Those that are familiar with Tesla's, would there be extra software features a car rental company would want?
Hertz orders 100k Teslas
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Re: Hertz orders 100k Teslas
#82I say this having never driven a Tesla, but are they really suitable rental cars? My understanding is that Tesla vehicles differ quite a bit from regular ICE vehicles, to the point that there's a bit of a learning curve to operating the car. I'd be interested to hear from a Tesla owner on this. Maybe it's a non-issue.
My concern with renting one (which for now would stop me from doing it), is the scarcity of charging locations. Not sure how far apart they are in most locations nowadays, or what wait times are like, but if I'm on vacation (which is when I most often rent), then no hassle is worth it. There are gas stations everywhere.
When you rent a car, do you pick the type of car today? I always have, I usually see a big list of cars, where larger/more luxurious is pricier. I imagine that's what Hertz will do here. Teslas on the menu, but if you don't want to, or are driving more than 200 miles, you should just go with a Camry.
Re: Hertz orders 100k Teslas
#83Those that are familiar with Tesla's, would there be extra software features a car rental company would want?
Limiting speed, monitoring location, monitoring of “safety score” (attempts to measure things like “aggressive turning”), low cost of maintenance (no oil changes, etc), drivers are purportedly safer with autopilot than without
Re: Hertz orders 100k Teslas
#84I assume there is a little bit of a "meme stock" element to this, the reddit folks will love it, but I think I would pay a small premium for an electric car when renting (unless I needed long distance). More likely I pay a premium for that than for than the higher end ICE car options at car rental.
The problem is that when you are renting from Hertz you are probably new to the area and don't know where you are going and if there are any charging stations nearby.
Teslas won't be the only option, if you have range anxiety then just take a Camry.
Re: Hertz orders 100k Teslas
#85How will they overcharge for gas with these?
I deeply hope they don't charge you for electricity, that would be a huge bummer and really counterproductive to their goal of having these luxury cars actually feel luxurious.
Re: Hertz orders 100k Teslas
#86Gas prices are going back up, How many gas tanks of water did it take to make them switch to electric vehicles?
Re: Hertz orders 100k Teslas
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
Probably cause it’s hard to get people to charge them before they get returned
Why wouldn't they just apply the same usury rates they apply for gasoline tanks that are not given full to electric cars?
I can do an after hours return with a gas car at 3am and spend the 3 minutes to fill up the tank before I leave it on the lot. You can't really do that with an electric car unless you want to pay a extremely high fillup cost
Re: Hertz orders 100k Teslas
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a non-Tesla owner, I'd love to rent a Tesla on my vacations just to try it before deciding on buying one. I'd say it's much better for renting than buying, as I know how I would use it beforehand.
> As a non-Tesla owner, I'd love to rent a Tesla on my vacations just to try it before deciding on buying one. Me too. I actually looked into that a few months ago. In Boston Massachusetts, there is this place: https://www.teslarents.com/ But we were going to San Francisco not Boston, and there was nothing that I could google up. With the exception of Oslo, Norway; I've never seen so many Teslas as I did in the Bay a…
Try Turo. There tend to be quite a few Teslas there.
https://turo.com/
Re: Hertz orders 100k Teslas
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
In what sense? They’re quite a bit quicker than ICE cars and regeneration is something you need to get used to, but nothing that’s radically different. With these the big issue would be charging them - people might not know not to go to a gas station. Also wonder how the “full tank” policy will work with EVs where ideally you want to hover around 80% Where they might not be suitable rental cars is the reliability. Th…
>Also wonder how the “full tank” policy will work with EVs where ideally you want to hover around 80% I thought for electric cars, that's already baked in? in other words, the car displays 100% and stops charging, but the battery is actually 80% charged. Also, I think for electric cars, they'll waive the "full tank" requirement or charge you a reasonable amount to make up the difference (cost of electricity plus a sm…
Nope, you can configure it, at least on Teslas. There's a slider you can adjust to tell the car how much it should charge to, so that with daily driving you usually charge to 80%, but if you're going on a roadtrip and want 100% - you can do 100%.
Re: Hertz orders 100k Teslas
#90If only Hertz wasn't the worst of the car rental companies. My latest, and last horror story with them was that because they couldn't correlate my identity to that of the corporate credit card I was using, they were "unable to rent" to me.
I asked about refunding my pre-paid rental then, and started finding an Uber to Enterprise.
"Oh, sorry sir. Prepaid rentals are non-refundable."
Right, so you take my payment, and then decline to rent to me, and then refuse to refund me? They did, eventually.