I live in a ski town, people in rentals drive recklessly and crash the things A LOT. I can absolutely understand the decision to switch to cheaper cars.
No matter how bad my life gets, I’ll always be able to say “at least I didn’t stand outside a courthouse in winter to give moral support to Donald Trump.”
Russia abstained as UN Security Council adopts resolution condemning Houthi attacks. They want the world to be distracted from their atrack on Ukraine. I'm sure, once russia has been beaten, suddenly a lot of other conflicts will dwindle away
"You have your own agenda. I understand that you can't listen for more than one minute," Trump said in court, as he denied wrongdoing and repeated claims of political persecution.
Hopefully the now arriving wave of electric cars built by incumbent car companies won't have the same issues as Teslas in terms of being single integrated bricks of technology that you have to throw out if any part breaks.
They almost exclusively bought Teslas and Polestars and are now complaining about maintenance costs? I remember a few years ago, the first time Tesla wasn't on the very bottom of the JD Powers Initial Build Quality list the editors put up a special note that it wasn't because Tesla had gotten better, only because Polestar was even worse.
Seems like Hertz's main problem is common sense.
I'd really like to rent a Hyundai Ionic 5 for a road trip next summer but I can't find anyone local that rents any electrics other than Teslas.
Ehhh, EVs, and modern cars in general, have a bit of a bad habit of adding a bunch of technology that makes what used to be pretty cheap repairs way more costly.
It used to be if you had a fender bender that tore apart your bumper, you were able to replace the bumper for pretty cheap, like maybe $100 just for the part, couple hundred for labor, because it's just a big piece of molded plastic.
Now, the bumpers often house tons of sensors, often up to and including rear-view cameras. Now to replace your bumper and all the sensors, the bill is $5k.
Some of that's not even that modern. I got in a small accident in my 2007 Prius and they had to replace the entire front of the body. The bumper, grill, and front quarter panels are all shipped as a single piece.
I think you might have gotten taken advantage of as I'm pretty sure the front quarter panel is not attached to the front bumper and can be replaced individually.
The grill I'm not sure about but I'm pretty sure I've disconnected the bumper from the front quarter panel on my 2007.
I could also be misremembering the details, it was 10+ years ago and insurance made me take it to the dealer for body work. I remember it was a lot of the front end though.
Edit: I suddenly remembered the details. When the bumper crumpled it broke the clips on the quarter panels that attached it to the frontend assembly. So they had to replace the quarter panels too.
Modern cars - even in 2007 - were designed to crumple in an accident. I'm not surprised that those panels also go enough damage that they need to be replaced.
Though of course I have no information on this incident. I'm just speculating based on general knowledge without knowing specific facts that are relevant.
I am kind of happy that I cheaped out on my car when I bought it. The only real issues I have had were that the speakers bugged out so that one side sounded like faulty wiring inside a tin can, and the Bluetooth connection made it impossible to make or take calls while driving as it blasted the caller or recipient with aggressive loud static. None of these really needed fixing, music is nice but not a must have and I could blame the car when I didn’t want to talk to people when I was driving or running errands. The new owner hasn’t seemed to notice or has no complaints…
Funnily enough, I thought I’d have to sell the POS at a loss, but I got money back that covered my car loan and afforded me an e-bike at least.
Tried with an EV car from a car pool for a while as well, but the e-bike was so much better.
They have a bunch of Chevy bolts in the fleet too. I loved renting them because they were cheap and fun to drive. I'd return them with almost no charge left for their$25 fee, because they were slow charging and I normally didn't have a place to go up for long spells.
NGL the venue was not a bad rental. Just not something I would own. I literally was lost in a parking lot looking for my car and was basically standing next to it when I hit the panic button to find it. It looks like so many other things its hard to find it.
Even the Ioniq 5 is susceptible to this issue. A few people have hit road debris which dented the case around the cells and they were quoted $60,000 (CAD) to replace the entire battery so insurance totalled both cars out.
I've been eyeing this thing to buy since it was released but now I'm second guessing that after hearing this. I assume it's due to Hyundai not having a large enough supply of battery packs in order to have a robust supply of replacement parts, so hopefully they can reduce that price by an order of magnitude once they do.
I wouldn't be surprised if the hidden costs aren't just around time. EVs are great, generally, but they're sort of purpose specific. Having a 250 mile range (at best), people generally not knowing where to recharge, the additional time to recharge, not being able to charge at a lot of hotels, severely limited long range ability (without a lot of stops)... All of those add up to a poor experience. I can't think of a time where I rented a car and an EV would have been an option that I wanted. MAYBE if I only needed to go as much as a single charge would allow me, but this is just not a good fit for rentals, in my opinion.
Electric cars are a lot heavier and thus more deadly than gas vehicles—I wonder if the costs they mention related to collisions are largely insurance related
For example, the 2023 GMC Hummer EV, a full-size pickup, weighs more than 9,000 pounds, sporting a 2,900-pound battery. In comparison, the 2023 GMC Sierra, also a full-size pickup, weighs less than 6,000 pounds, according to Kelley Blue Book.
Traffic safety is particularly concerning. In crashes, the "baseline fatality probability" increases 47% for every 1,000 additional pounds in the vehicle — and the fatality risk is even higher if the striking vehicle is a light truck (SUV, pickup truck, or minivan), according to a 2011 study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Sure, let's act like Full Sized pickup is a meaningful term. They compared the Hummer EV to the smallest line of Sierra trucks, the 1500.
The Sierra 3500, also a full sized pickup tops out at 8300 pounds. The Cybertruck tops out at 6843 pounds, so I guess I could use that to say that EVs are lighter than ICE vehicles.
The F150 to F150 Lightning is probably the best comparison, and it shows the lightning to be about 17% heavier.
The Hummer EV is a pretty ludicrous vehicle, and not typical. For a more apples to apples comparison, the gas-powered Hyundai Kona weighs 3005 to 3483 lbs, while the EV version of the same car weighs from 3571 lbs to 3891 lbs, depending on configuration.
100% this. My sister had a nightmare rental experience. The rental company was sold out on gas cars and gave her a Hyundai EV.
She had to drive about 200 miles through some remote areas. When she left, the car said 300 miles. She figured 50% was a good enough buffer. She started driving and range dropped quickly. About 100 mi into the trip, it was saying 40 miles left.
She was in the middle of nowhere with spotty cell reception worried that she would be stranded in the desert. She was afraid enough to call her daughter and say, "If you don't hear from me, send help."
The only charger she could find was at a Hyundai dealer. She just made it, but had to sleep in the car until the next morning when they opened to get the car charged.
The argument here is always that EVs need to solve a problem to become viable. No, they don't. They don't need to develop EVs with insane ranges to adapt to a non-existent infrastructure.
That's just diversion. Fix the infrastructure instead of pretending that EVs need fixing imaginary problems first.
The main hidden cost is that regular ass people aren't going to be able to afford one for another twenty years or more.
I'm in my forties, and I'm still driving a car from 1999.
I have never owned a new car, all my vehicles have been used, and I've bought them in cash, outright, no car payment.
The prices will never come down on a used EV enough for me to justify the purchase, especially since I can find cars from 20 years ago that don't have excess features that will cost me more money to repair. Like a bunch of rear-view cameras and sensors, often placed inside the bumper, make a small fender bender into a costly repair bill because it's no longer just a bumper, it's a bumper with all kinds of expensive shit inside of it.
You can't find an EV with roll-down windows, no extras, and just a radio. They don't fucking make 'em. EV's were just the first step of the auto industry fully embracing that all vehicles are luxury, and economy cars just don't exist anymore.
Add to all this that charging networks haven't exactly rolled out nationwide and you're left with feeling stuck with ICE cars longer than you'd like.
I would have loved an EV a decade ago, but literally nobody is making an EV I can fucking afford before I croak.
Long story short: As with everything, the blame will be put disproportionately on the poor while ignoring that buying an EV is something most poor people simply cannot afford.
If you're in the US and meet the income requirements, you should be able to apply the Used Clean Vehicle Credit to drop the price by $4k.
$18k for a used vehicle in 2024 isn't doing too bad.
And specifically for Hertz, used EV prices ended up hurting them a lot here. Tesla's price cuts combined with how fast EVs depreciate over the first couple years impacted their ability to re-coup the cost of the vehicles leading to this.
The 1970's called - they want the idea that cars are worn out at 250k miles back.
Modern cars with 250k miles are just broken in. They are not in perfect condition anymore, but with minimal maintenance most still have a lot of life left.
Simple car, minimal extra features when compared with new. And as of this year a decade old.
I Love it, never had issues with it, and since I bought it 5 years ago has saved me it's current value in not buying gas alone, not including oil changes, brakes, etc.
I'm not saying ev is for everyone right now and I agree the current ev available new don't seem to be likely to be good used cars.
Just that this one seems to be one that doesn't fit a lot of your complaints.
This one is finally going to be available in the US in 2024, but I have a deep dread that import costs are going to make it not so cheap of a used vehicle in the US.
Europe and China have blown the US out of the water on affordable EVs and I guess maybe I should make clear I'm speaking very, very Amerocentrically on this issue.
There's literally a number of affordable Chinese EVs that don't have a bunch of extra features, but the cost of getting one to the US and making it street legal is basically more than a conventional EV.
Wild, I was unaware of that. Looking at the Seattle craigslist, it looks like the Seattle area has a handful of used ones in that price range, 2015 models.
The older 500e was a “compliance car” that only gets about 80 miles of range and doesn’t charge very quickly m. Fine for going to the grocery or maybe work if it’s nearby. That’s about it.
The 2024 model isn’t much better. Only about 120 miles of range and hella expensive for what it is. You’d be better off getting something else with fast charging and 200 miles or more of range.
I mean that's fair about the earlier model, 80 miles would be tight, even for a local commuter.
However, I really am a local commuter, it's part of how I keep low miles on my vehicles post-purchase, and while 80 miles of range feels a little tight for a busy day. 120 miles, well... I think I've maxed out a daily trip of "getting shit done" at 100 miles, so in my particular use-case, 120 miles would leave me about a 20 mile buffer on my busiest of days.
So, for me at least, the newer model is actually relatively in-line with my needs, but still several years away from being affordable used, considering the cheapest 2015 model I see is $5000 (with more of them in the $7k-10k range), and its a 9 year old vehicle. I'll still be pushing my sixties before I can really afford one, likely. Which is in line with my original point: most poor people will spend their lives still driving ICE vehicles.
Yeah, Hertz's pricing on their EV sales seems to be at the absolute upper end of the market, which is crazy for rentals. I was hoping their 20,000 unit sell-off would drive down used prices, but if anything it's going to cause them to go up.
The parts availability would be the biggest pain in the ass. I personally would avoid any Model 3 more than a couple years old because of various manufacturing things they've run into.
Because of various effects related to the pandemic, the used car market drove the average price of a used car to insane prices. I'm sure you can find cars for cheaper, but:
That is because economy car buyers figured out that you can buy a used car with all the options, so why buy a new car with less options. In 1970 it made sense to buy a cheap new car as cars back then were so unreliable that a used car was not reliable. These days cars will go a lot longer, so you can buy a nice enough used car and not compromise all the features.
EVs are a lot cheaper to run so maybe you shouldn't concentrate exclusively on the sticker price. Also, in the long term EVs will be cheaper to buy than gas cars too. Right now the limited availability of batteries puts limits on EV adoption. That will change in the next few years. Then EVs will be both cheaper to buy and to run than gas cars. The problem of increasing complexity and worse repairability applies to all modern vehicles, regardless of drive train.
How, by couping a country with a lot of lithium like Bolivia?
For starters... by getting rid of lithium. Alternatives might have a lower energy density in theory but also not the thermal issues of lithium-ion batteries. Which means you can pack them more densely without issues, or -even better- produce bigger cells instead of stacking small ones. So in practice they will perform on a similiar level but cheaper, making lithium-based batteries a niche product for high-end luxury items where you pay much more for a little bit of extra performance.
Next Step: You have batteries that don't run hot or might explode when damaged anymore? Stop putting them insinde the car but make the battery an integral part of the frame.
And that's just the theoretical side. The economic reality is that a lot of the benefits of lithium batteries are not based on the tech itself but coming from a decade of experience (and optimizations) in manufacturing. A lot of that experience is partly applicable to alternatives so they will reach a similiar maturity in a fraction of the time (= just a few years).
reuters.com
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