And they’re not even doing that. Only dumping a portion of the fleet. Based on some other articles on the subject it’s unclear what the actual number is. They say “dumping a third of its fleet… totaling 20K vehicles”. Is their fleet 20K and they’re dumping a third of that, or is the fleet 60K?
All of this complication would apply to general ownership of an EV and not just to rentals. Outside of the coastal, left-wing enclaves the slow rentals and sales of EV’s compared to the marketing estimates is due to many, but not all of course, people not wanting to bother with EVs.
People are also reacting to reliability problems with EVs
As for me, if and when I come to replace my venerable 15-year-old car, I will certainly not buy an EV. I Will buy a reliable gasoline engine car. These cars have over 100 years of improvements by manufacturers.
Regarding the fraction of the EV fleet Hertz is selling see this article. And that is for the first round. Their experience may require further major reductions.
You are missing the point. It’s one thing to deal with the initial complication when you will be driving the car daily for years, it’s different when you’ll be driving the car for only a couple days.
You know I agree with you about EVs in general. But in this case there are two distinct user bases. I can see even happy EV owners not wanting to rent a random EV when traveling.
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In the same vein, I could consider an EV as my next car for driving around town. Don’t need huge range, won’t worry about public charging costs and availability. But for family car for doing road trips, at present, I’d likely go with gas-powered car for convenience and cost.
For rental, I don’t think I’d rent an EV. Because I’ve never used one. I don’t have accounts with charging networks, don’t know issues with public charger availability, and don’t care to learn all that stuff the hard way while on vacation or business. And besides, cost of charging on the road is often worse than refueling gasoline cars.
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You mean Hertz overestimated the demand for EVs, not cars, correct?
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Wow! That’s a shock. No wonder they’re being pushed by Big Utility and Big Govt.
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It’s not always the case.
WaPo found that for a Trip Detroit-Miami using level 3 chargers (the only ones somewhat close in recharging time to a gas refueling), Chevy Bolt cost $169 to make the trip vs $142 for gasoline-powered Toyota Camry.
But for a shorter trip (400 miles across CA), L3 charging was somehow more affordable than gasoline for these same 2 cars. Maybe this was also due to the very high gas prices in CA compared to on the way from MI to FL. That and/or cheaper charging due to bigger charging network in CA.
Still my take home was that public charging is not a very clear cost saver currently so I wouldn’t overweigh that in my car buying decision.
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Trump’s political fortunes have been Making DWAC Great Again. DWAC is the spac associated with Trump’s media businesses, which is trying to go public via a merger.
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That’s spot-on. A lot of places don’t have great charging infrastructure. I will do the Hertz EV manager’s specials if I know it’s going to be convenient (e.g. free charging at the hotel or work site) and I’m not driving terribly far, but it’s just adding pain if you’re doing a very long drive.
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The engine tech has 100 years of improvements, but so do most of the rest of the car parts, including the suspension, wheels, steering, etc.
I think that EVs are marketed for the environment is kind of selling it short. The real benefit is that there’s fewer things to break. You don’t have to worry about fuel pumps, radiators, oil changes, transmissions, belts, etc. Depending on the type, you may not have to worry about vacuum lines or hydraulics.
And while it’s a personal preference, most of these cars have instant acceleration, are quiet, and no gear shifting. You can precondition them in a sealed garage without any emissions or smells, and can just leave them running in the winter to return to a warm car. Also, for the winter, they heat up instantly or close to instantly usually, which is also convenient.
Where they kinda suck is public charging and distance driving. If you can treat them like a golf cart that can go 85, they work great. It’s not that you can’t make the distance driving work, but you have to plan around the charging.
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That’s a good perspective. The biggest knock against EVs is how they’re being shoved on us as the climate solution. The problems being that 1) rightly or wrongly a large chunk of people don’t buy that there is a climate crisis, 2) even larger chunks of people don’t like change being forced on them, and 3) a yet even larger chunk of people can see how it isnt the solution it’s being sold as.
If they’d let acceptance grow organically as the technology develops, I doubt there’d be anywhere near the pushback. At worst the objectors simply wouldn’t care.
One thing I have read is that EVs chew up tires on a fraction of their expected lifespan. Where do tires come from?
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Why is that? My only guess is that the early adopters have a need… a need for speed. And acceleration. I would be surprised if the weaker EVs like the Leaf have this problem.
Instant torque is harder from a mechanical perspective. It’s similar to what you get in a TDI hot hatch on the low end.
Torque plus weight is what I’ve read.
I feel like that’s just marketing. Want to drive a car using energy derived from coal? Hard to do that with anything but an EV. Want to go extreme prepper and live off the grid and the land? Way easier to do that by generating your own power.
The weight is typically less than a truck. An F-150 is more than say, a Chevy Bolt or a Tesla Model 3, and you don’t often hear about those trucks tearing up tires.
They also have much beefier tires to begin with. Compare similar tire size, and the EVs are 10-20% heavier.
I dont know, that’s just the reasoning I’ve seen. I’m guessing it’s those two factors working together.
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Hertz pays the price for their idiotic woke move to EV‘s. Notice they say that EV’s have higher repair cost than gasoline engine cars
Hertz, in reporting an adjusted loss of $1.36 per share, wider than the $0.76 loss expected, was saddled with losses stemming from its decision to sell 20,000 Teslas, representing a third of its EV fleet. Hertz said last month it would take a $245 million charge from the sale of those cars due to high depreciation costs, in addition to higher costs for repairs for EVs, which dragged on the bottom line.
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I’d also bold the high-depreciation costs part. I don’t know how it compares to the usual depreciation costs for ICE vehicles but if it was mentioned in that piece, I assume it’s higher than normal for EVs. Meaning, EVs not keeping their values are a thing to consider both for rental fleets and for consumers.
The collision/repair part is a bit puzzling to me though. When I’m renting a car, either I take their insurance (and they should set it at a price that covers their statistical costs) or I use my insurance and I pay them back for repairs and loss of use if I damage the car. So why is this part way more costly than anticipated? Even if EVs have more accidents than ICEs, isn’t that an insurance premium vs. cost issue on their side?
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I do not think they mean cost to repair after a collision. I think the article means that EVs are more likely to have non-collision mechanical problems, and/or those problems are more expensive to repair.
Edit. This article addresses the repair/depreciation cost comparison
Hertz said the company found that repairing damage to an electric car can cost around twice as much as fixing similar issues on a comparable internal-combustion-engine vehicle. Routine maintenance, however, costs less, the company said. EVs don’t need oil changes and are generally simpler to maintain than internal-combustion vehicles.
Tesla’s barrage of price cuts over the last year hasn’t done Hertz any favors, either. When Hertz made its Tesla announcement, Elon Musk chimed in to say that he wasn’t going to offer a bulk discount.
“The MSRP declines in EVs over the course of 2023, driven primarily by Tesla, have driven the fair market value of our EVs lower as compared to last year, such that a salvage creates a larger loss and, therefore, greater burden,” Scherr said.
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