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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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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.
“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.
We’ll have to agree to disagree.