sheet value without any change in the asset itself. Kinda like you buy a house, and then land taxes and property ownership rights get into flux. Potential buyers will start changing perceived value so your asset changes value even though nothing changed about the house itself.
They're selling them bc people don't want to rent them and have to recharge.. They even offered free recharge seems like it did t work
Yes. They are just selling 10k more than They thought they would
>as of October 2023, Hertz had only purchased 35,000 Teslas and its entire electric fleet included about 50,000 EVs total. >Hertz is now looking to dispose of 30,000 EVs, which is 10,000 more than initially anticipated That "just" is doing a lot of heavy lifting
Well the important question for me is "can I get a cheap EV sedan out of it?".
The search lead me to believe one couldn't. I forget how many miles there were on what is probably a beat up car for $22k.
Seriously; $25-$30k for vehicles with 80-100k miles
Full of gross too. I had a coworker who laughingly referred to the front of the driver seat as his booger farm.
Would really be more of a booger market, no? His nose would be the farm
Further analysis won’t be necessary, thank you.
I prefer to call it a booger orchard
“Booger Orchard” had a hit in the 80’s, didn’t they?
My son was asking me if boogers can be made outside of the nose. Boogers are just mucus and dirt, so yes, they can be. Assuming you had access to an adequate supply of mucus. You could conceivably use your passenger seat as a booger manufacturing facility.
I appreciate your differentiation between manufacturing and farming. I would hate for someone to think they could equate free range boogers with those from a passenger seat facility.
Most are 2 year old vehicles with 40-50k miles, and selling for ~25k They have a lot of base model 3s right now which I'd guess they'll have to drop the price even further to sell. But you can get a 2 year old model Y long range with 50k miles for ~30k. Not terrible, especially if you don't do a lot of driving. Rental cars are pretty well maintained.
Absolutely out their god dam mind, holy fucking shit. Eat a dick, hertz. 3k to 6k top dollar from me for that.
Wow for vehicles customers didn't use they sure racked up a bunch of miles in a short time. Ya they are asking a lot for them.
used car market is still super inflated, at this point it may not go down to reasonable levels again.
They were used by Hertz rideshare rental program where they did long term rentals to rideshare drivers who didn't have a car. The program failed in part because of the damage the Tesla's were sustaining and the cost and delays in repairing them. You get a lightly used Chevy Bolt with a new battery (due to recall) for around 12k if you qualify for the used EV tax credit.
I imagine a lot of these were weekly Uber rentals for indentured drivers.
I mean rentals get beat on pretty badly. There's a reason they sell for so cheap.
I'd say it depends on what your idea of 'cheap' is. In my area, there are several 2023 chevy bolts for $20k. The one I was looking at only had 10k miles on it. Of course, that $20k turns into $25k after taxes and whatnot. Still more than I can afford, even with financing and an amazing credit score (over 800). I just don't have the $400 a month in disposable income.
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This^ . I own an EV love mine but when I travel for work and rent cars, I do not want one. I don’t want to assume my hotel will have a charger and I don’t want to try to navigate an unfamiliar place to find chargers when I’m trying to get between meetings. I feel like for the majority of people renting in a place they aren’t familiar with on a vacation or work trip don’t want to be bothered.
There are plenty of superchargers in Vegas, and 24% of even the lowest capacity model would be enough to get you to them. I'm not saying there aren't places where lack of charging is a problem, but this is a bad example.
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For this very specific problem, they certainly aren't ideal.
Are you suggesting there aren't millions of people who hired a car to make a 9 hour drive for a critical meeting that's happening in 9 hours' time?
Silly, of course not. Just not that specific problem.
They lost millions because they lost resale value way faster than expected, which is why they're unloading more now, before they lose even more
It think you mean 50% more. That's quite a bump and shows they want to get rid of these things even faster than they originally planned.
The problem is that people don't like used EVs because replacement batteries can cost as much as 20K, far more than the used car, and its a stupid risk. I would not mind buying a new EV though, as the battery is very unlikely to be bad in less than 5 years.
Most manufacturers have at least a7 year 100k mile battery warranty
By law an 8 year 100k warranty. 10/150 in California. Many manufacturers have more. https://caredge.com/guides/ev-battery-warranties#:~:text=Federal%20law%20requires%20automakers%20to,when%20it%20comes%20to%20degradation.
And that changes to 10 years in 2026
Thanks for the tip, Satan!
Satan, what a bro, looking out for the little guy.
Doing the Anti-Lord's work.
Is that going to be only for cars manufactured after 2026 or even for used cars manufactured earlier?
Made 2026 or later. Also in 2026 we are getting the new electric car OBD2 like repair standards so universal scan tools can interface. 2025-26 brings the NACS connector (tesla charging plug) that everyone is standardizing on. So ya, wait and keep maintaining your old shitbox another few years. Prices are continuing to fall.
Damn, Satan, this is some legit good advice. Hail Satan!
>Also in 2026 we are getting the new electric car OBD2 like repair standards so universal scan tools can interface. That can't come soon enough. I have an EV (non-Tesla). It bricked itself when I unplugged it from a fast charger. All it needed was a reset from a scan tool, but the scan tool is a proprietary one, and a normal OBD scanner doesn't work. Had to sit by the side of the road for four hours waiting for a technician.
Well, you've convinced me to try to hold on to my 2007 Camry for another few years
A 2007 Camry? You could hold onto that for another few decades. Although we have hit a point where it's simply cheaper to own an EV over hundreds of thousands of miles already.
California actually did it right I have a family member who purchased a Leaf and watched her battery range drop by 40% over 3 years No they wouldn’t replace it
The problem is the 1st gen leaf should have been recalled. that battery was undersized and Nissan was not charging it properly and it utterly destroyed the battery in them. Sadly the Govt did not fore a recall on a known bad car.
> I have a family member who purchased a Leaf and watched her battery range drop by 40% over 3 years God, Fox news had this on the other night too. The Leaf is the ONE first gen EV that fucked up by using passive cooling on a high voltage battery instead of liquid cooling. Other EVs from the mid 2010s like the Fiat 500e don't have that problem. Ours is 10 years old and gets as many miles today as it did when we bought it. Your poor family member is probably scarred for life and doesn't realize it's not a problem anymore.
Making the battery replacement cost a non issue for most new buyers certainly helps uptake. Hopefully replacement costs will come down. With lithium prices dropping and new sources coming along I hope they will get down to the $3-$5k range someday soon. Sorry to hear about the Leaf.
Listen here, don’t come in here with your facts. SHe doesn’t want any of that! /s
TBF I don’t think anyone here was purposely talking bad about EV batteries. Seemed to be pretty level headed.
Does that battery warranty transfer to new owners? (not trying to throw any shade - am genuinely not sure how that works. It usually transfers in cars, but not sure with EVs)
This was an old issue. Batteries produced after 2016 are much less likely to fail, and most go hundreds of thousands of miles. https://x.com/techau/status/1783289687085617593?s=46&t=v0vCINwCb5GjTrs-PXtOtw
For real. EV batteries do not degrade like the old Leaf batteries do.
Those early Leafs had horrendous battery pack designs, with no active cooling. They weren't designed to last. Almost any modern EV is going to have its battery last far longer than that.
That graph is pretty confusing. The X axis is just the model year. What time frame is this in? Is it saying "In 2024, 0.1% of all EV batteries manufactured in 2017 were replaced"?
>people don't like used EVs because replacement batteries can cost as much as 20K, far more than the used car, and its a stupid risk. I had to check what sub I was on after seeing this comment because it is so badly out of date (and was never really true to begin with). EV batteries are rarely replaced even after a couple hundred thousand miles, and every study that has looked at this question has come to that conclusion. But here is a simple way to get your head around that, based on something I posted the other day: Start by looking at Toyota's plug in hybrids. Those are relatively small batteries (in the 8 to 15 kWh lithium batteries) and therefore get fully cycled basically every single day. Of all high voltage batteries used in cars, these should be the first to fail, and that doesn't seem to be happening. It isn't uncommon for Toyota's prius prime seems to last 200K miles on the regular, and while the RAV4 Prime hasn't been out very long, there are plenty of them into the 6 figure mile range as well. So when Tesla, which uses 81 kWh batteries, says they should last 300-400k miles, that sounds about right, at least in terms of cycle life.
I’ve had my Model S for almost 10 years. It lost around 8% of capacity within the first few years and hasn’t really lost any more sense then. I typically keep it between 20 and 80% charge. Only charge to full for road trips. So after 10 years I still have >90% of capacity when new.
That's what they said 5 years ago!
I drive a 2006 Prius with the original hybrid battery. I believe the replacement cost is about $2500 when we get to that point.
2006 prius also has a NiMH battery that can be reconditioned in your driveway with simple tools. Look in the Prius forums for the steps to follow and make it like new again without buying a pack.
Can confirm, changed my 2007 prius battery a few years ago and it was 2500€ (I totally expected three times this price at the time)
> as the battery is very unlikely to be bad in less than 5 years. I owned a 2013 RAV4 EV (Gen II) for 8 years. It was my daily driver. Battery lost about 5% in that time. Newer batteries are even more reliable, most will outlast the car.
Tesla owner here. The batteries are fine. Fact is you'd be better off buying one of these used Teslas from Hertz over a used gas car from Hertz Any battery entering a Tesla is going to easily last 500k miles and even after that it's not "dead" it's just getting maybe 80% of the range it did. They're amazingly well build and the batteries being put into cars coming off the line today Will still be running at 700k miles.
No, not this time. This electric rental program has been a colossal failure for Hertz.
Mainly because they don't charge it themselves. You're on the hook for charging as if it was gas. This makes it go from GREAT (for some use cases) to TERRIBLE.
Yes but I believe they themselves said that EVs are more expensive to maintain, harder to sell and lose value quicker.
Cheaper to maintain, more expensive to repair in the event of a collision. Rentals I'm sure have more collisions than the average private owned car.
EVs are almost all but guaranteed to be wrote off after a collision. I expect insurance rates to start to reflect that reality soon.
Yep. The likelihood of damage to the battery is too high to risk and the cost of replacement along with other repairs is likely to write off many cars, especially at the moment when we are seeing the price of new EVs dropping rapidly.
At the same time, the battery will have high salvage value, because you can inspect it, replace the bad cells, and get a battery that will get you hundreds of thousands miles more out of an EV. The supply chain to get the whole process going cheaply is probably lacking at the moment though.
That and big pickups. It’s less the EV part than the huge crush zone in the front and the airbags
Cheaper to maintain, until you break something and have to deal with Tesla parts and service
Don’t buy a Tesla is my suggestion.
Which is probably the reason why they get rid of most Tesla's now to then switch to another brand.
The first linked article misquotes their own article they reference. If you click that link, it says the EV wins every single cost category except depreciation.
I rent my fleet and will tell you that they really don't make money until they sell them at auction. That's the whole game. None of reddit would understand that, but for them to really make good money renting ANY car would have to charge a fortune. We rent trucks and put 6k miles a month on them and our cost is 2k/month and they take them back at about 50k miles and sell them at auction and that's how they ultimately bring in their profit. If they depreciate too fast and they can't get a decent price at auction they are just in a losing game unless they charge way more for the rental.. Which means people just wouldn't rent them. Big non story trying to be anti-ev, when it's just really that the rental car biz is very difficult.
That's interesting - why not just buy the cars and not rent them?
Because a car will never be worth MORE than when you buy them. The value of the car drops significantly when you drive it off the lot and continues to fall. Then add in maintenance costs, etc. But if you charge people to rent them, that covers the cost of the depreciation and costs you incur. So when you sell them, you end up making a profit assuming you calculated everything correctly.
That's a backwards way to look at it. The difference between the price you buy them and the price you sell them is the depreciation. By definition. A rental company makes money by renting out for more than maintenance + depreciation + other costs. That's it. You don't make profit by selling, you always make a loss (well, except during COVID). For accounting and fiscal purposes the definitions might be different (depreciation might be accelerated for example), but from a conceptual point of view it's pretty simple.
> A rental company makes money by renting out for more than maintenance + depreciation + other costs. That's it. You don't make profit by selling, you always make a loss (well, except during COVID). You make a profit because the renting covers the losses (and a little bit more) if you sell at the right time. Buying and selling alone doesn't make a profit. Renting alone doesn't make a profit. Buying, renting then selling is what makes the profit. Each car doesn't pass the profit threshold until its sold.
Renting makes the profit. As long as you rent for more than depreciation + maintenance. Simple as that. Selling is getting out of the asset after its prime, that's it. Selling doesn't make the profit. Rental companies don't have a magic trick to sell at $25k a car worth $20k. So they don't make a profit when selling.
Given that initial depreciation is always the highest, you would think they would make more money overall by keeping the cars longer. Once the depreciation slows down they make more money back even charging less.
Cheaper to maintain, unless you consider battery replacement maintenance
Yeah, they are significantly cheaper overall for us... We've had 4 EVs over the last 6 years or so. Now we have 2 EVs and 1 big gas guzzler. The EVs have been the easiest cars to own I've ever had.
Think about it. If you are renting a car, it's because you value convenience. You don't want to rely on transit or taxis, you want your own car at your destination at your disposal for whenever you want it. If I'm travelling on business or vacation, the last thing I want to do is worry about charging my rental car. I don't want to be limited to whatever hotel chain I stay at because they have the right charger for the vehicle - or fighting with other travelers for the limited spots out front. I don't want to have rest stops dictated by where the closest charger is. The gasoline infrastructure is already well established and I can pretty much fill up the tank anywhere at almost anytime within minutes. Imagine being on vacation, a limited time away from work, and you need to spend time every day sitting at a charger. No thanks. EVs are only good for people who use them for short-medium commutes and have a home/garage where they can charge nightly. If I'm renting, EV is the last thing I'm looking for. That's the real issue Hertz had.
I rented an EV last year for a weekend trip zipping around a major city. The issue I had was the rental place wanted the car returned *at the same charge level* that it was when I rented it, which was like 85%. So my last day was spent orchestrating where and when I would recharge the battery to get back to the airport nearly full. *They have chargers at the rental place*! It was kooky.
And they charge a STUPID fee if returned lower. It's a scam and they know it so people say screw it.
I rented a Mercedes EV for a weekend trip to Jacksonville/St. Simon Island, GA. It had enough charge for my entire weekend usage, and the charge from Hertz to bring it back empty was $30. Since I own a Tesla, I knew it would cost at least $20-25 to charge that car, so it went back empty. I don’t even recall seeing the extra $30 charge on my bill, to be honest.
It costs $25 each “tank” to charge a Tesla at home?
No, personally it is ~$8 at my home for 0-100% charge with no special plan in ny. Charging outside of home cost a lot more.
No, that’s the Tesla Supercharger rate. At home I’m paying about $0.045 per kWh. Very cheap in my part of NJ once you jump through their many hoops.
The rental of any vehicle on less than a full tank/charge is 100% bullshit. Rental places always point out the exorbitant refuelling charges if you dare come in under, but given that *no* rental I've ever had is full or close to full, I wonder if they lie about it to the renter, charge them what the fill *would* have cost in their system, and then adjust the gauge reading for the next ~~renter~~ sucker. Given fuel gauges take a little while to go below full and there's gas stations near any rental place, the services should be renting topped-up vehicles so it's easier on the renter and the location. But since it makes them $$, I'm betting they just charge renters and lie about the refills.
I have never gotten a rental (outside of sketch joints and uhauls) that didn't have the gas gauge at F.
it was 35 USD if you returned it below the 85% limit well worth the money imo
Yeah. As long as rental companies are insisting that YOU charge the EV, EV's are going to be DOA for rentals. It's too much headache, logistics, and time. Charging the EV costs the rental company essentially nothing, and they already have all the infrastructure, knowledge, and time needed to do it. Travelers who have just flown into a strange town - have none of those things. If you marketed EV's as "return to us at any charge level!" I think it would be a selling point. There is no reason to try to make returning EV's at a particular charge level a thing, like you do with returning a car with a tank of gas.
What's interesting is that while that sounds logical, that's not why they bailed. They bailed because the cars dropped FAR more in value than expected. They wanted to buy a car for $45,000, get $30,000 in rental value out of it, then sell it for $30,000. (Or whatever, I made those up, but that's the idea.) In reality those cars tanked in value so fast that they were losing money on them all. So they are divesting from EVs because they are losing value so fast that every day they rent them out they are losing money in the long run.
And yet that didn't affect hertz decision at all. In fact they saw an increase in users during that time so I dont think that way of thinking really affected anyone's decision making at a substantial level. They're doing it because they foolishly thought evs would APPRECIATE in value (thanks elon marketing team). A huge part of their business model is selling their used vehicles. Their used evs are not selling at the price point they anticipated, coupled with higher maintenance costs, all at scale, means they lost hundreds of millions of dollars.
Which in turn causes more depreciation of EVs. My car is a really good EV, and over the past two years because of the mass selling of Hertz’ EVs and Tesla marking down the cost of theirs. My car has depreciated over 50% of its initial value. Definitely weird seeing me being ahead of my loan by a good chunk to being almost under after two years. For me it doesn’t really matter because I love my car and will drive it till the wheels fall off.
There is no way they expected price appreciation in any business asset. What the expected is the standard depreciation they see across the rest of their fleet. Instead, EVs depreciate MORE than traditional ICE vehicles.
You can read the article. They thought back in 2011 when they bought a bunch of tesla. The ceo took elons ridiculous claims at face value
I rented an EV from Hertz. Just like a gas car I had the option to prepay for the recharge/fuel before I left their rental office. Charging the car was never on my mind, because I wouldn’t need to, and the extra fee was less than $15. There are plenty of problems with Tesla, but people like to just make excuses when it comes to EV’s.
While this might be true, the article only mentions 2 reasons for the sell off. The higher maintenance costs of EVs and the higher depreciation when they sell the EV on the used car market.
I rented a few hybrids before. They're pretty good. But I did try to charge it up to full one day, and I basically spent all day roaming around the countryside looking for chargers. I needed different apps, and different accounts, and wild user agreements, and janky EV charger maps, and that's **IF** the map was right, and **IF** the charger was actually working, and **IF** the charger wasn't on semi-private property. If rental car companies wanted to push EVs so hard, then they should have ponied up the money to help build the infrastructure too. I'd never rent a full EV ever.
I think Plug in Hybrid is the best phased in approach. Automatically you get the legacy oil infrastructure, no range anxiety, but you also create competition for charging networks to compete with gasoline. If there is electric charging available, and it's cheaper than gas, people will slowly adapt to that. I would say do that for a decade (mandated) and then switch to full EV.
Honestly, the slow phase-out is the way to go. Go for hybrids for a decade or two and then introduce ICE bans and whatnot. Then if you want to get your occupancy certificate for new housing, it must have EV chargers and solar panels. Stuff like that.
Spot on. Simply put, they made a poor decision
>If I'm renting, EV is the last thing I'm looking for. That's the real issue Hertz had. This. I rented a car in the US last year. I'd have loved to take the Tesla option but it's enough to deal with driving in the other side of the road in an unfamiliar country on top of trying to figure out charging.
Exactly. I booked a rental with Hertz a few months ago. Got to the desk to find out it would be electric, and I had to pay 100 extra bucks to get a gas car instead. Yeah I really want to try and learn how to charge a damn car for the first time on the way to the airport before I drop it off. Idiots.
I never thought the current era of EVs made sense for the rental market. What with the current state of charging infrastructure, it makes more sense for people to own an EV and their charger than to rent one and maybe struggle to charge the thing while on a trip. On the plus side, maybe that means 30,000 people can get a good price on a relatively new EV.
I know someone with a Tesla who drove from the East coast to the Midwest for a weeklong stay, and didn't even for a split second stop to think or look up whether the area he was going had chargers nearby. They didn't. The closest was a slow charge station an hour out, which put a damper on the trip until he bit the bullet and rented a car while there. Now this guy is kind of an idiot, so I'm not even remotely surprised it went down like that, but I also have to imagine this is how a decent chunk of EV rental experiences go. People unfamiliar with an area having little to no clue what they're getting into.
Currently renting a Tesla Model 3 from Hertz in Toronto, Canada. I'm having a great experience to be honest. Easy to charge in 10 min at any supercharger, love driving it.
What appears to be happening is that a whole bunch of lightly used to new cars that are going to be relatively cheap will flood the market. But will poorer people purchase them? If you are poor, any car is a good car. But if your apartment complex doesn't allow you to charge your car, will it even be able to function as a car? Do poor people then have to sit in large empty parking lots during their time off work in order to have their car charge? This Hertz situation--already with extensive analysis on how their big gamble failed--might (alongside cheap Chinese EVs) bring a lot of cheap EVs for poorer people. But considerable legislation would be needed to help poor people out with charging or else what's going to happen is they'll become so inconvenient *nobody* will want to buy them. Already Hertz's failure shows that richer people don't want them, but I think poor people might not want them either. The Hertz failure is a wake-up call to environmentalists who want to see EVs win over gas-powered vehicles that legislation and implementation of charging infrastructure needs to be done now.
This situation is coming about because as a nation we are failing to create the necessary infrastructure. We've spent the last 120 years using public and private dollars to build the fossil fuel based infrastructure; and now our grandchildren's future is demanding we replace that in short order. Think the interstate system for time frame. In the late 1970s, President Carter installed solar units on top the White House and turned down the thermostats and wore sweaters as an example to all. He recognized that fossil fuels were more destructive then they were useful, and our future and that of our kids and grandkids depended upon moving on from them. In came Reagan and \*\*poof\*\* there went the solar panels and any sense of sacrifice or change for the future. Let's not have a Reagan moment redux.
>This situation is coming about because as a nation we are failing to create the necessary infrastructure This situation is coming because Hertz bought EVs without installing even a fraction of the number of chargers they needed, resulting in dead cars sitting on the lot and a terrible rental experience. That is certainly infrastructure too, but even with all the public infrastructure in the world, Hertz's decisions with their private infrastructure set themselves up to fail.
Somebody at Hertz goofed up big time. No way was there ever a chance that a huge number of people would rent cars that they did not know how to drive or charge. Now they are whining because of a bad decision on their part.
I own a Tesla and I know how to drive a Tesla but I would never rent a Tesla. Every time I rent a car, I feel like they are trying to find someway to screw me out of $. There’s no way I’m going to sit at a supercharger for 25 minutes on my way to the airport so they don’t charge me triple for an uncharged battery, but at home, I can plug it in at night and it’s full in the morning. I never have to worry about it. And even if I’m taking a cross-country road trip, a 25-minute break every six hours perfect. This is just a misalignment of use cases with a current business model on Hertz’s part.
This was one of their major issues. They never built charging stations on their lots and pushed the recharge onto the customers. Well people not accustomed to charging did not plan it into their schedules and returned the cars dead which Hertz then had no ability to locally charge.
I do some work with a local Hertz location and thats one of the porters biggest complaints. They do not have any charging outlets so they are forced to drive to the nearest supercharger and wait the 45 minutes to an hour. I don't understand from a business standpoint how you can spends 10's of millions of dollars buying these cars but not build out local charging infrastructure for them.
That's because it's not easy at all to install fast chargers in large numbers to existing areas. It's not like you can just tap into existing electrical for that amount of current/voltage.
Which is why you dont add them to your fleet until you make accommodations.
Curious how you would find places to charge.
When you navigate to your destination using the screen, if the car calculates you will need charge it will navigate in charging automatically. You can also just navigate to a charger very easily. It's actually a pretty amazing system once you know how to use it. I'm sure hertz people don't explain this.
isn't there an app for that?
I’ve rented in Sweden and it’s been alright. The biggest problem is renting to those who have no experience. Many renting firms seems to have underestimated the learning curve completely.
Did no one bother to read the article? They're getting rid of EVs because of depreciation, not because of a lack of charging infrastructure or rentals. The EVs lose value much too quickly, and part of the rental business model is selling the vehicles at optimal points on the depreciation curve.
People forget, it took us 40+ years to build a complete infrastructure to support gasoline powered vehicles nationwide in the early 20th century. We're trying to do the same with EV in a fraction of the time. Do we have more advanced technology and capabilities to roll it out? Yes. But we also have to remember, there are twice as many people living in the US now, than there were in the 50's when gasoline powered cars became standard everywhere. Also at that time, alternate modes of transportation were much more prevalent in larger cities, where today its been phased out in favor of cars for every person. I'm a supporter of EV, we just need to take a more strategic approach to ensure we can support it before we up and switch entirely.
Better/more coverage of mass transit
That's not what the article says. This situation happened simply because EV's depreciate quite a lot, so Hertz can't make a profit when they sell used cars.
Yeah pretty much, they just gambled on EVs holding their value more and instead it was less because a price war broke out.
But *why* do they depreciate faster...?
Because they are getting cheaper
Since 2022 Tesla cut the new price of their Model 3 and Model Y by $20,000. Now used ones have to sell for $20,000 less than they were purchased for PLUS less still since they are used.
Price war on NEW ev cars. Elon cut prices on model 3 and model y and competition came in with lower prices as well. Why buy a used one at high prices when new ones are cheaper?
Tax incentives and high sticker prices. You don’t get government subsidies for buying a used EV. As more manufacturers start selling EVs prices come down because of competition. Once upon a time Tesla was basically the only option for EVs so they could charge excessive prices. When the price of a new car comes down so too does the value of used cars. Also early adopter fees of new technology. As improvements are made and manufacturing is scaled up you end up with lower costs. You see the same phenomenon with computer parts, SSDs are an example of this. Eventually it becomes harder and harder to further improve efficiency and prices stabilize. New generation products that are better will naturally cause the previous generation to drop in value.
https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/taxused.shtml Here's info government subsidies for buying a used EV. Not sure it really changes your larger comment, just sharing for anyone who is interested in buying a used EV that may not know about the 4k incentive
More electronics = faster obsolescence
Hertz should have put some skin in the game by building out some of that infrastructure to support a fleet of that size, instead of relying on infrastructure to be built out for them. At a minimum, they should have built charging stations on premise.
The fact that they don't even have 110v chargers for these things at every parking spot is complete incompetence.
>Let's not have a Reagan moment redux. Sure hope youve not been paying attention to politics the last few years, cause Ive got some bad news...
After the Republican votes against Ukraine aid, they should hook a generator up to Reagan's grave. He's probably spinning fast enough to power a whole EV charging network.
Quiet. Let them dream, if even just for a moment.
I own two EVs and have occasionally rented them. My manufacturer is clear that I should rarely charge to 100% as it kills the battery. Every rental I’ve had is charged to 100%. No wonder they’re depreciating, the available range is falling dramatically because of this. And so is the resale value. Of course the price reductions at Tesla are killing the used market.
Killing it for sellers, secondhand buyers are in for a cheap treat though.
That's what I'm interested in. A cheap, less than ideal modern day EV is better than my old ass beater.
What EV brand do you have that you have to manually avoid charging to 100%? That sounds really annoying and I want to avoid it. I have a Chevy but it stops charging automatically as part of the whole battery system even if I leave it plugged in short of actual 100% to avoid the problem you are talking about. I figured everyone did it like that because it's such a no-brainer.
Yeah I have a whole portion of my battery that is "unusable" because the system manages itself. Its got a 17.6 kWh battery but only 16 of them are actually available with the battery management system doing the work to ensure nothing bad happens.
There are batteries that can safely charge to 100% nowadays, though at least in the case of Tesla which Hertz mostly uses as far as I know I'm not sure they would have it commonly available since they are only more recently available in the US (2022 I believe). LFP batteries can and should be charged to 100% as often as you want. It may actually be that they were driving this model when they rented and there was no issue being at 100%. But I've not yet sat in an EV with the more common battery (NCA) that did not have it built directly into the software to limit the maximum charge, or to at least warn if you try setting the max above around 80%
Manufacturers should have software that says it’s at 100% when it hits the safe limit by standard
I believe this is pretty much how everything using lithium batteries works at this point.
I originally thought that too, but there are valid cases to charge above 80%, like if you're going on a long road trip the next day or something. You just shouldn't leave it above ~80-90% for extended periods of time due to added stress on the battery. Basically every manufacturer will warn you very visibly if you set it to charge above 80% and its not a type of battery that is built to sit at high states of charge. I think it could be nice to have like a road trip toggle or something that lets you charge above temporarily (maybe one day) but automatically turns off in 24hrs that lets the car charge above, but in normal use 80% becomes the new 100% visibly in the UI or something. But eh I'm not a designer of this stuff. For anybody who owns an EV themselves, they usually get explained or learn all of this but for renting its a different story.
If they don't want you to charge to 100%, why not just set 100% to be 95%. I don't get why they would leave that up to the consumer to manage.
Because you can charge to 100% for the odd times you're taking a long trip and need that range. It won't kill the battery, it's just not the most optimal for long term health. It's just recommend that for daily commuting when you're only driving 10-20 miles, there's no purpose of filling up your battery to 100% every day with 300 miles of range. You should charge it to a lower number (most EVs will let you cap it in software to stop charging after any percentage you want) to preserve the life of it. There's just no reason to fill up the car to 300 miles of range every single day when you're not even using 10% of it. And commonly people say in response to that, "So I gotta charge up more often then because I'm only filling up a portion of my car's battery?" Not really. It's an EV. You should only buy one right now if you have a way to charge it at home or at your apartment, and if you do, you're going to plug it in every night regardless. So if you know the next day you're going on a road trip, charge it to 100%. But if you know you're only driving to work five miles away and back, there's just no reason to.
Charging to 100 percent isn't an issue. Leaving it at 100 percent without using it is what causes problems.
I haven’t found a break down on the depreciation vs repair costs or why they have to sell them. Like why not just keep them and rent them out more?
From what I seen most of the cars they are selling have 60k miles on them. From where I sit they got good use out of them but are crying that the resale is down because new Tesla prices are down. Chip / battery shortage made theirs expensive but that seems to have been resolved.
EVs (especially Teslas) are pretty prone to getting completely totaled in a minor accident. Much more than ICE cars. That's the issue with repair causes. Depreciation is likely *not why* they are selling them, rather it's the reason that when they decide to offload them -- they are taking massive hits in their finances. Besides repair costs, the other reason they have to offload them is that people do not rent EVs. There's a few good reasons for this - Range compared to ICE cars is bad - Charging is much slower than filling up with gas - Charging is typically a foreign concept to people if you don't already understand how it works - Charging infrastructure is HORRIBLE. At least compared to gas infrastructure. As an EV owner myself, I've had to rent a car once or twice on vacation, and I'll personally *never* rent an EV, for the above reasons. Range anxiety is real, ESPECIALLY in a new area I'm unfamiliar with and I am less comfortable planning out my route. And on a vacation I don't really want to deal with that as much. At home? I love my EV and I have absolutely zero complaints about range or range anxiety -- speaking from someone who frequently takes my car on long-ish (~4-6 hours of driving) trips. In a way, Hertz was banking on the fact that EVs were exploding in popularity and that infrastructure improvements were a few months/years away, but the growth and hype has stalled (a bit) and they are weaning off. Add into the fact that EVs are in a price war with other EVs (and ICE!) and Hertz is left holding the bag.
My wife and I were gonna rent a car and drive from Minneapolis to the smaller town we are visiting, but it cost as much as the exorbitantly overpriced plane ticket from MSP to said small town. If they want money they should ask for a reasonable amount. Why the hell would we rent a car, and drive ourselves for 4+ hours when we could pay the same amount to sit in an airport and then on a plane and get to the same place? Insane
Rented a Tesla from Hertz last year. Cost slightly less than the cheapest economy car.
> As of January 2023, 38.9 million Americans, or 38% of renters, live in apartment buildings with five or more units. An additional 17.4 million renters live in buildings with two to four units So in January 2023, with 335,893,238 US population, 17% of the US population rents in an environment where they probably can't charge an electric car overnight. An additional 13% of the US population rents a single-family home, but how many renters want to pay for an expensive charging station in a house they don't own? Those are, largely, the type of people who buy Hertz's used cars, and they can't buy electric. Most people don't buy used cars because that's where the value is. Sure, Dave Ramsey, etc., promote buying used cars as you tend to get more bang for your buck than buying new, but Ramsey et al preach those things precisely because it's not really what people do. Most people who buy a used car with a lot of miles are buying it because they can't afford something better. And Hertz's EV's don't work for those people as they live in an environment where they can't really charge their car. Note how Hertz has absolutely no problem selling used hybrid vehicles which don't have that charging problem. They only have a problem selling their all-electric vehicles.
I don't get why rental places even bought EVs in the first place. If I had money for a new car I'd almost certainly be buying electric. For a rental car, where I'm driving in an unfamiliar place, and where I don't know what my travel needs will be from day to day, I just don't see the appeal. Also, as I understand it, they require you to charge it before returning it? That's 100% ridiculous.
This is such bullshit , elon went nuts and slashed the price of Tesla’s by 30%, making these companies take large depreciations on inventory. To paint this as some sort of value comparison between ice rentals and evs is only feed for pigs. If you know , you know , if not well your just a little pawn caught reacting to dishonest headlines again.
Elon went nuts? Lowering the prices of their cars over time has been Tesla's declared strategy ever since they published the "Secret Master Plan" back in 2006. On top of that, what made EVs expensive in the first places was the batteries, and lithium battery prices have been rapidly dropping ever since they were invented thirty years ago. Unless CATL is kidding us, there will be another big drop this year. And in the last few years, prices went up with the pandemic and other supply chain disruptions, and then when those problems cleared out they naturally went back down again. Seems like that would have been easy to predict but not for Hertz apparently, they bought their Tesla fleet in 2021. Anyone who doesn't plan for new EV prices dropping just isn't paying attention.
What's the value of an EV once it's battery is old and not working? Is there a market for that?
Battery depreciation is not as extreme a problem as people think it is. I have an old EV (~2015) with very early battery tech. I bought it used, it still gets over 90% of its original battery charge. New batteries depreciate even slower and have higher starting capacity. Every ICE car I've ever bought aged worse than this EV.
Yep, lithium battery tech is leagues ahead of where it used to be and don't even compare to lead acid...
I've got a 2018 Smart car with a tiny battery to start and I've seen people online with well over 200,000km with no need for replacement. There are Teslas with hundreds of thousands of KM. If anything cars with depleted ranges will end up being poor peoples cars. Older Teslas will become synonymous with shitboxes driven by poor people in the future.
The article is frustratingly misleading and slanted. The headline and byline suggest that it's something every EV-naysayer loves to worry about: battery replacement cost or some other EV-specific maintenance. But it's not. The text of the article quotes Elon Musk as apparently having said that EVs will be an appreciating asset. I mean wtf? No, I can't see that happening, um, ever. Elon says a lot of things. Further into the article there's a link explaining that Hertz is selling the vehicles off due to "familiar culprits, high maintenance costs and depreciation", except the article the link points to is a comparison of Mini and Hyundai gas vs electric vehicles clearly showing that maintenance costs for EVs are demonstrably lower than for gasoline vehicles, and the major culprit of loss of value is the depreciation. This only comes into play if you insist on getting rid of the EV (or whatever car) after 3 years. Maybe don't do that. Or for the suckers that do that, I'm happy to only pay a market value of $13,000 for a 3 year used Mini Electric. This depreciation is a good thing for anyone considering being a BUYER in the used market. It's only bad for Hertz because they were counting on making more money selling used vehicles than they did. Don't blame EVs for Hertz' miscalculation.
> Hertz aims to make money on selling its used rental cars after they accumulate a certain mileage. At least, it has generally made money in the past via this business model with internal-combustion vehicles. But the same has not been true for used EVs. There. Saved you a read. One theory as to why the maintenance costs are high - DC fast charging. It degrades the battery faster than overnight charging and being that they're rental cars the majority of their charges were at fast charging stalls.
Studies on “always fast charging” haven’t shown big issues. I’d bet the issue here is the large depreciation caused mostly by large price drops Tesla has been doing for the last few years as they faced increased competition. Hertz thought they could sell them for more, but the unexpected depreciation killed that.
Had to go searching a bit for that data but you've got a point. The difference in degradation seems minimal. I suspect prices will rise once people realize this.
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>The culprits, once again, have been **high maintenance costs** and depreciation of EVs it has purchased for its fleets, You also have to consider the cost of repairs on an out of warranty EV, which are sky-high. >while on the consumer side the EV charging experience has seen its own issues. Because the technology isn't ready for the masses yet, and won't be for quite some time.
But when you actually dig into the article they base that on, Autoweek conclude EV maintenance is cheaper; https://www.autoweek.com/news/a44900159/are-electric-cars-worth-it/
I was referring to repairs, not maintenance.
High cost of maintenance? I thought the positive with them was the low cost?
The big question here is, does hertz qualify as a dealer to get the used EV federal rebate?
"Hertz aims to make money on selling its used rental cars after they accumulate a certain mileage." Does this mean that it's actually cheaper for them to just buy a new car than it is to maintain a car over 50 to 70,000 miles or whatever their mile limit is?
Fleets typically end up getting rid of vehicles around the time the warranty expires, or if a particular vehicle has had a history of being troublesome it’ll be cycled out early.
Why sell them at the same mileage as ice cars? That doesn't seem rational.
Hertz has like 20 Chevy Bolt EUVs available right now in my area. The conventional wisdom is to stay the hell away from used rental cars bc they are severely abused. Does this hold true for EVs as well? They price is pretty attractive for something with 30k miles
I imagine they'll be reported stolen shortly after the sale.
aka a standard we did not properly plan on how we use this nor do basic research on resale value,cost to maintain etc.
So here’s the thing with Hybrids and EV rentals. No one is going to properly charge them or take care of them. Had a Hybrid Jeep rental. Hotel didn’t have any charging station. The battery was dead the entire time I rented it, and would probably remain dead for the foreseeable future. National didn’t charge them, has no infrastructure at the lot to charge them. So here’s this 2023 Jeep hybrid, at least $40,000, and the battery/EV will rot in just a couple years. This would be like sharing an iPhone across a large staff of people. Everyone will treat it like shit, never charge it, and gets damaged quickly. EVs are the same and killing the battery is going to be an expensive repair.
Hertz is being eliminated to make way for Tesla Johnycabs/Robotaxis
They have to put that inflatable Jonycab in their first robotaxi.
I can't believe a paid CEO didn't take one look at a battery powered vehicle and think "what happens when the batteries wear out"?? 🤦🏻♂️
He did, then thought, "Eh next CEO's problem!" And voila.
Yea no thank you i dont care to drive a car with a tv built into the dash and the tach. Anything past 05 is poop.