Hertz replacing 20k EVs with gas vehicles.

A coupla things: The Teslas Hertz is offloading are not a stellar deal. Out here Hertz is listing '22 base and LR Model 3's with 70-90k miles for 24-28 large. The same vehicle but a year or two older with 25-40k miles are showing up on Craigs for 2-3k bucks more. I am not buying a used rental car for anything close to market when I know exactly how I drive a rental. I don't imagine most people tend to drive the E36 M3 out of rentals but there is that sub-set of miscreants out there...

About two years ago, I rented a Tesla Model 3 base out of Baltimore for a day meeting in Pax River. This was a spur of the moment decision because, why not? I hadn't driven one more than a blast up and down 101 in Morgan Hill, CA in a friends P90s so I thought this would be fun. It was. Mostly. There was a Supercharger at the place we ate but I wasn't able to get as much charge as I wanted for the 90 mile return trip resulting in the typical out of gas concern we get when there's 50 miles to go and you know you have 52 miles of gas.

Fun car and I thought it would a blast to own one but my commuting/day trip/trip model doesn't really support one. For the delta in cost I can drive a desirable ICE car for about 20 years and not have to worry about where I'm gonna fill up. And my driving privilege would probably suffer with my leadfoot...

Keith Tanner said:

SV reX said:

It also wouldn't surprise me if they have more accidents with Teslas than other cars. Every single person who rents them is unfamiliar with the controls and has to go through a learning curve. That equates to distractions while driving. 

And they've got massive acceleration - who's not going to exploit that as much as possible? I'd love to see a breakdown of the sort of accidents they had. 

I'd be curious how many of those were "hit in the back because the cruise control was hallucinating obstacles that weren't there". At least that was my experience when I rented a Model Y.

I probably would rent another one, but only after I made sure that any hotels I stay at have destination chargers. 

BoxheadTim said:

Keith Tanner said:

SV reX said:

It also wouldn't surprise me if they have more accidents with Teslas than other cars. Every single person who rents them is unfamiliar with the controls and has to go through a learning curve. That equates to distractions while driving. 

And they've got massive acceleration - who's not going to exploit that as much as possible? I'd love to see a breakdown of the sort of accidents they had. 

I'd be curious how many of those were "hit in the back because the cruise control was hallucinating obstacles that weren't there". At least that was my experience when I rented a Model Y.

I probably would rent another one, but only after I made sure that any hotels I stay at have destination chargers. 

The 392 Scat-Pack Challenger I rented did the exact same thing.  Dash lit up and it automatically panic stopped - for a few seconds and then all was fine.  This was in Mexico (the real Mexico not the "Mexico" YouTubers film races in) and my colleague in the passenger seat freaked out.  So that hallucinating is not limited to EVs.  I probably could have turned that off but didn't have time or patience to figure all that out in the airport garage.  It's one of the reasons I don't especially care for new cars.

I think Mazda actually had a recall for phantom braking. 

Datsun240ZGuy said:

I rented a Suburban in Minneapolis this week and there's always a learning curve as you hustle out of the rental garage.  I'm sure as mentioned electric can be a challenge.

This. I rent quite a bit while on travel, various cities in the US and overseas. Look, I have 7 cars of various generations and makes and countries (Porsche, Toyota, Mazda, VW, others) so I'm used to having different controls doing different things. But as you note, when I get whatever car they give me (invariably something I've never used before), the first 5-10 minutes are figuring out where the controls are, how to operate the nav system and so on - while I'm trying to get out of a 4th floor garage designed like a maze, into airport traffic patterns, in a place I've never been. 

So yeah, I can see that there could be some issues jumping into a Tesla (or some other EVs) for the first time - and a lot of the populace is a lot more clueless about cars in general than most of us here (SWMBO included, lol). I remember when my realtor came by years ago with her brand new BMW i3 and said "go take it for a drive, I know you love BMWs!" while she talked to my wife. 3-4 minutes later I was still sitting there trying to figure out how to turn it on and put it in "drive" haha. 

Toyman! said:

I'm curious if the repair costs are from damage or maintenance. 

 

A buddy of mine has a Tesla, and somebody backed into them and cracked the front bumper cover. Repair cost was in line with any other fairly new car for a new cover and paint.

In reply to Brett_Murphy (Agent of Chaos) :

They also autocalibrate their sensors, so you don't need all the ADAS setup folderol like you do with an F150. I suspect parts supply was a bigger problem - and the resale value drop was the biggest problem for the accountants.  

This is another business case study on different products being actually different. Same reason McDonald's would lose a lot of money and then eventually give up if they suddenly started making burritos (ahem, chipotle).

A gas powered rental car and an electric powered rental car seem similar enough, like hamburgers and burritos, but there are clearly many pieces of the hertz business model that are very refined to and work only with gas powered cars. 

I think an electric rental car could work great. But I also can see why hertz is having serious trouble doing it. 

I just bought a 2023 car with no Nannie's.  It could end up a unicorn.

Im not surprised by the higher repair costs. Everyone keeps telling me they are cheaper to maintain, what they mean is they are cheaper to maintain in theory. Its similar to when people would say Rotaries have less parts so they should be cheaper to maintain. ive seen some bonkers estimates for EVs and hybrids. I know many have had good luck and I hope they continue to, but Ive seen enough to not be interested.

FWIW, I discovered the other day that Model 3 Performances are dipping under $30k.

In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :

They still get the full federal tax credit so they're an abnormal deal right now. But they're the pre-refresh ones, there's no Performance Highland (yet). Supply of new ones will dry up quickly. 
 

edit: Tesla shows 0 in inventory. So there are no more new ones. 

In reply to Keith Tanner :

This is used ones with 80k miles.

About eight months ago they had a floor of $55k used.

Keith Tanner said:

In reply to Brett_Murphy (Agent of Chaos) :

They also autocalibrate their sensors, so you don't need all the ADAS setup folderol like you do with an F150. I suspect parts supply was a bigger problem - and the resale value drop was the biggest problem for the accountants.  

Are you sure? A buddy had a minor accident in his 2022ish Model 3 that damaged the bumper cover and rear quarter. Just over $14k to repair. He was told that if he had the poorly named Full Self Driving the repair would have taken another week and several more $kilodollars to set up the sensors.

paddygarcia said:

Keith Tanner said:

In reply to Brett_Murphy (Agent of Chaos) :

They also autocalibrate their sensors, so you don't need all the ADAS setup folderol like you do with an F150. I suspect parts supply was a bigger problem - and the resale value drop was the biggest problem for the accountants.  

Are you sure? A buddy had a minor accident in his 2022ish Model 3 that damaged the bumper cover and rear quarter. Just over $14k to repair. He was told that if he had the poorly named Full Self Driving the repair would have taken another week and several more $kilodollars to set up the sensors.

I am, that came from a friend who works at Tesla when I asked him about it specifically. They're not even calibrated from the factory, they autocalibrate on the initial drive. And all cars have the FSD hardware and sensor package that can be turned on anytime with a software upgrade, so FSD would not increase repair costs. I think your friend either misunderstood or was given bad information.

Good to know that the repair was just expensive and not super-stupid expensive

In reply to Toyman! :

I laughed out loud when I heard this on Bloomberg radio the other day.  Last summer I had a Polestar rented from Hertz for our visit to San Diego.  Upon arrival at the counter I was told by the agent that the car came with no charging cord because people were stealing them. 

She then spent the next few minutes telling me how terrible they were and I ultimately rented a Grand Cherokee instead.

I don't know how they expected to succeed with these if their own people didn't support the effort.

Brett_Murphy (Agent of Chaos) said:

Toyman! said:

I'm curious if the repair costs are from damage or maintenance. 

 

A buddy of mine has a Tesla, and somebody backed into them and cracked the front bumper cover. Repair cost was in line with any other fairly new car for a new cover and paint.

It stops about there. You go in any deeper, and the price escalates to silly pretty quickly. Plus, Tesla requires shops to be 'Tesla certified' or they won't sell you parts, so of course the hourly labor rate is at least half again as much as a normal brand. Lots of line item additional charges for plugging the thing in and going through the Tesla electronic 'toolbox'. But why care? Insurance will just pay for it!

In reply to ddavidv :

I was watching Sandy Monroe this weekend talk about how every auto manufacturer is looking at going to "gigacastings" for their unibodies now that they have been pioneered by Tesla. Is there any data on the repair implications of this type of construction? Seems like a lot of cars written off as totaled in the near future. 

A friend of mine has been loving the Hertz Teslas.   We live in the NJ shore area but he drives up to CT once/wk.  It's a perfect use case because they have chargers in the parking garage at his office up there.  No gas stops.  Also no stop-n-go in a 6MT coil-overed F80 M3.  It sounds like the self driving works great in slow moving traffic too.

Hertz always struck me as a poorly managed company. 

It looks like you can rent EVs from Enterprise, Alamo, etc as well. 

Not sure if they are cutting their fleets as well, or maybe didn't jump so quickly into the EV world before the infrastructure was built out.

My understanding of the driving issue for the Hertz change was the Tesla repair times and limited approved facilities.  When my M3P had a minor rear bumper hit it took 4.5 weeks to get it repaired.  It seemed to be partially poor communication between Tesla parts, the repair shop, and my insurance.  The primary time lag was getting the oem repair parts from Tesla.  

I can understand perfectly that this would be a deal breaker for a rental car outfit.  They run them like aircraft, they literally always need to be rented to make the financial model work.

ddavidv said:

 

It stops about there. You go in any deeper, and the price escalates to silly pretty quickly. Plus, Tesla requires shops to be 'Tesla certified' or they won't sell you parts, so of course the hourly labor rate is at least half again as much as a normal brand. Lots of line item additional charges for plugging the thing in and going through the Tesla electronic 'toolbox'. But why care? Insurance will just pay for it!

How is that legal?  There are a ton of laws that protect the independent repair shops for cars, as far as I  know.  

AnthonyGS (Forum Supporter) said:

I just bought a 2023 car with no Nannie's.  It could end up a unicorn.

Nope. Mrs. Javelin and I have been shopping 21-24 cars hard and maybe 10% of luxury SUV's even have the radar cruise/lane assist/auto brake features. It's a massive amount to add on as an option and the take rate is surprisingly low. Our 2020 Q5e has it all (and it has freaked out twice, once it almost sent me into an oncoming 18 wheeler) and we want to keep it (despite those freak outs, it's legitimately avoided a crash on it's own as well more than once) and it's hard to find, even in Porsches! 

Javelin said:

AnthonyGS (Forum Supporter) said:

I just bought a 2023 car with no Nannie's.  It could end up a unicorn.

Nope. Mrs. Javelin and I have been shopping 21-24 cars hard and maybe 10% of luxury SUV's even have the radar cruise/lane assist/auto brake features. It's a massive amount to add on as an option and the take rate is surprisingly low. Our 2020 Q5e has it all (and it has freaked out twice, once it almost sent me into an oncoming 18 wheeler) and we want to keep it (despite those freak outs, it's legitimately avoided a crash on it's own as well more than once) and it's hard to find, even in Porsches! 

How sure are you?  You can easily buy a Hyundai with none of those features.  But it's stability control cannot be fully defeated.  The nannies may not be explicit options, but there is a good chance they are in there.