Hertz accelerates sales of Tesla vehicles as value crumbles

The challenge of repairs especially from gigacasting is almost certainly a problem at that scale, even without Tesla's slow parts chain.

After finding damage in a car I was going over for a friend, I would avoid them personally even if it made sense for utility needs.

I know repairability isn't a huge deal for most people, but it is for fleets and me, I was surprised Herz made such a commitment as the concerns were well known.

Obviously this is just one aspect of the value crash.

I wonder how many of these 100,000 cars purchased were due to Elon's false claims that self driving would have been available and INCREASED the value of the cars.

At the time, I found his claims hard to believe but I didn't have much conviction given his extremely strong track record up to that point.

The value of the cars almost always goes down, and rental car companies churn through cars while making money on rentals. The problem with Teslas is not so much the depreciation, but more so that people don't want to rent them. They were marketed as some sort of upgrade but given the maturity of public chargers, I do not want an EV if I travel somewhere and rent a car, let alone pay a premium.

With a gas car I know I can get gas wherever cars go and that will take a few minutes. With an EV I would have to work out whether my hotel has EV charging/plan travels around chargers in an area not known to me.

The depreciation on EVs is actually quite ludicrous. I have a 2018 Leaf that has 30k miles on it. I took it in for warranty repairs to a local dealership and while I was waiting looked at some of the 2024 Leafs and the starting price was 35k. The trade in value of my leaf? 6k.

The dealer told me that the price of all EVs is much lower in resale due to the incentives offered on new EVs.

I found it entirely preposterous that the difference between the 2018 leaf and 2024 leaf was really 29k for 60 additional miles of range. Materially that was really the only difference between the two models (and 30k miles, but still).

I greatly appreciated Hertz' push into renting EVs. The first EV I drove was a Hertz Polestar and I liked it so much I ended up buying a similar car (Volvo C40).

The depreciation of Teslas is a big problem for Hertz. But also they had a hard time with customer service. There's lots of stories of people having bad experiences with Hertz EV rentals. Personally I had a great experience.

I love EVs and Teslas. I love renting them during my business trips and put in extra effort to explicitly seek them out.

Hertz going all-in on Teslas like they did was extremely dumb and short-sighted. I have many reasons why:

- Teslas are far from normal cars. Nothing about operating a Tesla is like any other car out there. Great if you're shopping for a car; terrible if you've just landed into ORD on a Monday morning after getting up at 4am and are sprinting to a 10am meeting. Hertz didn't do even the most basic ground work at understanding how their customers will rent these cars before spending an absolutely ludicrous amount of money on what was, essentially, a stupid flex.

- Hertz ordered the Teslas well ahead of building out a comprehensive charging solution to assuage range anxiety. They, then, did things like charge renters a "full tank" for returning the cars below 25% capacity despite their hotels, their customer sites or any of the areas they frequent having easily-accessible charging options. They should have allowed drivers to return them at whatever % they had left and handled charging logistics transparently.

- Teslas have a non-existent parts network, and becoming proficient enough to repair Teslas on-site required significant labor investments that, given the state of many of the Teslas I've rented, didn't seem to be made.

Hertz had the right idea. EVs are 100% the future. They should have slowed their execution of that idea way the hell down. $300M+ investment in charging solutions throughout the worldwide Hertz network, with a focus on 90%+ coverage in the US. Purchase used Bolts and A FEW partner EVs as upmarket vehicles (which few people rent because businesses won't expense cars at those classes) and design incentives to drive rentals, collect feedback and understand pain points. Shit, I don't know, maybe spending a few dollars on creating an actual dedicated rental type for EV tiers instead of lumping them in with the same tired rate codes from the 80s so that renters who expected an ICE don't get an EV and vice versa! Or, maybe, spending a few dollars tracking inventory levels so that those who DO rent Tesla EVs don't come to learn upon arrival that all of them are INOP (see point above).

But, no. Instead, Hertz is going to Hertz and sell these vehicles off to stop the bleeding and go back to the ICE-only strategy that already wasn't working for them.

What’s truly notable is that this isn’t a statement of Hertz’s belief in EVs in general. They are expanding their fleet of EVs. But Teslas in particular were problematic, mainly for maintenance reasons. Not a surprise if you’ve been following the category.

I suggest another take, from https://asia.nikkei.com/content/1f9ed40b4b44745e1a39fafaf94b... an imported Chinese EV in Thailand are now priced ~8750€ while in EU costs 37.990€.

Since the OEM surely do not sell cars loosing money, it's clear that current western prices are not competitive at all, to the point our automotive industry is DOOMED. Or our OEMs can make a Telsa for 10.000 or they are out of the game.

I might be wrong, but that's what I see.

I'm sure after the 5th Tesla battery to be punctured underneath to instantly cause a repair of 2/3rd the entire new car value, they realized there was a problem. After the 50th they threw in the towel and realized this was a bad idea and threw out whoever suggested it in the first place.

Damn the planet, internal combustion for the profit.

This is purely Tesla’s fault because they slashed prices. This is not a failure of ev. This is a failure of tesla.

I don’t get it, what changed in between 2021 and now? Back then we were told that electric cars were faster, cheaper to operate, quieter, and better for the environment. Isn’t all that still true today? Why are they losing value then?

Let’s say your goal was to improve the electric vehicle charging network. Is there a reasonable way to create a government incentive for gas stations to add charging spots in their parking areas?

Is this a way for me to buy a cheap Tesla?

don't car rental companies have this kind of churn regardless of the vehicle make/model?