this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2024
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Apparently it’s related to “expenses related to collision and damage” and they’ve had to put speed and torque limitations on the fleet cars.
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/hertz-sell-about-20000-evs-us-fleet-2024-01-11/
Telsas and Polestars are not slow cars, and it sounds like renters are driving them aggressively. I wouldn’t be surprised if torque and speed are also the reason why Tesla is #1 with recent car accidents stats.
Driving a rental car - any rental car - more aggressively than your own car has been pretty typical behaviour since the beginning of rental cars.
Exactly. Only now they’re twice as fast and require you to play a video game to turn the air vents.
I mean, technically you're not supposed to be fiddling with neither radio, AC or other crap on any car, touch or not, when you're driving. All of that should be set before you start driving anywhere. If you follow the law to the letter, the only thing you should operate while driving, is what can be done from the steering wheel controls and voice control.
Of course that's now how most people actually drive their cars...
I have never in my life heard this before. What if the window fogs up and you have to turn the defrost on?
You should have anticipated this and directed airflow to the windshield before you start driving.
I have also never experienced spontaneous fogging of the windshield while I'm driving, and I live in Scandinavian weather which is both humid and cold. It's always there when I enter the car. The AC dehumidifies the cabin air while driving so it really shouldn't be fogging the windshield out of the blue while you're driving.
But besides that, steering wheel control or voice control cab enable/disable this in many cars these days.
Yeah, last time I've rented a car I wanted an electric but my insurance would not cover me for a Tesla.
They are in the sport car category.
Pretty sure they are #1 due to their touchscreen focus. Its incredibly hard to operate a Tesla safely.
Hertz is also famous for renting Mustang GTs which are much faster and much more likely to be driven aggressively.
I'm guessing it has more to do with the misconceptions around "self-driving" that these cars don't even include.
I wouldn't say a mustang GT is any faster. Most EV's have a sub 5 second 0-60, which is what a Musang GT has. EVs are just incredibly fast, especially Teslas.
Well if you said anything different you'd simply be wrong.
This isn't "most EVs", this is a Tesla Model 3 standard range (AKA RWD).
Yeah, but they usually don’t have a lot of those things on the lot to rent. They have a butt load of Model 3s. My guess is that it’s a numbers game.
They also have a ton of data and footage to tell them what people are doing when they’re getting into accidents, and after looking at that stuff, they’re choosing to basically put these cars into a form of valet mode to limit acceleration.