Going green Hertz: Rental giant axes third of EV fleet over lack of demand

Rental giant Hertz is backing away from electric vehicles (EVs) and plans to sell off a third of its global fleet of battery-powered cars. Approximately 20,000 EVs are to be offloaded from its US fleet throughout 2024, and the company plans to spend at least a portion of the proceeds buying internal combustion engine (ICE) …

[Filippo]

This is not terribly surprising. Most of the cases where I would rent a car are also cases where I'm unlikely to want to use a BEV.

The first one that comes to mind is when I'm on holiday touring a foreign country. In that scenario, I'm probably going to drive quite a bit, I'm not familiar with the local charging infrastructure, and I usually won't sleep at a place where I can charge overnight.

The second one is where I'm flying somewhere for work. In that scenario, I won't necessarily have to drive a lot, but I'll still be unfamiliar with the local charging infrastructure, I'll be generally short on time, and I'll be unlikely to be able to charge at destination.

By comparison, nearly all of my usual driving needs can be met by a BEV. I can very easily see myself buying a BEV but renting ICEs. That sounds reasonable.

[Abominator]

The crappy app also won't work and the errors will be in a foreign language. Good luck!

[Phil O'Sophical]

Yeah, and "return full" is tricky if you have to plan a couple of hours charge time on your way back to the airport.

[elsergiovolador]

Like someone rented EV for their holiday and spent half of the holiday babysitting the car at charge points or looking for charge points.

[toejam++]

I am starting to notice more DC fast chargers near airports' rental car facilities. The last place I visited in November had four 65 kW CCS stalls at the airport. But that's going to be a 40 minute charge if you are near empty. Really only good for topping up. And I can only imagine how long the wait would be during a busy travel weekend. No thanks.

[Anonymous Coward]

Flip it

> By comparison, nearly all of my usual driving needs can be met by a BEV. I can very easily see myself buying a BEV but renting ICEs. That sounds reasonable.

We're looking at just this scenario, a BEV would do for almost all our "home" travel requirements now but not for holidays. I was sitting on the bog this morning trying to get Hertz's bloody website to work out ball park costings for hiring a suitable car for holidays ready to put into calculations for looking at an EV as a local run around.

[midcapwarrior]

checked the for sale listings from their website and most have 30-40,000 or more miles on them. Given they are nearly all years or less it seems they are fairly popular. I'd go with the cost to repair and the unexpectedly high depreciation rather than infrastructure issues.

[katrinab]

Those might be the ones rented to Über drivers.

[Col_Panek]

That's when they normally sell cars. The ones I've looked at had even more miles. And they weren't much cheaper than new ones, with the rebates.

[NerryTutkins]

The problem with EVs for rentals....

Whenever I have rented a car, I've generally been doing significant mileage (else I'd just take an Uber), often in places I am not familiar with. The limited range of EVs, charging time and potential worries about finding charging mean they're less well suited to most rental cases. So it doesn't surprise me Hertz's decision to go big on EVs hasn't worked out.

I am not an EV hater, in fact, I am a happy EV owner. But at home, we generally don't do many long trips, we know where chargers are if we need them, and we generally charge at home where there is a cost saving. Most rentals are business trips, so the main advantage of cost savings isn't going to be a big factor if your company picks up the bill.

[Catkin]

Re: The problem with EVs for rentals....

Hertz didn't help themselves by requiring a vehicle to be returned charged or face hefty charging fees, plus a base payment. When I'm on a trip, sitting around to charge up a vehicle (close enough to the return location, no less) is costing me and/or my employer not insignificant amounts of money.

[jaffy2]

Re: The problem with EVs for rentals....

EVs work great for reducing the maintenance costs for rental companies, but repair costs (and times) are much higher. I live in fear of someone crashing into my Tesla because it might take 3 months to get it fixed; same for Hertz I imagine - no income from the car until its rentable again.

Hertz did a crappy job in the EV marketing. They could have had chargers onsite that you could return your rental to, and then it can charge on their time whilst they prep it for the next. They could've provided some integration with their app to educate the renter on the EV, and maybe even act as a key/lock as they do for gas. Outside of the "must return with 80%" rule there was no info on using Tesla's supercharging network. I'm pretty sure we never got charged for supercharging costs before returning it on the one rental we did. I didn't know if it would passthrough, or they'd be a markup like on the tolling.

[Catkin]

Re: The problem with EVs for rentals....

I knew about the high risk of writing off a Tesla for a minor bump but I had no idea it could get that bad on repairs.

[Necrohamster]

Re: The problem with EVs for rentals....

"I knew about the high risk of writing off a Tesla for a minor bump but I had no idea it could get that bad on repairs."

Parts availability is terrible, and body shops don't want to work on them.

Spendy and slow Tesla repairs frustrate drivers as automotive tech drives up cost of collisions

FTA:

From the outset, Campbell’s pursuit of repairs was agonizingly slow. Her car was hit in May, but she couldn’t even get an estimate for repairs until August.

...

The Tesla collision center didn’t have availability, so Campbell went with a certified shop. An initial estimate was from $6,000 to $7,000, but once mechanics disassembled the damaged area to get a better look, the price doubled due to issues with sensors.

“It’s not ‘replace the bumper and call it good,’” Campbell said.

After the second estimate, the car sat waiting for parts.

[elsergiovolador]

Re: The problem with EVs for rentals....

I was expecting EV worshippers to come and say something like:

"If you don't crash, you'll be fine."

"Just pay attention to your driving and you won't have any problem."

"ICE fan boys drive like maniacs and when they do that on EV they blame EV and not themselves."

and so on..

[Androgynous Cupboard]

Re: The problem with EVs for rentals....

No need, we knew you'd be along to build then demolish the straw man for us.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The problem with EVs for rentals....

This issue with EV repairs is one of the factors being cited for the sky high jumps in peoples insurance premiums. Have an accident with an EV and the bill the insurance company faces can be horrific apparently. I guess lots of non EVs are also now full of sensors and stuff which ramp up repair costs for what would have been minor bumps for most cars in years gone by.

[blackcat]

Re: The problem with EVs for rentals....

The sensors as well as the integration make for some horrific parts prices.

$5k for tail lamps for a Ford pickup

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUkFsuilVD0

[Necrohamster]

Re: The problem with EVs for rentals....

The tail lights on some Ford trucks have integrated radar modules apparently? And when they die, they can take out a bunch of other stuff on the canbus

YouTube: $1,500 Taillight BROKE This ENTIRE Ford F-150 (Wild Troubleshooting)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The problem with EVs for rentals....

In fairness I had to wait 7 weeks to get brakes disks for my middle aged Maserati. And I've a friend who had to wait months on parts for a Fiat Panda 100hp. Longer delays are pretty common for more niche cars. I guess the argument is if you condsider your Tesla to be mainstream or not.

[C R Mudgeon]

Re: The problem with EVs for rentals....

"EVs work great for reducing the maintenance costs for rental companies, but repair costs (and times) are much higher."

Maintenance lower but repair higher: that sounds like a contradiction, so I must be missing something. Could you explain?

[A. Coatsworth]

Re: The problem with EVs for rentals....

Maintenance == all the stuff that must be done every X thousand kilometers, such as oil changes, engine tune-ups and the like, not applicable to EVs

Repair == try to get a spare part from His Muskiness

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: The problem with EVs for rentals....

Also until there is more history , insurers are wary of liability down the road. So if you have a small crash they will scrap the car rather than replace a bumper and risk being blamed if someone burns to death in later fire

[M.V. Lipvig]

Re: The problem with EVs for rentals....

Or, a minor fender bender causes the car to burn your house down a week later because the fender bender damaged a cell and created a high resistance point in a highly flammable battery pack. Plug it in, go in the house, and half an hour later FOOOM! Once the battery catches there's no getting the car out of the garage, or putting the car out before the house is too far gone to save.

[Necrohamster]

Re: The problem with EVs for rentals....

"Maintenance lower but repair higher: that sounds like a contradiction, so I must be missing something"

Sure. An EV doesn't need oil changes, timing belts, brake pads/disks.

Tyres are probably the only things that need to be changed with any regularity, and apparently some EV drivers don't even bother with that minor detail as they take maintenance-free literally

[blackcat]

Re: The problem with EVs for rentals....

Really?? So they couldn't slow charge them at low cost while they wait to be cleaned and checked?

I can understand not wanting to faff about with fuel.

I made the fatal mistake of not completely checking out my last hire car cos we'd landed late and wanted to have some non-plane food and get to the hotel. Turned out that both front wiper blades were toast. Didn't discover this until a week into the trip and 600 miles from where we started.

[david 12]

Re: The problem with EVs for rentals....

So they couldn't slow charge them at low cost while they wait to be cleaned and checked?

Most rental outlets (car and truck) don't have vast lots for holding vehicles. They are tiny lots for interchange, in high traffic areas or on high-rent airport real-estate, and they depend on most of their vehicles being out on rent. If everything comes in at once, they're parked in the street all around.

[blackcat]

Re: The problem with EVs for rentals....

In the US at major airports the hire car parking lots are HUGE! They've got cars racked up as far as the eye can see. The new car hire centre for Las Vegas airport is mahoosive.

[cozappz]

Re: The problem with EVs for rentals....

I know a lot of car rental businesses have a 0lace, away from airports where they inspect their rolling property.

I see a lot of car carriers cargo-ing the cars into those vast lots.

Maybe they can 8nvest 8nto electrifying part of them.

[Marty McFly]

A good way to ruin a vacation

A buddy of mine rented one. On 240v with the supplied charger, he was knocking down 10% per hour. That is the better part of a day to refill a depleted battery. He literally had to structure his vacation around charge times. Sure he could charge overnight at the AirBNB (he paid them extra), but the drive back to the airport drained much of that.

As for routinely using an AirBNB for vehicle charging while traveling...that seems a bit disingenuous for the purpose of the accommodations. Kind of like stealing the gas out of the AirBNB's lawnmower for use in the renter's ICE vehicle.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: A good way to ruin a vacation

They were good in some circumstances when EVs were new. It was fun to try out a Tesla from the airport and cool to arrive at the customer site in one

But for a vacation rental? No way - and I drive an EV everyday

[gecho]

Reparability

The reparability of EVs is quickly becoming a bigger issue than charging, and directly related to that insurance cost.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Reparability

That's not an EV problem, that's a Turdla problem.

[JC 5]

Had a great experience on my last trip

Just to balance the other side of this discussion, I had a month rental in Dec and supercharging cost 33c a KWh and I was paying 8c or so at home.

I have a 220V RV socket and was getting a smidge over 7Kwh on that which meant I could easily charge from 30% to full overnight

Many places had free destination charging and in that month probably paid <$40 for 1500 miles. Ironically in the UK I live in London in an apartment, so cant charge and have an ICE car

My FL experience has removed some of the dread from the eventual EV switch.

That said I'd only get a Tesla - not a fan boy just there supercharger network always worked. Other chargers are just a pain re how much they charge and how can I pay or do they work..

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Had a great experience on my last trip

Soon you'll be able to charge anything on the Turdla chargers.

[Tron]

American priorities.

There are 140,000 publicly available chargers in the US.

There are around 1,300,000 lawyers in the US.

There are around 393,347,000 civilian-owned guns in the US.

On the plus side, the cost of a 2nd hand EV should go down quite a bit when these EVs are offloaded.

[M.V. Lipvig]

Re: American priorities.

Yes, lawyers are a problem. That gun count seems low though.

[Steve Davies 3]

One of the problems is that Hertz chose Tesla's

For many ICE drivers a Tesla is just far to different from what they were used to. PLUS... you would little or no help in working out what was what before you had to drive off the lot.

If the choice of EV included EV's that were less.... minimalistic and different from their daily driver then the uptake might have been more. As I have said for years, Tesla is not the only answer to anything.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: One of the problems is that Hertz chose Tesla's

But if you were offering an EV as a premium upgrade it had to be a Tesla. Especially a few years ago when Hertz launched this.

It was also easier for a manager to swing an upgrade to a premium rental if it was part of the company's Green Agenda. I know were all allowed to rent 'Standard option' in the US but could rent any EV

[toejam++]

Re: One of the problems is that Hertz chose Tesla's

I've wondered if a big reason mainstream drivers dislike EVs is because so many of them have minimalist interiors with a giant touchscreen for controlling most functions. I test drove a Tesla and a Polestar and found both of their interfaces to be quite unintuitive. Meanwhile, I had no trouble the first time I test drove a Bolt, which has a more traditional layout.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: One of the problems is that Hertz chose Tesla's

My mother as had VW cars for years buying a new one every 3 years or so ... however, last year when she decided it was time to change the she but bought a used car (I think one of the dealershipsex-demonstrator cars) rather than new on the sole basis that it was a Golf v7 with switches rather than the new Golf v8 that did everything via a touchscreen.

[Francis Boyle]

The dealership

has sex-demonstrator cars. Must be a fun place.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: One of the problems is that Hertz chose Tesla's

"For many ICE drivers a Tesla is just far to different from what they were used to."

I remember on my first trip to the US for a conference being asked by a worried car rental agent "could you manage a stick shift" (ie. manual rather that automatic transimission) - my answer of "yes" attempted to suppress the growing sense of foreboding I'd had on the flight from the UK of having to pick up an automtatic car when I'd never driven an automatic before (this was one for the next trip and turned out not to be an issue!)

[Pascal Monett]

"As the law stands today"

The law is going to change since China has, apparently, banned the export of rare earths (wonder why nobody is talking about that).

So good luck finding new batteries for your precious EV.

[Phil O'Sophical]

Re: "As the law stands today"

China has, apparently, banned the export of rare earths (wonder why nobody is talking about that).

It hasn't. It's banned the export of the processing technologies, presumably so it can have an effective monopoly on the supply of the rare earths themselves.

[M.V. Lipvig]

Re: "As the law stands today"

The graphene aluminum ion battery will soon replace the lithium battery, while also solving quite a few of the EV'S problems.

[DS999]

EV rentals

Only make sense if you know your total amount of driving will be less than the range (and it is full when you get it) Because one thing you don't want to do is try to find a charger in an unfamiliar city, and that's true whether you are on vacation or it is a work trip. When you have a rental car you will typically be parking it at a hotel, so it won't have convenient overnight charging like parking it at home.

I can understand why they are seeing more damage. EVs by their nature have quicker acceleration than combustion engine cars, and people who don't own one and are covered against collision damage for free by their credit card are going to "have some fun". So getting them returned with damage is probably much more likely versus say a Ford Focus.

[werdsmith]

Re: EV rentals

The EVs internal sat nav automatically finds public chargers, that's not the problem.

Switching over to actually driving something unfamiliar in a place that is unfamiliar is more of a problem, when convenience is required.

[Kevin McMurtrie]

Again?

This is the second recent time that Hertz has dumped inventory. The first one cost them insane amounts of money by selling at a loss and then again when they ran out of cars. They're practically a charity giving away cheap cars that still have years of warranty left.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Again?

Indeed.

Wonder which executive took the responsibility for the vast financial loss.

[Anonymous Coward]

Never Mind Rental EVs

Those will never work in the US. Nor the UK.

Corvette ZHZ though ....

[sanmigueelbeer]

Hertz expects to take a hit to the tune of $245 million

Ouch! That gotta Hertz!

(Yeah, yeah, yeah! Stop pushing me! I will show my way out, TYVM!)

[Anonymous Coward]

Article I read seemed to indicate that they were selling off EVs at most 2 years old at around 25-35% original sale price.

[Anonymous Coward]

Smug mode engaged

ICE or no dice!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Smug mode engaged

In Circuit Emulation is indeed very useful.

[Gala]

I don't think it's the range or availability of charging points (both improving as far as I'm aware) that's the only issue, it's people's familiarity with EVs in general.

I don't bother running a car these days, but I've hired and borrowed a lot over the years and every time it's a new make/model there always seems to be some design tweak specific to that car that I have to work out - usually not anything serious, just wiper/lights controls etc. I still get teased about having one of the company Mondeos years ago and (after looking everywhere) having to phone a friend to find out where the release for the bonnet was so I could fill up the windscreen wash. (FYI, it was a lock under the Ford logo on the front. Who knew? Not me obviously!)

Or the one where the auto-hold only worked when you had your seatbelt on...

I can imagine it might be a bit daunting to pick up a car at a strange airport, possibly strange country, foreign language and having to deal with a new tecchnology as well - I know I wouldn't fancy it.

[guavatree]

This.

It actually happened to me last year, I was offered an upgrade to an EV (a Polestar IIRC). However, tired after the flight , strange city and driving on the ‘wrong’ side of the road, I decided not to add my first EV experience to the mix.

[Anonymous Coward]

The Polestar 2: A Cutting-Edge Electric Sedan for the Tech-Savvy Traveler

The Polestar 2: A Cutting-Edge Electric Sedan for the Tech-Savvy Traveler

“An electric star has arrived at Heathrow Airport, and it's set to revolutionize the way visitors travel around the city. Polestar, a Swedish automotive brand wholly owned by Geely, has been making waves in the auto industry with its innovative electric vehicles.”

[Winkypop]

Re: The Polestar 2: A Cutting-Edge Electric Sedan for the Tech-Savvy Traveler

“Swedish”

LOL

[werdsmith]

Re: The Polestar 2: A Cutting-Edge Electric Sedan for the Tech-Savvy Traveler

Volvo is a Swedish brand.

It's not owned by a Swedish company, but it's still a Swedish brand.

[Psamathos]

Good experiences with renting EVs

I have rented Teslas from Hertz several times, including the last five times I've had cause to rent a car, and my experience has generally been excellent. For context, all of these have been rentals in southern California, where urban sprawl generally means that one is car dependent and things are spread out enough that Uber/Lyft gets expensive, but I'm not needing to do hundreds of miles of driving each day on a long road trip.

In terms of charging, when you rent a Tesla from Hertz it comes with a subscription to their "supercharger" network, which gets billed back to your credit card with no mark-up. The navigation system in the car is good at pointing you to the nearest charger if you need one and they are common enough down there that they are usually nearby and not busy. Furthermore, I have found that if I stay at a hotel that has valet parking and I show up in an EV then they will generally charge it overnight for "free", which is very handy. For clarity, Hertz DO NOT require you to return the car fully charged. Until recently they asked you to return it at least 80% full; now they have switched to letting you return it at any charge level but if it's less than 80% then they charge you (at standard supercharger prices) to charge it back up to 95%.

Aside from the charging, the rental Teslas from Hertz seem to have a pretty good level of spec compared to other cars in their fleet at a similar price. The acceleration from having an electric drivetrain is better than you'll get from anything else in a reasonably price category. Hertz still try to charge extra to book a car that will have GPS, but all the Teslas have it so there's no need to pay extra. The interior is as good as any random Ford/Chrysler/Toyota cars around the same price and the stereo is generally better. Having a BEV lets you use the carpool lane, which is a boon in that part of the world.

All in all, despite not owning a BEV, renting one has become my default option. Of course as the saying goes: "your milage may vary".

[blackcat]

Re: Good experiences with renting EVs

Worth a read:

https://www.npr.org/2023/09/10/1187224861/electric-vehicles-evs-cars-chargers-charging-energy-secretary-jennifer-granholm

'Riding along with Granholm, I came away with a major takeaway: EVs that aren't Teslas have a road trip problem, and the White House knows it's urgent to solve this issue.'

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not lack of demand. Go on their website and you will see all the Teslas for sale are very high mileage. They are definitely being rented.

[Spazturtle]

The problem is repairs, if you look at the mileage on them they usually have done around 20k to 30k miles so they are pretty much end of life and not worth the repair costs.