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I was considering a tesla when i went to Dallas for a training event a couple years ago...they didn't have a Tesla but did have a Polestar...The lady in front of me took it, and i was a bit let down as a result. Her comment "well, i only plan on driving a hundred miles or so while i'm here, so...i'd like to give it a go"...
I'd have obviously driven it considerably more...think i went to Waco while i was down there, wandered around town, drove to friends houses, went to eat numerous times on the other side of the city...it'd have been a nightmare being new to the EV world.
I since did buy a Tesla (at inflated prices - gah....but oh well) and have absolutely loved the ownership experience. It gets charged every evening, can leave the house with 230 or so miles or range on an 80% charge...showing about 10% degradation to the battery...still get 0-60 in about 4 seconds and suits my DAILY driving perfectly...if i use a supercharger, it's because i'm traveling...or, i want to...and wanting to doesn't really happen.
That was his bad if so. It was obviously just COVID markups. Tesla doesn't have dealers to charge markups or do discounts so they fluctuate the price more. Bad call to pay $13-19k in markup.
No they likely paid slightly below MSRP as a fleet price. Musk dropped the prices on new Teslas 8-10K so that has a trickle down effect on the used prices.
So imagine Hertz owns 40,000 Teslas they paid 45K each for. Musk drops the retail price from 48 to 40. Now those used Teslas might have been worth 33K each as used rental cars but hey if you can buy a brand new one for 40K why buy a used rental car? Those used ones are worth 28K now.
45K new plan on selling used for 33K = loss of 12K per car is now a 17K loss per car X 40,000.
40,000 cars losing an extra 5K in value = 200 million dollars in extra depreciation!
Renting an EV seems…dumb. The biggest benefit of owning an EV is when you have a place to park it that has a charger, like your home or office. This seems destined to fail from the get go.
I was in San Diego a few months back, rented a Tesla 3. Gas was $6 a gallon and a Tesla was $51 a day. The math heavily favored the Tesla. The hotel charged it for me for no charge.................but valet at the Del Coronado was $75 a day.....ouch! Self parking was $70.
The tesla chargers are everywhere, literally hit a button on the dash and it will tell you where to go and how long to charge. Everything is done through the car so you literally just plug it in.
If they were 2022's with the used car credit, it might be tempting
I looked at them, they're all stripped down base models. I'd want the comfort and convenience packages which include heated steering wheel and heated/ventilated seats.
I don't have an EV and generally when renting, I like to rent a car that I will consider buying as a way to do a long test drive. But when renting recently, I could never bring myself to rent an EV. There is too much to figure out with the charging. If the hotel has a charger, what if I am staying in a friend's condo or other rentals, etc how would I charge it..
Same. I don't have an EV and recently when i traveled for business, I almost rented one.
What stopped me was the fact i had zero familiarity with the area I was going to. I didn't know the hotel. Didn't know if i could charge there. Didn't know where I would be driving to. Didn't know where charging areas were. Didn't know if i could charge at my customer site. I knew i'd be driving enough to need a charge at some point. I was under enough stress to meet a tight timeline that I got an ICE car instead. I just didn't want to try and figure it all out on the fly even though I wanted to drive an EV.
Also part of the problem is Hertz’s charging policies.
There’s too much of a learning curve, and forcing the customer to spend their time charging prior to vehicle return is a cost that makes consumers less willing to pay as much for the car itself. Hertz charges customers in their time, effort, and confusion and so has to lower rates as a result.
Most people haven’t driven an EV yet. They haven’t figured out EV charging yet. And it’s not worth the learning curve for a one-off. That’s true whether renting from Hertz or not.
The need to return a car fully charged may be keeping people from wanting to rent those vehicles.
I agree. We for all of two seconds considered renting an EV recently on a trip to the Big Island, but the charging policy we read about was too much. Note, it turns out the location we were traveling to ultimately didn't have any EVs available, but the point still remains. We ended up changing our flight back to Oahu to two hours earlier and had to make a mad dash to the gas station and then airport. That would not have been possible with an EV.
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From the two people I know that rented them, one problem with EV rentals is lack of experience, and no training from Hertz. They both were treated as though it was a Nissan Sentra or Toyota Camry, pay and go. Now if they had asked for a Tesla they would have at least been able to research it first, but both had asked for ICE models and those were gone when they arrived, so Hertz gave them the Teslas.
Last edited by Hemlock140; 01-12-2024 at 03:45 PM..
I’m not totally surprised by this. I rented one from Hertz and my experience was okay, but I rented it because I wanted to try a Tesla. So I prepared myself for the inconvenience that comes with renting one.
Anecdote but probably representative of quite a few people: a friend of mine, who is not anti-EV, was assigned to a Tesla on a recent trip to New Jersey. He went out to the car lot, got in, first had trouble figuring out how to “start” the car and move the mirrors and whatnot, and then realized that it had something like 5 or 10% of charge left.
So he walked back in and asked for an ICE vehicle, as it was late and he didn’t want to be bothered with figuring out where to charge, and felt like the lack of buttons in the Tesla was a pain. I’m sure if he owned one, he’d get used to it - but as a rental, it wasn’t a great first impression for him.
No they likely paid slightly below MSRP as a fleet price. Musk dropped the prices on new Teslas 8-10K so that has a trickle down effect on the used prices.
So imagine Hertz owns 40,000 Teslas they paid 45K each for. Musk drops the retail price from 48 to 40. Now those used Teslas might have been worth 33K each as used rental cars but hey if you can buy a brand new one for 40K why buy a used rental car? Those used ones are worth 28K now.
45K new plan on selling used for 33K = loss of 12K per car is now a 17K loss per car X 40,000.
40,000 cars losing an extra 5K in value = 200 million dollars in extra depreciation!
Yeah, really bad call to pay 45k for the Short Range Model 3 since before COVID markups it was a sub 40k car. Oh well, fools and their money as they say. At any rate, that's what is called a sunk cost. Once you decide that you need to pay a markup for something because (insert reasons) you've already done it. If the EV rentals were actually good business they'd hvae kept them. But they never really were a smart move. Great for people who wanted to test drive an EV for a few days but otherwise a Camry has a bigger back seat and is a lot easier to manage a fleet of those since there's no charging issues. They needed to budget in the money for lots of chargers on site and the electrical work but from people who got the cars they never did and relied on the customers to do the work for them and return the cars charged which of course customers don't really like doing work for them and the penalty wasn't that large so they didn't which meant they delivered lots of uncharged vehicles to customers who had poor experiences. Plus it's just tough. If a 25k Camry can rent for $60 a day they need to get more like $150 a day for the Telsa since the depreciation is so bad. Stuff like minivans and SUVs they can do that with... larger vehicle. The people that need them will pay much more for something that will comfortably hold 7-8 passengers. I guess they couldn't on Teslas.
From the two people I know that rented them, one problem with EV rentals is lack of experience, and no training from Hertz. They both were treated as though it was a Nissan Sentra or Toyota Camry, pay and go. Now if they had asked for a Tesla they would have at least been able to research it first, but both had asked for ICE models and those were gone when they arrived, so Hertz gave them the Teslas.
"Pay and go" is the whole point of renting a car. What training would they need? The amount of charge left in miles is displayed as much as the amount of gas left in ICE is. People pay for convenience, not to take on an additional chore, while away. I would assume people who rent EVs are those that don't plan to drive more than the full charge would be sufficient for.
Now, I can see the issue if someone was expecting an ICE vehicle and was forced to take an EV, but that would be Hertz's scheduling issue, not an EV issue.
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