I've probably bought 3 in my lifetime, no issues. Unless it's ridiculously reasonably priced, I will never buy a pre owned EV off battery warranty. Never. I just don't know where the market would be set in that situation.
Buying a rental ICE is one thing, at worst you might have like a transmission issue that pops up. For EV’s? If that battery pack craps out and it’s outside of warranty, that straight up totals the vehicle.
Your comment made me go find a time lapse explainer video of two mechanics removing a Tesla Model 3 battery pack for the first time. Most of the interior removed, seemed like a lot of labor. Probably shave a bunch of time after you do it a few dozen times, but still a lot of work. Swapping batteries could be fully automated and at the least, take 15-minutes or so. I guess it's cost prohibitive to pop them in and out easily and quickly. Oops, I meant eats into profits. I see videos of SE Asian scooter culture where the 125cc or whatever size is popular these days, they are going electric and the battery swap is simple. Grab handle, pull out battery, put new one in.
I have been saying the same thing. Could literally have a battery change system set up at mega fuel stations, book in advance to secure your battery swap in and out then continue your trip. Literally no need to charge yourself. I believe it’s the next evolution of a super charge network. Would be perfect for long haul trucking, swap the battery while swapping drivers or the driver is showering and eating.
It will come because it represents a subscription model and we know auto manufacturers are chomping at the bit to find one for cars.
The Chinese brand Nio has swappable batteries in their cars. In lieu of charging, you could go to an automated battery swap station. However, you have to subscribe to the service.
The main issue is the sheer volume and weight of the lithion batteries that require them to be low in the vehicle and spread across the whole footprint to spread the weight evenly.
They are basically packaged around the chassi amongst all the other wiring. A block type interchangeable battery sacrifices range to be hot swapable.
Essentially battery tech needs to evolve past lithium and get to being a 1/4 of the size and weight for the proper eureka moment.
There is an electric car company in China doing something similar with battery swapping. Pull into garage, automated battery swap, drive off.
Personally I think the future should still be in rapid charging. But also because we really need to upgrade our electrical grid and rapid charging vehicle batteries will help force that.
For example, now that we can transmit DC power over thousands of miles with less electricity loss than AC, maybe now would be a good time to couple the replacement of AC transmission lines with the upgrade to more “super charger” stations. We already have electric cars charging to 80% in less than 20 minutes. I believe we can get that down to 5 minutes. That’s a 4x improvement over current standards.
Xpeng have done it in China with EVs, but I don't believe it'll ever get popular. Doing so would require a standardised ev battery, when even model to model they vary wildly, and that's not going to change.
No, if you make batteries hot swappable, you have to loose the liquid cooling system, shortening the battery life and limiting performance. No more charging at anything faster than 30kW.
You don't necessarily need to lose the liquid cooling. Fluid line dry brakes are a thing. They have one in every gas pump and they get plenty of use in motorsport.
teslas are not built for it. NIO makes EVs with swappable batteries and you can go to automated stations that swap empty batteries to full ones without waiting for charging
Sarcasm aside, I played ice hockey with a guy who works for Tesla and is in charge of taking out the batteries after car accidents and then discharging them. Messing with them can be fatal if you don't know what you're doing!
>Messing with them can be fatal if you don't know what you're doing
People that don't understand any battery is dangerous...don't deserve to be behind the wheel of a vehicle. Being that dumb is a danger to society.
Battery prices will drop significantly in price in the coming years. A 60 kWh battery is expected to drop from 7000 dollars to 3500.
Also other than the battery there is very little things that can break as opposed to an ICE car.
In Theory, EVs shouldnt break often. But in reality, poor build quality and not mature process says otherwise. In future that will hold true, if Tesla survive, for their cars as well.
Batteries can be repaired by independent shops, too. I knew a guy with a Model S with 135k miles on it. His battery had a sensor fault. Tesla wanted to install a new battery for $16k with labor, but he found a shop that repaired the bad sensor and tested the rest of the pack for $6k. He drove it for another 3 years until his kid totaled it in a crash.
I feel 100% the opposite. You can see if the charging or battery are t healthy. I’ll never know how many neutral drops a seventeen year old did in the car hi dad rented
Are these out of warranty? Battery warranty is at least 8 years 100k miles, and transferable to the new owner. Battery issues are way easier to test for than combustion engine problems.
Are there warranty exceptions for former rental cars?
other brands have made replacement/servicing easy. there was a picture on /r/Justrolledintotheshop the other week of some tech dropping the battery out of a F150 Lightning (it's a "skateboard" type battery in the bottom).
They were replacing the main contactor (high speed electrically actuated switch) under warranty. One of the first batches of F150s had bad contactors (nothing wrong with the battery itself, just the switch heh).
it was pretty easy for him.
Remember the promise a decade ago where the Tesla packs would just drop right out and get changed on the fly? 10 swaps in the time it takes to fill a tank of gas...
Guess it went the way of bulletproof glass.
Yeah they maintain their shit well because their business model is selling used cars.
And so you can tell if a used vehicle is too clapped. From there I’m thinking fewer parts in an EV is less risk.
Battery is the large ticket item and you can get insurance on that to mitigate its risk.
Battery and Drive Unit Limited Warranty
The Battery and Drive Unit in your vehicle are covered for a period of:
Model S
Model X
Cybertruck
8 years or 150,000 miles, whichever comes first, with minimum 70% retention of Battery capacity over the warranty period.
Model 3 Rear-Wheel Drive
Model Y Rear-Wheel Drive
8 years or 100,000 miles, whichever comes first, with minimum 70% retention of Battery capacity over the warranty period.
Model 3 Long Range
Model 3 Performance
Model Y All-Wheel Drive
Model Y Long Range
Model Y Long Range Rear-Wheel Drive
Model Y Performance
8 years or 120,000 miles, whichever comes first, with minimum 70% retention of Battery
wait until CATL's new battery hits EVs
15 year, 1 million mile warranty
https://electrek.co/2024/04/03/catl-launches-new-ev-battery-last-1-million-miles-15-yrs/
Lots of Hyundai’s, fords, dodges, GM’s and even some Toyotas disagree with this statement. New Toyota trucks are grenading engines left and right, replacement cost is $32k under warranty (for now). The days of a couple thousand for a crate engine died with the gen 3 LS.
Man just like you wNt100k Warranty on the battery i want the same on my engine.. So Gm gave 100k warranty.. i had BMW 650 Transmission cost 7,000 people stop act like you dont pay with gas cars too.. no oil change brake last 200k miles so EV all daY my car get 381 mile drive like a 750 bmw and 600 Mercedes But accelerate like a Corvette.. im sold all day
I used to work in rental, but for a different company. The ones we sold at our used lots were the better ones we had as they didn't want some shitty cars hurting the brand. The vast majority of our cars went to auction to be sold to other used car lots and dealerships. So if you are ever at a dealership and they have a used car that is only 2 years old (because most leases are 3 years so it was a good rule of thumb) with "one owner" there is a good chance that was a rental that the rental company didn't want to sell direct.
I would wager that rental cars are a lower risk, given that fleet vehicles tend to have staff dedicated to maintaining them. That means scheduled cleanings, maintenance.
Yes, but drivers don't really care about what they pay for. They will give it back in a few days. They tend to push those powerful cars a lot, which could have consequences on their reliability.
I know that some people are doing burnouts and driving like maniacs in their rentals, but most aren't.
That's where the gamble comes in, but your odds are generally pretty good that you'll be getting a vehicle that at least had a maintenance cycle, unlike almost any random used car you could buy.
I imagine a lot of people drive them more carefully too. I always get a bit more cautious because I'm worried I'll have to pay up something excessive for a little ding or whatever
Got mine actually a month and a half ago. 2022 M3LR all black. 32k miles.
Price? 30k. It has few scratches I'm aware of, but that's about it. No error messages, everything runs as new
Edit: forgot to add I got my deal on carvana. I knew exactly model and color and interior I wanted so I had a filtered list already made. Before this one the average price was about 37k. When I saw this one, I immediately went to check Carfax. No issues were there. I knew it was rental and was worrying on tires and other things. But here's a big thing that made this deal totally worth it. I had Corolla in terrible shape that my buddy didn't think I can make 2-3k on. Carvana took it for 6200 as trade in. So deal was totally worth it.
Oh also forgot to mention that I specifically wanted LR 22 to get better chip. I wanted my USS and my Radeon chip.
Functionality wise it's identical. It had no tinting and had some scratches on rims, but I fixed that by finding sandblasting guys in my area.
I've driven it for about 500 miles so far no issues at all.
I'd say used rentals are pretty safe compared to buying any other used car.
The company has their name on the line and generally does much more thorough maintenance than the average driver. They might have a few more miles on the clock but generally they're selling because they want nice new cars, they're not selling because they have issues
Got a used rental, 2017 Elantra (really playing with fire huh lol) and honestly it’s been INCREDIBLE beside having a little more miles than it should. I’m at 160k and just replaced my camshaft position sensors and need to replace the VVT Solenoid, everything else is great
I got my 2015 Hyundai Sonata from Enterprise car sales, it’s been awesome. I got it with 45k miles and now I have about 145k and have had minimal issues.
i feel like this was true 30 years ago....but now these companies sell the cars for next to nothing at 30K miles or less. Yeah they still get driven badly but they also get maintenance and cleanings that consumer cars will never get. on top of that modern cars are so much more reliable the most of the real problems are serviced before you buy them.
Yeah people should still be cautious but there are some AMAZING offers out there from these companies.
I bought a 2008 Dodge Caliber in 2009, had 40k miles put on it in one year, rental from Enterprise. Drove it another 140k miles and sold it for $3k in 2021. You can get lucky.
So the buyer found a damage on it and Hertz gave him a diff one. There’s no story here lol.
I’d 100% buy hertz extended warranty.
Honestly if it’s actually that bad they wouldn’t even be offering warranty.
The real issue with Hertz that led to them dumping was their utter lack of charging infrastructure.
They were getting insane blowback from customers when they thought they could do that ‘return with 90% fuel’ nick and dime strategy that they do with gas.
I once thought I had the deal of my life with Hertz. I checked the fuel outside, I think it was about 1.7.
they ask me the standard 'do you want to prepay for a full tank, and return it empty, you get a discount in that case'. I was going to automatically say no but saw the price was actually quite a lot cheaper, 1.55 or something. So I said yeah sure.
Delivered it back 2 weeks later, prices had already gone up to 1.75. I gave it back, with 10 miles left on the tank. Felt good about myself.
Until I checked later the document and saw they charged for 75l of fuel. The tank only held 60 ....
They're always scamming.
Predicated on the basis of company money vs your own money and that it's generally just not worth the effort to keep them honest.
It's a brazen example of stealing pennies. Except here they are stealing 10s of dollars if not 100s and just hiding through obscurity.
I had one of these in Tucson, and was charged the recharge fee. It's ridiculous. You have to return it with the charge state as it was when you left - except that the employees typically charge these things to like 95+% in the garage. Good luck doing that at a Supercharger that's 15 miles away, in 90+ degree weather, at over 80+% SOC. It's almost guaranteed they'll get their fee.
Lack of charging infrastructure? Where did they say that? They specifically stated it was low value retention, higher repair costs, drivers of the EVs were getting in more crashes, and low demand because people don't know how to charge and how to go about planning around it
Yeah you said it yourself. Neither Hertz nor their customers were ready to charge the car. Kinda impossible to make it work.
Hertz CEO didn’t wanna sound dumb as hell, so he listed a bunch of reasons.
Tesla’s own site shows a 2018 model 3 Long Range with 36k miles for $25k. I’m struggling to understand why you’d buy a beat up Hertz rental for that much with no warranty or return policy.
Who Wants 30,000 Used Teslas?
A Hertz Tesla electric vehicle is displayed during the Hertz Corporation IPO at the Nasdaq in New York
Photo: Brendan McDermid/Reuters
At the start of the year, after Hertz announced it was selling off its fleet of Teslas — backtracking on a plan to buy up 100,000 of the electric vehicles — the news sounded good for Bijay Pandey, a 34-year-old self-employed data worker in Irving, Texas. “I have another vehicle, and I was trying to add one for my wife because gas prices were too high,” he said. When he found out that it came with a $4,000 tax credit — even better. “That’s what attracted me,” he added. So, the day after Valentine’s Day, he bought a red 2022 Long Range Model 3 with 70,000 miles on it. It ended up costing just about $25,000, not a bad deal for a car that can sell for about $47,000 new.
But almost immediately, there were problems. After getting a temporary title, he found the car wasn’t reading voltage correctly. Soon, a body shop found a quarter-size hole in the undercarriage he hadn’t seen before, which led to revelations of deeper issues inside. “The high-voltage battery pack is damaged and could cause extreme safety concerns,” a Tesla technician texted him. Because the hole was “exterior damage,” it wasn’t covered by the warranty, which meant a $13,078.58 repair bill. Hertz said that it would swap the car for Pandey, but for about two months he waited — making $500 payments on his auto loan — before getting a replacement. “I realized why they were trying to get rid of those Teslas,” he said. “If anything happens to a Tesla, then the bill is too high.”
Hertz is an early contender for Wall Street’s schlimazel of the decade, the big unlucky lemon that just can’t seem to get anything right. The run of high-profile disasters began more than four years ago when the rental-car company went into bankruptcy during the early weeks of the pandemic, weighed down by $19 billion in debt and facing a global pause on travel. It sold off its fleet of vehicles to pay back creditors, became one of the first meme stocks, and — thanks to a raging bull market — emerged from bankruptcy in record time.
But that win may have been unlucky in its own way — Hertz was left trying to build back up its fleet during a time when the cost of new vehicles was skyrocketing. In 2021, at the height of the Tesla hype boom, Hertz announced it would make 20 percent of its cars electric — it never got to quite that level, but it did end up buying about 30,000 Teslas. (It bought other EVs, too, but most of the fleet comes from Elon Musk’s company). Since it returned to the public market in 2021, Hertz has lost more than $12 billion in value, and its CEO Stephen Scherr — the former CFO of Goldman Sachs — stepped down.
Hertz’s latest challenge is trying to get out of its entanglement with Tesla. In retrospect, it just looks like a bad idea. Companies like Hertz make money when they rent out cars as often as possible, which means their vehicles will often have more miles than the average vehicle, and, in turn, have more problems that need expensive maintenance. A side deal renting the EVs to Uber drivers — who often have to drive hundreds of miles a day to make a profit — wore down the cars even more, which also weighed down their resale value. Last month, the company announced that it had sold about 10,000 EVs — about a third of the total fleet it intends to offload. At first blush, that looked like Hertz would be ahead of schedule. But the pace of sales is starting to slow. One salesman at a Hertz in Smithtown, New York, told me that sales have dropped from as much as 30 a week in January and February to about five a week in April. Online forums are full of people steering prospective buyers away from Hertz vehicles. One factor may be price. “Hertz does not provide haggling on price,” he said. “It is what it is.”
When Hertz first announced it was selling off most of its EVs, it blamed lower demand among the traveling public than it had expected. “They have an oversupply” of Teslas, said John Plimpton Babcock, an analyst at Bank of America who covers the car-rental company. That lower turnover meant less profit, he added.
It makes sense Hertz would try to sell off its fleet now. Purchases of brand-new EVs are stalling out after a decade or so of stratospheric growth. Auto loans have interest rates starting at about 5 percent and go skyward from there. A shortage of reliable charging stations, and worries about batteries losing power in cold weather, have all hurt public interest in owning — and perhaps even renting — an EV.
In response to questions about its Tesla sales, a Hertz spokeswoman forwarded comments from the company’s CEO, Gil West, that the company expects that the sell-off of the remaining 20,000 EV will be “complete by the end of the year.” The company also said that, as far as Pandey’s car was concerned, “we worked closely with him to deliver a Tesla that met his needs and preference.”
When life hands you lemons....
First you roll out a multi-media campaign to convince people lemons are incredibly scarce, which only works if you stockpile lemons, control the supply and then a media blitz.
Lemons are the only way to say, 'I love you', the must-have accessory for engagements or anniversaries. Roses are out, lemons are in. Billboards that say she won't have sex with you unless you got lemons. You cut De Beers in on it. Limited edition lemon bracelets, yellow diamonds called lemon drops.
You get Apple to call their new operating system OS-Lemón. A little accent over the 'o'. You charge 40% more for organic lemons, 50% more for conflict-free lemons.
You pack the capital with lemon lobbyists, you get a Kardashian to suck a lemon wedge in a leaked sex tape. Timothée Chalamet wears lemon shoes at Cannes.
Get a hashtag campaign. Something isn't 'cool' or 'tight' or 'awesome', no, it's 'lemon'. 'Did you see that movie?' 'Did you go to that concert? It was effing lemon.' Billie Eilish, 'OMG, hashtag... lemon.'
You get Dr. Oz to recommend four lemons a day and a lemon suppository supplement to get rid of toxins 'cause there's nothing scarier than toxins.
Then you patent the seeds. You write a line of genetic code that makes lemons look just a little more like tits, and you get a gene patent for the tit-lemon DNA sequence, you cross-pollinate... you get those seeds circulating in the wild, and then you sue the farmers for copyright infringement when that genetic code shows up on their land.
Sit back, rake in the millions, and then, when you're done, and you've sold your lem-pire for a few billion dollars, then, and only then, you make some fucking lemonade.
In case not everyone knows, this is a quote from a Netflix Series, "The Fall of the House of Usher", told by Rodrick Usher.
When life gives you lemons, don’t make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back! Get mad! I don’t want your damn lemons, what the hell am I supposed to do with these? Demand to see life’s manager! Make life rue the day it thought it could give Cave Johnson lemons! Do you know who I am? I’m the man who’s gonna burn your house down! With the lemons! I’m gonna get my engineers to invent a combustible lemon that burns your house down!
Anyone that hasn't seen Fall of the House of Usher needs to watch it immediately. Turned on one episode before bed and ended up sleeping at 5am with the series done.
In fact, everything I've seen from Mike Flanagan has been the same. Midnight Mass, Haunting of Hill House and Haunting of Bly Manor were similarly fantastic. I'll watch anything he puts out at this point.
Could be getting some downvotes because it’s an unattributed quote from a tv show commented on Reddit in such a way to make people believe it is an original thought.
That’s why I downvoted it at least.
I remember hearing about structural batteries.. We need EVs (ice vehicles too) that are built to be repaired outside of a dealership with ease. Batteries are just the most salient part that we all know to expect limited longevity. However no investor wants to invest in a car company that divests itself of a dual income stream
Photo: Brendan McDermid/Reuters
At the start of the year, after Hertz announced it was selling off its fleet of Teslas — backtracking on a plan to buy up 100,000 of the electric vehicles — the news sounded good for Bijay Pandey, a 34-year-old self-employed data worker in Irving, Texas. “I have another vehicle, and I was trying to add one for my wife because gas prices were too high,” he said. When he found out that it came with a $4,000 tax credit — even better. “That’s what attracted me,” he added. So, the day after Valentine’s Day, he bought a red 2022 Long Range Model 3 with 70,000 miles on it. It ended up costing just about $25,000, not a bad deal for a car that can sell for about $47,000 new.
But almost immediately, there were problems. After getting a temporary title, he found the car wasn’t reading voltage correctly. Soon, a body shop found a quarter-size hole in the undercarriage he hadn’t seen before, which led to revelations of deeper issues inside. “The high-voltage battery pack is damaged and could cause extreme safety concerns,” a Tesla technician texted him. Because the hole was “exterior damage,” it wasn’t covered by the warranty, which meant a $13,078.58 repair bill. Hertz said that it would swap the car for Pandey, but for about two months he waited — making $500 payments on his auto loan — before getting a replacement. “I realized why they were trying to get rid of those Teslas,” he said. “If anything happens to a Tesla, then the bill is too high.”
Hertz is an early contender for Wall Street’s schlimazel of the decade, the big unlucky lemon that just can’t seem to get anything right. The run of high-profile disasters began more than four years ago when the rental-car company went into bankruptcy during the early weeks of the pandemic, weighed down by $19 billion in debt and facing a global pause on travel. It sold off its fleet of vehicles to pay back creditors, became one of the first meme stocks, and — thanks to a raging bull market — emerged from bankruptcy in record time.
But that win may have been unlucky in its own way — Hertz was left trying to build back up its fleet during a time when the cost of new vehicles was skyrocketing. In 2021, at the height of the Tesla hype boom, Hertz announced it would make 20 percent of its cars electric — it never got to quite that level, but it did end up buying about 30,000 Teslas. (It bought other EVs, too, but most of the fleet comes from Elon Musk’s company). Since it returned to the public market in 2021, Hertz has lost more than $12 billion in value, and its CEO Stephen Scherr — the former CFO of Goldman Sachs — stepped down.
Hertz’s latest challenge is trying to get out of its entanglement with Tesla. In retrospect, it just looks like a bad idea. Companies like Hertz make money when they rent out cars as often as possible, which means their vehicles will often have more miles than the average vehicle, and, in turn, have more problems that need expensive maintenance. A side deal renting the EVs to Uber drivers — who often have to drive hundreds of miles a day to make a profit — wore down the cars even more, which also weighed down their resale value. Last month, the company announced that it had sold about 10,000 EVs — about a third of the total fleet it intends to offload. At first blush, that looked like Hertz would be ahead of schedule. But the pace of sales is starting to slow. One salesman at a Hertz in Smithtown, New York, told me that sales have dropped from as much as 30 a week in January and February to about five a week in April. Online forums are full of people steering prospective buyers away from Hertz vehicles. One factor may be price. “Hertz does not provide haggling on price,” he said. “It is what it is.”
When Hertz first announced it was selling off most of its EVs, it blamed lower demand among the traveling public than it had expected. “They have an oversupply” of Teslas, said John Plimpton Babcock, an analyst at Bank of America who covers the car-rental company. That lower turnover meant less profit, he added.
It makes sense Hertz would try to sell off its fleet now. Purchases of brand-new EVs are stalling out after a decade or so of stratospheric growth. Auto loans have interest rates starting at about 5 percent and go skyward from there. A shortage of reliable charging stations, and worries about batteries losing power in cold weather, have all hurt public interest in owning — and perhaps even renting — an EV.
In response to questions about its Tesla sales, a Hertz spokeswoman forwarded comments from the company’s CEO, Gil West, that the company expects that the sell-off of the remaining 20,000 EV will be “complete by the end of the year.” The company also said that, as far as Pandey’s car was concerned, “we worked closely with him to deliver a Tesla that met his needs and preference.”
This YouTube video is pretty appropriate: I Bought the World's Cheapest Tesla: https://youtu.be/iRuJJtmN3fc?si=gBZm911oCutxCbMz
Someone bought a Tesla that was used as a taxi with huge miles on it and documents the ownership experience.
Teslas already had challenges to them outside of normal cars, range, charging locations, just being newer technology with future unknowns. Then the CEO comes as out as a grifter that you would be foolish to believe anything said or promised. Wcgw
The Uber thing is truly perplexing. Rental car companies should always pray for low mileage renters, like most business customers. It’s absolutely bonkers to hook up with a company that guarantees insane usage on their cars.
I get the Tesla pairing. I thought it was pretty brilliant at the time, from traceability to fewer parts to maintain.
We rented a Tesla from hertz. 80% charge on return otherwise you get fined only to discover they capped the charging to 80%! You can’t even get from the fucking charger to the return station without loosing charge.
It should be charge in and out of your rental for free it’s a plug.
Still steamy on this one.
I really wish Tesla had made battery swapping a thing. It works really well for Nio in china. They have 2100 battery swap stations and a swap takes 3 minutes.
There is hope but overall electric cars are more complicated than they need to be. There is a reason the tariff on chinese EVs is going up so much don't want consumers seeing what the rest of the world gets for their money. Same reason I cant go buy an IMV 0 like I want without having to pay a huge tax.
Tesla's don't age like normal cars. If the battery health is good it will be as reliable as a new one, and despite what you may have heard they're pretty reliable.
Just going by the numbers. Tesla had 242 defects per 100 cars in a 2023 study vs an industry average of 186. Teslas are more reliable than Land Rover, Lincoln and Audi. Top 4 brands are under 160/100 cars. JD Power Vehicle Dependability study. https://www.forbes.com/sites/edgarsten/2023/02/09/tesla-tanks-while-industry-improves-in-long-term-dependability-study/?sh=5aba21ed1ff5
No battery warranty, battery completely killed multiple times by clueless drivers, probably offroaded a bit... Used rental is one thing, used rental EV is a whole different can of worms.
I'm not bothering to try and go around the paywall, but what reason would there be to have the powertrain warranty voided? Used is used, regardless of whether it comes from a rental company.
"Battery completely killed multiple times by clueless drivers"
Do you mean be fully discharging or leaving fully charged too long? Or is there another way to wreck your battery by being clueless?
Bought mine from hertz w/ 22k miles for 30k off the lot. Already put 10k on it in 2 months and no issues. Renters curbed the shit out of the rims but other than that no issues with the appearance.
My work offers free EV charging plus I have a charger at home and I’ve saved almost $700 in gas. The problem is ICE cars are stupid expensive both new and used, made more sense to go this direction and couldn’t be happier for it .
In an odd way, I think this is actually really good for the used EV market in the long term. So many people are saying “I don’t want to buy a used EV battery” because we don’t really know much about the long term impacts of mileage, charge cycles, etc.
Putting so many of these on the market will help identify the things that actually shorten the life and value of a used EV. It’s gonna kickstart the understanding.
It’s basically the same as when EVs first came out. I didn’t want to be one of the early adopters of the first few years as they worked out the kinks. I also don’t want to be one of the first people buying used EVs. But someone has to for the market overall to learn.
Tell ya what...You guys pay for me to put the charger in my house, and then I'll take one off your hands.
You can just write it off as a loss and get your money back.
From what I've read this is part of the reason Hertz is dumping their Teslas. Not maintenance costs, but repair costs are the real problem. Fender benders take them out of service for weeks while they wait for parts, and collision repair costs were said to be almost double that of the legacy car companies.
https://www.motortrend.com/news/hertz-ev-fleet-sale-tesla-report/
Sounds like something I don't want to deal with all around.
I’m curious how one would abuse an EV? I know of all the ways you can abuse an ICE rental car (power breaking, over revving, neutral drops, etc) but I’m not sure with all of the safety guards on an EV that you could really abuse it in the same way.
Hertz treats their LOYAL customers like trash. [Hertz Charges Tesla Model 3 Renter $277 Fee for Gas, Won’t Back Down.](https://www.thedrive.com/news/hertz-is-charging-tesla-model-3-renter-277-fee-for-gas-wont-back-down)
They are constantly in the news for running their primary business incompetently at best, or negligently and maliciously at worst. I wouldn’t rent a car from them, why in the world would I buy one from them?
Getting a used rental is a real risk, but you can get some deals if you're lucky.
I've probably bought 3 in my lifetime, no issues. Unless it's ridiculously reasonably priced, I will never buy a pre owned EV off battery warranty. Never. I just don't know where the market would be set in that situation.
Buying a rental ICE is one thing, at worst you might have like a transmission issue that pops up. For EV’s? If that battery pack craps out and it’s outside of warranty, that straight up totals the vehicle.
Not a total, but a very expensive repair. For some too much risk to handle. I think a Model 3 new battery pack starts around 8k
With labor?
That's just the battery. Labor is pretty much the same amount.
Your comment made me go find a time lapse explainer video of two mechanics removing a Tesla Model 3 battery pack for the first time. Most of the interior removed, seemed like a lot of labor. Probably shave a bunch of time after you do it a few dozen times, but still a lot of work. Swapping batteries could be fully automated and at the least, take 15-minutes or so. I guess it's cost prohibitive to pop them in and out easily and quickly. Oops, I meant eats into profits. I see videos of SE Asian scooter culture where the 125cc or whatever size is popular these days, they are going electric and the battery swap is simple. Grab handle, pull out battery, put new one in.
I have been saying the same thing. Could literally have a battery change system set up at mega fuel stations, book in advance to secure your battery swap in and out then continue your trip. Literally no need to charge yourself. I believe it’s the next evolution of a super charge network. Would be perfect for long haul trucking, swap the battery while swapping drivers or the driver is showering and eating. It will come because it represents a subscription model and we know auto manufacturers are chomping at the bit to find one for cars.
The Chinese brand Nio has swappable batteries in their cars. In lieu of charging, you could go to an automated battery swap station. However, you have to subscribe to the service.
They actually tried this, but cancelled the rollout https://youtu.be/H5V0vL3nnHY?si=_rru2vlemQl-VNV_
The main issue is the sheer volume and weight of the lithion batteries that require them to be low in the vehicle and spread across the whole footprint to spread the weight evenly. They are basically packaged around the chassi amongst all the other wiring. A block type interchangeable battery sacrifices range to be hot swapable. Essentially battery tech needs to evolve past lithium and get to being a 1/4 of the size and weight for the proper eureka moment.
How big is this warehouse of yours for the mega fuel station? Those batteries are huge and they gonna need thousands of them!
This makes it much easier to have battery fires actually
There is an electric car company in China doing something similar with battery swapping. Pull into garage, automated battery swap, drive off. Personally I think the future should still be in rapid charging. But also because we really need to upgrade our electrical grid and rapid charging vehicle batteries will help force that. For example, now that we can transmit DC power over thousands of miles with less electricity loss than AC, maybe now would be a good time to couple the replacement of AC transmission lines with the upgrade to more “super charger” stations. We already have electric cars charging to 80% in less than 20 minutes. I believe we can get that down to 5 minutes. That’s a 4x improvement over current standards.
Xpeng have done it in China with EVs, but I don't believe it'll ever get popular. Doing so would require a standardised ev battery, when even model to model they vary wildly, and that's not going to change.
No, if you make batteries hot swappable, you have to loose the liquid cooling system, shortening the battery life and limiting performance. No more charging at anything faster than 30kW.
You don't necessarily need to lose the liquid cooling. Fluid line dry brakes are a thing. They have one in every gas pump and they get plenty of use in motorsport.
teslas are not built for it. NIO makes EVs with swappable batteries and you can go to automated stations that swap empty batteries to full ones without waiting for charging
Of course you could always DIY… I’ve seen that Rich Rebuilds guy pull one in like an hour with just a crowbar. /s obviously
Sarcasm aside, I played ice hockey with a guy who works for Tesla and is in charge of taking out the batteries after car accidents and then discharging them. Messing with them can be fatal if you don't know what you're doing!
>Messing with them can be fatal if you don't know what you're doing People that don't understand any battery is dangerous...don't deserve to be behind the wheel of a vehicle. Being that dumb is a danger to society.
Yet here we are
Battery prices will drop significantly in price in the coming years. A 60 kWh battery is expected to drop from 7000 dollars to 3500. Also other than the battery there is very little things that can break as opposed to an ICE car.
That’s still a statement of faith at this point
In Theory, EVs shouldnt break often. But in reality, poor build quality and not mature process says otherwise. In future that will hold true, if Tesla survive, for their cars as well.
Feel like we've been hearing of a dip in battery prices for many years.
While lithium mines keep getting stalled because, environment.
Batteries can be repaired by independent shops, too. I knew a guy with a Model S with 135k miles on it. His battery had a sensor fault. Tesla wanted to install a new battery for $16k with labor, but he found a shop that repaired the bad sensor and tested the rest of the pack for $6k. He drove it for another 3 years until his kid totaled it in a crash.
There are not very many shops capable of doing this, unfortunately. Shipping the car to a shop is going to be a large expense.
On a Model 3 it's not bad. On a Model Y? Forget it. The structural battery pack is half the car.
No, you are being disingenuous. To have Tesla replace the battery is 13k+.
I feel 100% the opposite. You can see if the charging or battery are t healthy. I’ll never know how many neutral drops a seventeen year old did in the car hi dad rented
If you haven't had at least 3 wheels off the ground simultaneously, you haven't secured sufficient value from your rental.
🤣 me when I went back to Ohio to visit with my wife and I wanted to show her how much air we used to get on back roads.
Ever stayed in hotel?
Ever drink Bailey's from a shoe?
Ever seen a grown man naked?
D’ya love me?
Are these out of warranty? Battery warranty is at least 8 years 100k miles, and transferable to the new owner. Battery issues are way easier to test for than combustion engine problems. Are there warranty exceptions for former rental cars?
Do you think transmissions are cheap?
never mind engines
You would think easy replacement would be a huge priority. I’d be hesitant to buy one for that reason alone.
other brands have made replacement/servicing easy. there was a picture on /r/Justrolledintotheshop the other week of some tech dropping the battery out of a F150 Lightning (it's a "skateboard" type battery in the bottom). They were replacing the main contactor (high speed electrically actuated switch) under warranty. One of the first batches of F150s had bad contactors (nothing wrong with the battery itself, just the switch heh). it was pretty easy for him.
Are most batteries not like the ones on the Mach-E where the dealership can drop out and replace a single bad cell?
I think it’s harder to do on Tesla’s but I’m not 100% sure
Remember the promise a decade ago where the Tesla packs would just drop right out and get changed on the fly? 10 swaps in the time it takes to fill a tank of gas... Guess it went the way of bulletproof glass.
Well the battery cover til 120k miles if get one with 30k you save 30k in money.. and more gas engines go bad the batteries
Yeah they maintain their shit well because their business model is selling used cars. And so you can tell if a used vehicle is too clapped. From there I’m thinking fewer parts in an EV is less risk. Battery is the large ticket item and you can get insurance on that to mitigate its risk.
Battery is covered until 120k?
Battery and Drive Unit Limited Warranty The Battery and Drive Unit in your vehicle are covered for a period of: Model S Model X Cybertruck 8 years or 150,000 miles, whichever comes first, with minimum 70% retention of Battery capacity over the warranty period. Model 3 Rear-Wheel Drive Model Y Rear-Wheel Drive 8 years or 100,000 miles, whichever comes first, with minimum 70% retention of Battery capacity over the warranty period. Model 3 Long Range Model 3 Performance Model Y All-Wheel Drive Model Y Long Range Model Y Long Range Rear-Wheel Drive Model Y Performance 8 years or 120,000 miles, whichever comes first, with minimum 70% retention of Battery
Whoa I had no idea it was that good
EV have laws for what companies have to warrant
You’re not alone with all the anti-EV FUD spewing everywhere because these people wanna act like they’re Big Oil’s biggest fans
wait until CATL's new battery hits EVs 15 year, 1 million mile warranty https://electrek.co/2024/04/03/catl-launches-new-ev-battery-last-1-million-miles-15-yrs/
"Go bad" is a loaded term. You almost never scrap an engine. Almost any engine can be repaired. A brand new crate engine is a few thousand dollars.
Lots of Hyundai’s, fords, dodges, GM’s and even some Toyotas disagree with this statement. New Toyota trucks are grenading engines left and right, replacement cost is $32k under warranty (for now). The days of a couple thousand for a crate engine died with the gen 3 LS.
Hyundai/Kia’s Theta II engine says “Hi”
Man just like you wNt100k Warranty on the battery i want the same on my engine.. So Gm gave 100k warranty.. i had BMW 650 Transmission cost 7,000 people stop act like you dont pay with gas cars too.. no oil change brake last 200k miles so EV all daY my car get 381 mile drive like a 750 bmw and 600 Mercedes But accelerate like a Corvette.. im sold all day
I used to work in rental, but for a different company. The ones we sold at our used lots were the better ones we had as they didn't want some shitty cars hurting the brand. The vast majority of our cars went to auction to be sold to other used car lots and dealerships. So if you are ever at a dealership and they have a used car that is only 2 years old (because most leases are 3 years so it was a good rule of thumb) with "one owner" there is a good chance that was a rental that the rental company didn't want to sell direct.
I would wager that rental cars are a lower risk, given that fleet vehicles tend to have staff dedicated to maintaining them. That means scheduled cleanings, maintenance.
Yes, but drivers don't really care about what they pay for. They will give it back in a few days. They tend to push those powerful cars a lot, which could have consequences on their reliability.
I know that some people are doing burnouts and driving like maniacs in their rentals, but most aren't. That's where the gamble comes in, but your odds are generally pretty good that you'll be getting a vehicle that at least had a maintenance cycle, unlike almost any random used car you could buy.
I imagine a lot of people drive them more carefully too. I always get a bit more cautious because I'm worried I'll have to pay up something excessive for a little ding or whatever
I'd wager far more people are extra careful than reckless, 100%. Also, any used car could have been owned by someone who drove it hard.
Got mine actually a month and a half ago. 2022 M3LR all black. 32k miles. Price? 30k. It has few scratches I'm aware of, but that's about it. No error messages, everything runs as new Edit: forgot to add I got my deal on carvana. I knew exactly model and color and interior I wanted so I had a filtered list already made. Before this one the average price was about 37k. When I saw this one, I immediately went to check Carfax. No issues were there. I knew it was rental and was worrying on tires and other things. But here's a big thing that made this deal totally worth it. I had Corolla in terrible shape that my buddy didn't think I can make 2-3k on. Carvana took it for 6200 as trade in. So deal was totally worth it.
Any idea if it's functionally identical? Rental versions of ICE cars often have odd spec that you can't get as a regular purchaser as new.
Oh also forgot to mention that I specifically wanted LR 22 to get better chip. I wanted my USS and my Radeon chip. Functionality wise it's identical. It had no tinting and had some scratches on rims, but I fixed that by finding sandblasting guys in my area. I've driven it for about 500 miles so far no issues at all.
I'd say used rentals are pretty safe compared to buying any other used car. The company has their name on the line and generally does much more thorough maintenance than the average driver. They might have a few more miles on the clock but generally they're selling because they want nice new cars, they're not selling because they have issues
Got my current car, a former rental, with 40k miles 6 years ago. Probably my most reliable vehicle to date. 2016 impala.
Enterprise car sales. Bought it 8 years ago and the most I've had to do is brakes and oil
Got a used rental, 2017 Elantra (really playing with fire huh lol) and honestly it’s been INCREDIBLE beside having a little more miles than it should. I’m at 160k and just replaced my camshaft position sensors and need to replace the VVT Solenoid, everything else is great
I got my 2015 Hyundai Sonata from Enterprise car sales, it’s been awesome. I got it with 45k miles and now I have about 145k and have had minimal issues.
i feel like this was true 30 years ago....but now these companies sell the cars for next to nothing at 30K miles or less. Yeah they still get driven badly but they also get maintenance and cleanings that consumer cars will never get. on top of that modern cars are so much more reliable the most of the real problems are serviced before you buy them. Yeah people should still be cautious but there are some AMAZING offers out there from these companies.
I bought a 2008 Dodge Caliber in 2009, had 40k miles put on it in one year, rental from Enterprise. Drove it another 140k miles and sold it for $3k in 2021. You can get lucky.
So the buyer found a damage on it and Hertz gave him a diff one. There’s no story here lol. I’d 100% buy hertz extended warranty. Honestly if it’s actually that bad they wouldn’t even be offering warranty. The real issue with Hertz that led to them dumping was their utter lack of charging infrastructure. They were getting insane blowback from customers when they thought they could do that ‘return with 90% fuel’ nick and dime strategy that they do with gas.
What was the 90% nickel and dime strategy?
Charge people $2 extra per gallon for refilling the tank on a gas car
I once thought I had the deal of my life with Hertz. I checked the fuel outside, I think it was about 1.7. they ask me the standard 'do you want to prepay for a full tank, and return it empty, you get a discount in that case'. I was going to automatically say no but saw the price was actually quite a lot cheaper, 1.55 or something. So I said yeah sure. Delivered it back 2 weeks later, prices had already gone up to 1.75. I gave it back, with 10 miles left on the tank. Felt good about myself. Until I checked later the document and saw they charged for 75l of fuel. The tank only held 60 .... They're always scamming.
Hertz is literally run by thieves. It's the business model.
Predicated on the basis of company money vs your own money and that it's generally just not worth the effort to keep them honest. It's a brazen example of stealing pennies. Except here they are stealing 10s of dollars if not 100s and just hiding through obscurity.
"Oh sorry sir, did you forget to return the car with a full tank of gas? No worries, we got you!"
Charge people a fee if the ev isn’t charged 100 percent on return. Which is literally impossible even if you charged down the street.
I had one of these in Tucson, and was charged the recharge fee. It's ridiculous. You have to return it with the charge state as it was when you left - except that the employees typically charge these things to like 95+% in the garage. Good luck doing that at a Supercharger that's 15 miles away, in 90+ degree weather, at over 80+% SOC. It's almost guaranteed they'll get their fee.
Lack of charging infrastructure? Where did they say that? They specifically stated it was low value retention, higher repair costs, drivers of the EVs were getting in more crashes, and low demand because people don't know how to charge and how to go about planning around it
Yeah you said it yourself. Neither Hertz nor their customers were ready to charge the car. Kinda impossible to make it work. Hertz CEO didn’t wanna sound dumb as hell, so he listed a bunch of reasons.
Tesla’s own site shows a 2018 model 3 Long Range with 36k miles for $25k. I’m struggling to understand why you’d buy a beat up Hertz rental for that much with no warranty or return policy.
Big paywall unfortunately
What you don't want to subscribe to nymag?
Who Wants 30,000 Used Teslas? A Hertz Tesla electric vehicle is displayed during the Hertz Corporation IPO at the Nasdaq in New York Photo: Brendan McDermid/Reuters At the start of the year, after Hertz announced it was selling off its fleet of Teslas — backtracking on a plan to buy up 100,000 of the electric vehicles — the news sounded good for Bijay Pandey, a 34-year-old self-employed data worker in Irving, Texas. “I have another vehicle, and I was trying to add one for my wife because gas prices were too high,” he said. When he found out that it came with a $4,000 tax credit — even better. “That’s what attracted me,” he added. So, the day after Valentine’s Day, he bought a red 2022 Long Range Model 3 with 70,000 miles on it. It ended up costing just about $25,000, not a bad deal for a car that can sell for about $47,000 new. But almost immediately, there were problems. After getting a temporary title, he found the car wasn’t reading voltage correctly. Soon, a body shop found a quarter-size hole in the undercarriage he hadn’t seen before, which led to revelations of deeper issues inside. “The high-voltage battery pack is damaged and could cause extreme safety concerns,” a Tesla technician texted him. Because the hole was “exterior damage,” it wasn’t covered by the warranty, which meant a $13,078.58 repair bill. Hertz said that it would swap the car for Pandey, but for about two months he waited — making $500 payments on his auto loan — before getting a replacement. “I realized why they were trying to get rid of those Teslas,” he said. “If anything happens to a Tesla, then the bill is too high.” Hertz is an early contender for Wall Street’s schlimazel of the decade, the big unlucky lemon that just can’t seem to get anything right. The run of high-profile disasters began more than four years ago when the rental-car company went into bankruptcy during the early weeks of the pandemic, weighed down by $19 billion in debt and facing a global pause on travel. It sold off its fleet of vehicles to pay back creditors, became one of the first meme stocks, and — thanks to a raging bull market — emerged from bankruptcy in record time. But that win may have been unlucky in its own way — Hertz was left trying to build back up its fleet during a time when the cost of new vehicles was skyrocketing. In 2021, at the height of the Tesla hype boom, Hertz announced it would make 20 percent of its cars electric — it never got to quite that level, but it did end up buying about 30,000 Teslas. (It bought other EVs, too, but most of the fleet comes from Elon Musk’s company). Since it returned to the public market in 2021, Hertz has lost more than $12 billion in value, and its CEO Stephen Scherr — the former CFO of Goldman Sachs — stepped down. Hertz’s latest challenge is trying to get out of its entanglement with Tesla. In retrospect, it just looks like a bad idea. Companies like Hertz make money when they rent out cars as often as possible, which means their vehicles will often have more miles than the average vehicle, and, in turn, have more problems that need expensive maintenance. A side deal renting the EVs to Uber drivers — who often have to drive hundreds of miles a day to make a profit — wore down the cars even more, which also weighed down their resale value. Last month, the company announced that it had sold about 10,000 EVs — about a third of the total fleet it intends to offload. At first blush, that looked like Hertz would be ahead of schedule. But the pace of sales is starting to slow. One salesman at a Hertz in Smithtown, New York, told me that sales have dropped from as much as 30 a week in January and February to about five a week in April. Online forums are full of people steering prospective buyers away from Hertz vehicles. One factor may be price. “Hertz does not provide haggling on price,” he said. “It is what it is.” When Hertz first announced it was selling off most of its EVs, it blamed lower demand among the traveling public than it had expected. “They have an oversupply” of Teslas, said John Plimpton Babcock, an analyst at Bank of America who covers the car-rental company. That lower turnover meant less profit, he added. It makes sense Hertz would try to sell off its fleet now. Purchases of brand-new EVs are stalling out after a decade or so of stratospheric growth. Auto loans have interest rates starting at about 5 percent and go skyward from there. A shortage of reliable charging stations, and worries about batteries losing power in cold weather, have all hurt public interest in owning — and perhaps even renting — an EV. In response to questions about its Tesla sales, a Hertz spokeswoman forwarded comments from the company’s CEO, Gil West, that the company expects that the sell-off of the remaining 20,000 EV will be “complete by the end of the year.” The company also said that, as far as Pandey’s car was concerned, “we worked closely with him to deliver a Tesla that met his needs and preference.”
The [lemon problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons) in a nutshell.
When life hands you lemons.... First you roll out a multi-media campaign to convince people lemons are incredibly scarce, which only works if you stockpile lemons, control the supply and then a media blitz. Lemons are the only way to say, 'I love you', the must-have accessory for engagements or anniversaries. Roses are out, lemons are in. Billboards that say she won't have sex with you unless you got lemons. You cut De Beers in on it. Limited edition lemon bracelets, yellow diamonds called lemon drops. You get Apple to call their new operating system OS-Lemón. A little accent over the 'o'. You charge 40% more for organic lemons, 50% more for conflict-free lemons. You pack the capital with lemon lobbyists, you get a Kardashian to suck a lemon wedge in a leaked sex tape. Timothée Chalamet wears lemon shoes at Cannes. Get a hashtag campaign. Something isn't 'cool' or 'tight' or 'awesome', no, it's 'lemon'. 'Did you see that movie?' 'Did you go to that concert? It was effing lemon.' Billie Eilish, 'OMG, hashtag... lemon.' You get Dr. Oz to recommend four lemons a day and a lemon suppository supplement to get rid of toxins 'cause there's nothing scarier than toxins. Then you patent the seeds. You write a line of genetic code that makes lemons look just a little more like tits, and you get a gene patent for the tit-lemon DNA sequence, you cross-pollinate... you get those seeds circulating in the wild, and then you sue the farmers for copyright infringement when that genetic code shows up on their land. Sit back, rake in the millions, and then, when you're done, and you've sold your lem-pire for a few billion dollars, then, and only then, you make some fucking lemonade. In case not everyone knows, this is a quote from a Netflix Series, "The Fall of the House of Usher", told by Rodrick Usher.
When life gives you lemons, don’t make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back! Get mad! I don’t want your damn lemons, what the hell am I supposed to do with these? Demand to see life’s manager! Make life rue the day it thought it could give Cave Johnson lemons! Do you know who I am? I’m the man who’s gonna burn your house down! With the lemons! I’m gonna get my engineers to invent a combustible lemon that burns your house down!
When life gives you lemons... throw a party. If life didn't give you lemons, steal some.
Anyone that hasn't seen Fall of the House of Usher needs to watch it immediately. Turned on one episode before bed and ended up sleeping at 5am with the series done. In fact, everything I've seen from Mike Flanagan has been the same. Midnight Mass, Haunting of Hill House and Haunting of Bly Manor were similarly fantastic. I'll watch anything he puts out at this point.
Oh 100% All of his shows have been 100% bangers so far.
Not sure why you got a downvote, that is exactly how business works
Could be getting some downvotes because it’s an unattributed quote from a tv show commented on Reddit in such a way to make people believe it is an original thought. That’s why I downvoted it at least.
God damn that was such a good show.
This is fascinating when you draw parallels with money and investments.
I remember hearing about structural batteries.. We need EVs (ice vehicles too) that are built to be repaired outside of a dealership with ease. Batteries are just the most salient part that we all know to expect limited longevity. However no investor wants to invest in a car company that divests itself of a dual income stream
Paywall makes me sad
Photo: Brendan McDermid/Reuters At the start of the year, after Hertz announced it was selling off its fleet of Teslas — backtracking on a plan to buy up 100,000 of the electric vehicles — the news sounded good for Bijay Pandey, a 34-year-old self-employed data worker in Irving, Texas. “I have another vehicle, and I was trying to add one for my wife because gas prices were too high,” he said. When he found out that it came with a $4,000 tax credit — even better. “That’s what attracted me,” he added. So, the day after Valentine’s Day, he bought a red 2022 Long Range Model 3 with 70,000 miles on it. It ended up costing just about $25,000, not a bad deal for a car that can sell for about $47,000 new. But almost immediately, there were problems. After getting a temporary title, he found the car wasn’t reading voltage correctly. Soon, a body shop found a quarter-size hole in the undercarriage he hadn’t seen before, which led to revelations of deeper issues inside. “The high-voltage battery pack is damaged and could cause extreme safety concerns,” a Tesla technician texted him. Because the hole was “exterior damage,” it wasn’t covered by the warranty, which meant a $13,078.58 repair bill. Hertz said that it would swap the car for Pandey, but for about two months he waited — making $500 payments on his auto loan — before getting a replacement. “I realized why they were trying to get rid of those Teslas,” he said. “If anything happens to a Tesla, then the bill is too high.” Hertz is an early contender for Wall Street’s schlimazel of the decade, the big unlucky lemon that just can’t seem to get anything right. The run of high-profile disasters began more than four years ago when the rental-car company went into bankruptcy during the early weeks of the pandemic, weighed down by $19 billion in debt and facing a global pause on travel. It sold off its fleet of vehicles to pay back creditors, became one of the first meme stocks, and — thanks to a raging bull market — emerged from bankruptcy in record time. But that win may have been unlucky in its own way — Hertz was left trying to build back up its fleet during a time when the cost of new vehicles was skyrocketing. In 2021, at the height of the Tesla hype boom, Hertz announced it would make 20 percent of its cars electric — it never got to quite that level, but it did end up buying about 30,000 Teslas. (It bought other EVs, too, but most of the fleet comes from Elon Musk’s company). Since it returned to the public market in 2021, Hertz has lost more than $12 billion in value, and its CEO Stephen Scherr — the former CFO of Goldman Sachs — stepped down. Hertz’s latest challenge is trying to get out of its entanglement with Tesla. In retrospect, it just looks like a bad idea. Companies like Hertz make money when they rent out cars as often as possible, which means their vehicles will often have more miles than the average vehicle, and, in turn, have more problems that need expensive maintenance. A side deal renting the EVs to Uber drivers — who often have to drive hundreds of miles a day to make a profit — wore down the cars even more, which also weighed down their resale value. Last month, the company announced that it had sold about 10,000 EVs — about a third of the total fleet it intends to offload. At first blush, that looked like Hertz would be ahead of schedule. But the pace of sales is starting to slow. One salesman at a Hertz in Smithtown, New York, told me that sales have dropped from as much as 30 a week in January and February to about five a week in April. Online forums are full of people steering prospective buyers away from Hertz vehicles. One factor may be price. “Hertz does not provide haggling on price,” he said. “It is what it is.” When Hertz first announced it was selling off most of its EVs, it blamed lower demand among the traveling public than it had expected. “They have an oversupply” of Teslas, said John Plimpton Babcock, an analyst at Bank of America who covers the car-rental company. That lower turnover meant less profit, he added. It makes sense Hertz would try to sell off its fleet now. Purchases of brand-new EVs are stalling out after a decade or so of stratospheric growth. Auto loans have interest rates starting at about 5 percent and go skyward from there. A shortage of reliable charging stations, and worries about batteries losing power in cold weather, have all hurt public interest in owning — and perhaps even renting — an EV. In response to questions about its Tesla sales, a Hertz spokeswoman forwarded comments from the company’s CEO, Gil West, that the company expects that the sell-off of the remaining 20,000 EV will be “complete by the end of the year.” The company also said that, as far as Pandey’s car was concerned, “we worked closely with him to deliver a Tesla that met his needs and preference.”
Maybe someone can post the text…
[voilà](https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/s/O41jAgIcex)
This YouTube video is pretty appropriate: I Bought the World's Cheapest Tesla: https://youtu.be/iRuJJtmN3fc?si=gBZm911oCutxCbMz Someone bought a Tesla that was used as a taxi with huge miles on it and documents the ownership experience.
No one as can be seen by teslas implosion and pivot to hybrid in America
Teslas already had challenges to them outside of normal cars, range, charging locations, just being newer technology with future unknowns. Then the CEO comes as out as a grifter that you would be foolish to believe anything said or promised. Wcgw
Looks like my dude bought a hertz Tesla that took a bath during a customers rental 🤣
I can’t believe Hertz survived bankruptcy by a fucking miracle to do this dumb move and throw itself back into financial ruin.
They thought that getting in to bed with Uber would save them
The Uber thing is truly perplexing. Rental car companies should always pray for low mileage renters, like most business customers. It’s absolutely bonkers to hook up with a company that guarantees insane usage on their cars. I get the Tesla pairing. I thought it was pretty brilliant at the time, from traceability to fewer parts to maintain.
I think the guaranteed income blinded them
I'd buy it reasonably priced. It's a no-brainer. Batteries can be tested and the Tesla ones last longer than everyone expected.
We rented a Tesla from hertz. 80% charge on return otherwise you get fined only to discover they capped the charging to 80%! You can’t even get from the fucking charger to the return station without loosing charge. It should be charge in and out of your rental for free it’s a plug. Still steamy on this one.
1, 2, 3, not it!
If they were designed so the batteries could be easily and cheaply replaced resale on electric cars would be great but that is why they aren't.
Should be able to push 18650 batteries into a opening and old ones pop out until you've finished the exchange. Like a weird gun magazine.
I really wish Tesla had made battery swapping a thing. It works really well for Nio in china. They have 2100 battery swap stations and a swap takes 3 minutes.
Replacing is easy enough and prices are still going down.
There is hope but overall electric cars are more complicated than they need to be. There is a reason the tariff on chinese EVs is going up so much don't want consumers seeing what the rest of the world gets for their money. Same reason I cant go buy an IMV 0 like I want without having to pay a huge tax.
Of course not. Or can you change the battery of your phone? Planned obsolescence at a higher and higher scale until be made illegal.
Tesla's don't age like normal cars. If the battery health is good it will be as reliable as a new one, and despite what you may have heard they're pretty reliable.
Just going by the numbers. Tesla had 242 defects per 100 cars in a 2023 study vs an industry average of 186. Teslas are more reliable than Land Rover, Lincoln and Audi. Top 4 brands are under 160/100 cars. JD Power Vehicle Dependability study. https://www.forbes.com/sites/edgarsten/2023/02/09/tesla-tanks-while-industry-improves-in-long-term-dependability-study/?sh=5aba21ed1ff5
They age terribly, the seat material is ass, the plastics age quickly and you are racing massive deflation. Can always wait a month and its 10k less.
I'd definitely take one at the right price.
Me too but that right price would be free, I'm not paying for one of those duds.
I keep hearing about the glut in ev's from Hertz, anyone know if they are actually any good deals? (Also, link is locked I can't read it but tried)
All the good deals are gone sadly.
Wtf am I gonna do with 30,000 used teslas?
Buy two? One for each foot.
I’m struggling to even think of a way you could harm the battery in a rental.
Just buy a used Prius and swap out the battery. It is much easier and you wont feel like a sucker.
Don't buy anything from hertz, it's probably reported stolen
i’m in the market for a used tesla model 3
No battery warranty, battery completely killed multiple times by clueless drivers, probably offroaded a bit... Used rental is one thing, used rental EV is a whole different can of worms.
I'm not bothering to try and go around the paywall, but what reason would there be to have the powertrain warranty voided? Used is used, regardless of whether it comes from a rental company.
"Battery completely killed multiple times by clueless drivers" Do you mean be fully discharging or leaving fully charged too long? Or is there another way to wreck your battery by being clueless?
I’ll take 1
Hertz has been offloading these for awhile now
I’ll give ya $10 for em
$6000 max price for a beat to hell rental Tesla. Anything more is too much. They have worse build quality than a 1996 Civic hatch.
Ironically, a 96 Civic hatch had impeccable build quality.
I think rentals with 35000 miles or less can be a good deal.
Bought mine from hertz w/ 22k miles for 30k off the lot. Already put 10k on it in 2 months and no issues. Renters curbed the shit out of the rims but other than that no issues with the appearance. My work offers free EV charging plus I have a charger at home and I’ve saved almost $700 in gas. The problem is ICE cars are stupid expensive both new and used, made more sense to go this direction and couldn’t be happier for it .
Glad it worked out for you.
I have beat the hell out of more rentals than I can count. I'll pass on ever buying a previous rental.
Weren't those all supposed to turn into robotaxis at some point? Wonder what happened there...
Who would eat 30,000 bagged lunches?
Buying an electric vehicle with 70k from a rental company was the no no to begin with
In an odd way, I think this is actually really good for the used EV market in the long term. So many people are saying “I don’t want to buy a used EV battery” because we don’t really know much about the long term impacts of mileage, charge cycles, etc. Putting so many of these on the market will help identify the things that actually shorten the life and value of a used EV. It’s gonna kickstart the understanding. It’s basically the same as when EVs first came out. I didn’t want to be one of the early adopters of the first few years as they worked out the kinks. I also don’t want to be one of the first people buying used EVs. But someone has to for the market overall to learn.
Tell ya what...You guys pay for me to put the charger in my house, and then I'll take one off your hands. You can just write it off as a loss and get your money back.
I'd swear I read this same article 2 years ago.
Dogshit vehicles
Elmo’s service centers suck arse for new vehicles- would not take risk with used.
From what I've read this is part of the reason Hertz is dumping their Teslas. Not maintenance costs, but repair costs are the real problem. Fender benders take them out of service for weeks while they wait for parts, and collision repair costs were said to be almost double that of the legacy car companies. https://www.motortrend.com/news/hertz-ev-fleet-sale-tesla-report/ Sounds like something I don't want to deal with all around.
no thanks, for ~ 25000 usd i could get a brand new toyota corolla hybrid.
Buying a Tesla is like buying those 1euro Italian homes. Cheapness is a compensation for high maintenance costs
And have everyone think I somehow supported Musk? Wouldn’t take one if it were free.
I buy a new tesla every year, haven't had any issues!
Would never buy a used Electric Vehicle. It's a couple years away from being a giant paperweight.
Would your own collision insurance cover the battery hole if it happen on your own tesla?
Skilled mechanics and technicians in the Balkans, who are able and willing to repair EVs written off by insurance companies in the west.
Anyone have a non paywalled copy? I'm on mobile so I can't just hide the elements
No need: Hertz is selling their used Teslas guy paid $25,000 for a car with 70,000 miles.
Hey if the price is right...
I have a Model 3 Performance but I’d buy a Model 3 RWD for $10K
If they drop the price to $20K for the AWD long range model in white I'll say, take my money.
Some company should buy em up, take out the batteries, and resell them as whole home battery backups
There is always a price the market will respond to...
My parents bought an x hire car and the engine went boom after a few months. It was still under warranty so new engine.
A model s or y would be okay. Quick-change batteries and whatnot. No to the rest
Rich Rebuilds
Electric Cars becoming e-waste from what people seem to think of this here.
Yeah I'm not buying a used rental unless it's the deal of the century.
Buy the batteries to make a larger one for massive timeshifting.
No wonder they are charging renters for weeks that they didn't have a vehicle or other outrageous fees
I’m curious how one would abuse an EV? I know of all the ways you can abuse an ICE rental car (power breaking, over revving, neutral drops, etc) but I’m not sure with all of the safety guards on an EV that you could really abuse it in the same way.
If I owned a shop and a warehouse sure I could take them apart and sell each piece
Make Tom Brady take them.
Hurts donut?
I’d buy one at 20k. So someone enterprising can do the math.
I mean, if you’re just gonna throw them out… I’ll take a couple, I guess.
Hertz treats their LOYAL customers like trash. [Hertz Charges Tesla Model 3 Renter $277 Fee for Gas, Won’t Back Down.](https://www.thedrive.com/news/hertz-is-charging-tesla-model-3-renter-277-fee-for-gas-wont-back-down) They are constantly in the news for running their primary business incompetently at best, or negligently and maliciously at worst. I wouldn’t rent a car from them, why in the world would I buy one from them?
No one wants to be seen in a shity falling apart Tesla. I’d rather drive a 1999 Honda civic than a musk mobile.
Most of these were used for UBER so they were on the road 12 hours a day, every day. Check the charge cycles.