Story here: Hertz Stock Plunges 19% as It Continues to Lose Money on Ill-Fated Tesla EV Plan
Shorty story, Hertz invests heavily in a fleet of Teslas for rent, now because of low demand, high maintenance costs, and low resale value are taking it in the shorts.
How in the world did everyone and their brother predict that nobody wants an EV in rental situations but apparently nobody at Hertz thought past the 5-second “cool, I can rent a Tesla” knee-jerk reaction?
Thinking about it more than 10 seconds it doesn’t take a genius to come to the conclusion “yeah… maybe not”. If you rent a vehicle for a road trip you are probably going long distances and have no idea where and when you can charge the thing and you don’t want to risk being stranded in the middle of nowhere. If you’re on vacation who knows if your hotel/resort has charging capabilities. and if they do who says they’ll even be available. “Sorry kids, can’t leave for the Magic Kingdom just yet, gotta wait our turn to charge the Tesla along with these other 5 families.”
Rent one on a business trip and risk missing a meeting cause you may or may not find a charging station and if you do it may be occupied?
I’m just confounded by the idea that some corporate decision makes at Hertz made a multi-million dollar decision thinking “eh, it’ll work itself out, EVs are the future, right?”
Absolutely moronic to go all in like that. Also the employees weren’t properly trained in many cases. Two of my friends were given Teslas at Hertz that were charged below 40% and turned them back in. I’m a huge Tesla fan but there’s a significant enough learning curve that only people who are familiar with them should be given one as a rental and then only if they are going to places with destination charging.
They should have gotten a few of them per large location and seen how things went, not bought an entire fleet from the start. The CEO was massively incompetent which means he’ll be the CEO of a different place soon enough.
Well, they went bankrupt at least once already, so it won’t be a new experience for them. We did rent an EV last fall, but it was because my wife’s car was in the shop for 2 weeks and we could charge at home (and wanted to try the whole EV thing out). Also, although I know a lot of the depreciation is a Tesla/Musk thing, dumping a large fleet on the market isn’t going to move that needle in an upward direction… Plus, IMO Hertz is now a second tier rental company, far behind Enterprise in car features, quality, and customer service.
Well, he’s no longer CEO of Hertz, as of end of last March. I’m not sure if he’ll get another CEO role. Making big strategic bets and losing does not encourage other company boards to hire.
Sheesh. Reading the OP … is dealing with EVs generally that fraught to where you’re constantly getting stranded and/or delayed due to charging issues?
Disclosure: I don’t own and have never driven an EV. I had thought that in general, about 99% of the issues with charging had been worked out for people who own and drive EVs. Additionally, I thought that there were fairly large geographic areas in the U.S. (e.g. “Southern California”, “The Northeast along a D.C.-to-Boston axis”) where the EV support infrastructure was sufficiently developed and convenient to readily support EV rental.
Totally agree. When our Tesla was in the shop for an extended period, I rented a Model 3 from Hertz to tide us over. For me, the experience was just fine, but I cannot imagine that it would have worked for someone new to EVs and to Tesla. There was no information provided or available about charging or the differences in the controls. I don’t even think there was a L1 wall charger provided, although I’ll admit that I didn’t dig around for it.
And it certainly wasn’t charged much when I picked it up. At the time, and probably still now, a Tesla would be the easiest EV to drive long distance and charge, but Hertz did nothing to help their customers understand how.
In my observation, this happens when a “leader” gets a “vision” and formulates a pet project. The objective feasibility or business suitability of the idea are irrelevant as long as the champion executive keeps on championing it.
Absolutely not. It’s effectively not an issue at all just like people aren’t constantly running out of gas, so long as you’ve learned how to deal with an EV. You can’t just give one to someone and expect them to magically know how to manage that. They also drive differently. For the most part you only use the break pedal in an emergency and you use the accelerator kind of like a motorcycle throttle.
I believe the other two, but where are you getting the “high maintenance costs” from? I had always understood that EVs were lower maintenance than ICE vehicles.
That said, if I had had the need to rent a car I probably would have gotten an EV from Hertz. I’m strongly considering buying an EV for my next car anyway, and it would have been nice to try one out for a few days be fore going all in. Except my employer has a contract with Avis, so when I travel for work I have to rent from them, and I rarely rent cars for personal travel.
Having owned two EVs, yeah, regular maintenance is much less expensive. But for Teslas specifically, based on both what I read and what my insurance agent told me, the damage repair cost is quite a bit higher. And IME, slower as you wait for parts. I personally wouldn’t consider damage repair to be a maintenance cost, but for a rental agency, maybe that’s how they look at it?
Ah, reading other articles it looks like it was mainly related to damage costs, mainly front end.
Admitted I have no experience with EVs, but when going on vacation to an unfamiliar area isn’t there a lot of pre-planning involved if you are going to be using an EV? I don’t really see places to charge these all over the place like I do gas stations. And isn’t there a charge time involved? I can get in and out of a gas station in about 2 minutes. Do I have to wait 20-30 minutes at a charging station twiddling my thumbs in a random part of Myrtle Beach?
If you put a destination into the navigation system it shows you a route with chargers along the way and the expected battery level at each one. Typical range for a long range Tesla is close to 300 miles. You’d have to chill for 20 minutes or so at each one. They’re usually in shopping centers so enough time to take a pee break and get a snack or whatever. Ideally your end stop will have a destination charger so you’ll start the day with a “full tank”. If you’re on or near a highway, you’re not really at risk for running out of juice. It would be a poor choice for a rural roadtrip but the navi system would warn you not to make that trek.
My first experience driving an EV was renting a Tesla while visiting Texas. It look me perhaps 10 minutes to get comfortable enough to leave the garage, then maybe 20 minutes in the hotel parking lot doing some minor tweaking to really start to enjoy it. We took a 3-4 hr drive to visit Chip & Joanna’s place and finding charging stations was no problem whatsoever. If you use the onboard GPS it plots everything out for you
It was overall a positive experience (freeway speed limits are 90MPH in Texas). But I can see why there wouldn’t be a large market wanting to buy a Tesla after it was used as a rental car.
Clearly, you have never been to Oregon. 
Over on the EV-dedicated threads
… there is a far more extensive discussion maybe more than we can bear, but yes, to this day for those unfamiliar with the vehicles the questions of range and ease of charging are still a great source of anxiety. And the rental companies are notorious for just sitting you in the car and leaving you to wonder how stuff works. As was mentioned before, there is a learning curve to get the most of these vehicles and especially Teslas, that don’t even try to look/feel like conventional vehicles in much of their user interface.
The company took a whopping loss in the higher repair costs and the steep depreciation.
It sounds like a Hertz mismanagement and mis-training problem, not an EV problem. I recently rented an EV from Enterprise, and the experience was seamless and easy. The car was at 95% charge when I started, and I returned it with about 30% and only a very small recharge convenience fee instead of having to visit a gas station to fill up in avoidance of the typical rental gas refill gouging fee. I would definitely pick an EV again assuming I am in a metro area with nearby charging stations if needed.
Ideally the car is charging while you’re getting in a round of golf, or sleeping in your hotel. It requires some planning and foreknowledge of the area.
If the extent of your research is that you reserved a car, then an EV might not work out. Just landed in Denver and staying in Boulder? No problem, there are probably more charging stations than gas pumps. Driving up to the mountains for a few days? Better do some research, because ease of charging will be based on the exact details of where you’re going and staying.
I can understand customers being real upset when they didn’t even know they had to do that research.
Folks, you’re just not thinking big enough. Elon Musk has promised us all robotaxis any day now. Soon Hertz is going to be looking pretty smart with their fleet of autonomous money makers out there crushing the competition.
Based on unfortunate personal experience, “quite a bit higher” is an understatement.
People unfamiliar with the tech and a high repair cost for fender benders is not a good combination. No oil changes so there’s that.