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Hertz 180: Rental giant to sell 20,000 EVs and replace them with gas-powered vehicles
(www.techspot.com)
this post was submitted on 12 Jan 2024
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Technology
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Amended title: Rental giant to take a huge step back in climate change fight and generate more GHG to protect their bottom line.
Alternate alternate title: EVs’ cost of ownership too high compared to ICEs.
EV cars have a lower cost of ownership than ICE cars, especially for high-use cars like taxis and rentals. Hertz is just pushing the cost to the customer here.
How do you mean? I’m not following.
EV cars have fewer moving parts and maintenance items. Most notably there's no need to replace the engine oil, and it's rare to need to replace the brakes. Battery degradation is probably on par with engine rebuilds. Only limitation is maybe the tires due to the high torque and increased weight, which is exacerbated by it being a rental car. But Hertz could always just limit the torque in software. Vehicle maintenance is clearly cheaper for EV cars than ICE cars.
The biggest difference in cost of ownership though is the cost of gas. 80 kWH is much much cheaper than 25 L of gas, so the biggest savings from the EV car are felt by the person renting instead of Hertz. By switching back to ICE cars, people renting their cars will have to pay a lot more to drive, due to the increased fuel costs.
I'm not sure what economic calculations Hertz is doing here, they're citing higher repair costs due to Tesla's repair monopoly, and other people have mentioned the value depreciation of the car as battery prices go down. But the cynic in me says that Hertz can get away with renting a ICE car for the same price as an EV car and pass the increased cost of ownership of ICE cars onto the driver.
The upfront cost is a tough pill to swallow though. I drive a 20 year old Toyota SUV that I bought in 2018, and now has 190,000 miles. I bought it for $3,000 in 2018. In that time, I’ve personally replaced the radiator and brakes and changed the oil when it needs it, maybe twice a year since I use synthetic.
Sure, I’ll readily admit that my vehicle is terrible on gas mileage, but I work from home and drive about 5k miles per year on average. The initial cost of a new EV is a dealbreaker, let alone one that can handle 4 kids. And the thought of possibly having to suddenly replace a Li-Ion battery on a used one with degraded performance is a non-starter for me.
I’m not against EVs, and they certainly aren’t practical for everyone, yet at least. The dependability has to improve, and then I’d consider it. I still can’t see how it makes sense for a regular person like myself to dump $40k-$50k into a car because it doesn’t run on dinosaur juice. Especially in my situation.
Tesla’s build quality is shit anyways, on top of blaming drivers’ habits for their engineering mistakes and then refusing to fix it. Then there’s the fit and finish part of it, where the panel gaps don’t line up on this piece of shit $100k “truck”, that has no truck capabilities that apparently can’t drive in the snow. Elon Musk is a snake oil salesman, but I’d be willing to listen to an argument where I can get 5 years out of an EV for under $6k + the cost of gas.
Real alternate title: EV manufacturers are trying to be like apple and misrepresenting your ability to repair your shit for profit.
I'm not even sure it's just that. A guy i know had to wait a couple of month until he could get his tesla windshield replaced. I still don't really know where all these tesla owners around here go to service their cars, because i only know of a dealership, but that's no garage. The only people i know with a teala bring their car there and they bring it somewhere from there. And service and shit takes for ever.
Took 11 months to get my Tesla repaired because they were waiting for suspension parts from Tesla. There are only three Tesla certified repair shops in my whole city (of 2 million people) but that wasn't the issue. The issue was Tesla.
If the EV's they're talking about in the article are Teslas, then I can understand why they would want to get rid of them.
And to be clear, I love my Tesla, but nobody should be buying one until they get their supply chain shit together. I already passed on buying a Tesla when I had to replace my second car recently. (Went with a PHEV because I need to road trip regularly and non-Tesla charging is still pretty terrible in that area.)
In Seattle, there is a dealer in the city, then there is a repair center in the city across the lake (Bellevue). There used to be a repair center in Seattle, but Tesla closed it. It is a terrible service model and like you said, everything takes forever.
If you read the article, it's nothing to do specifically with EVs, they just had an unusually high crash rate.
“Likelihood of crashing” is part of the cost of ownership (regardless of engine type). For example, suppose a particular model comes with certain features that are more likely to distract the driver, thus increasing the rate of highway collisions, thus either increasing the cost of repairs over the life of the vehicle or just shortening the life of the vehicle—all else equal, this vehicle has a higher cost of ownership than a different model with fewer distractions, collisions, repairs, etc.
Uh, no, it's definitely not.
We’ll have to agree to disagree.