401–410 of 834 posts
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> my hotel had a charger in the parking garage and the valets plugged my car in for me So they just put the charging fee on your bill with the little bottles of gin from the minibar? I'm sure hotel power is reasonably priced...
I have never been charged by a hotel to charge my car
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One of the reasons large rental companies self insure is so that they can do repairs in house without listing cars as salvaged. They make it back on resale I think I read this from car dealership guy.
That's (yet) another reason why I don't buy the insurance that covers incidents of my own fault for my beater. A crushed bumper will deem it salvage and the insurer will take it away but I could still drive it (and from a relative's experience, at much lower cost than the insurer would pay). But on a newer vehicle, it takes a lot of damage to get branded salvage. Also makes sense for Hertz to do it in-house as they'l…
Insurance companies still make you pay for everyone else's coverage.
ref: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/09/05/auto-insu...
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Yes, because the Model 3 incorporates quite a bit of aluminum in the body. This is good for weight savings, but more difficult to work with. The root cause is that batteries are too heavy so other components must be made lighter.
Do you know why it's harder to work with? My untrained brain would have assumed it was easier, what with it being more malleable.
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Is there a reason why body damage on an EV would cost more to repair?
I suspect the main reason is because Tesla has a monopoly on replacement body parts.
Not sure about the economics for the rental companies, but for a consumer, there are practical reasons why electric aren't quite as attractive. When you rent a car, more than likely you will be in unfamiliar territory. So it seems that it just adds to the stress of travel and yet another thing you have to pay attention to. Will my hotel have charging spots? Will I be able to charge at the client site I'm visiting? Ho…
I'd be reluctant to rent an EV at this point. But I own one, and I for sure won't ever being going back to gas. I can't see myself giving up the convenience, or paying $50 every week to fill it up. And only at special locations that stock gasoline. That's a hard sell.
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> to expect that car rental employees will babysit every customer and show them all the cars in detail is... unrealistic. Not every customer needs explanations. I think it's completely realistic to expect a business to show me how to use what they are selling to me. How they profit from that is their problem - when they start having compassion for customers' finances, I'll have it for theirs.
I don't think it's likely they'll change their process just for EVs. I've never had them explain a car to me, they just toss me the keys and point in the general direction of the car. Figuring out how to make it work has always been my own responsibility.
I rented a Tesla from Hertz once in Houston and the whole experience was terrible. Got to the counter and the agent first suggested that I take a gas car for $25/day. I was confused because that was so cheap, although the Tesla was already heavily discounted. Apparently, this was $25/day above what I had paid for the model 3 and it was for a compact economy car. I stuck with the Tesla. The agent warned me that repair…
This is the same with gas cars. It's very frustrating because they're directly being dicks to their customers. You have 3 options
1. Bring it back with a full tank of gas (annoying, as you have find a gas station and plan time)
2. Pay up front for a full tank of gas and 1.5x to 2x the price of normal gas. Now you'll be trying to drive it extra so you can use all the gas you paid for but not so much that you run out.
3. Bring it back not full and then they charge you even more.
It's infuriating how adversarial it is and I'm surprised no company advertises they don't do this to their customers. No idea if there are good ones out there but have never been to one.
I've been seeing a lot of headlines the last month about demand for EVs falling. Of course, it could just be a PR campaign by Big Fossil, I'm not in a position to judge that. I had another idea about it and I'm wondering what other people think: by buying Twitter/X, Musk has waded deeply into the culture war, and we see on HN plenty of people who just can't stand to see his name. It seems a sizable community, could t…
I used to have a '18 Model 3 Performance (P3D as they were called then) and I sold it after a little less than 3 years. 1. The interior quality was shit. By 10k miles everything was rattling and the quiet nature of the car meant even with bass thumping everything was just annoying af. 2. The car software felt like it got worse. I had bought FSD for $2k back in 2018. I thought it worked fine for that price. As it beca…
For me the thought of plugging in my car at home and cutting gas station visits by half or more sounds great! Yet I road trip frequently and if I'm paying tons of money for a car the experience better match that of an ICE car(no problems working in cold weather like Fairbanks AK, EV chargers need to be in every nook n cranny of this and other countries like gas stations are & most importantly don't inconvenience me making me wait 15 to 60 or more minutes to charge my car on one of my road trips when I paid thru the nose for an EV/Telsa).
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Teslas are extremely expensive to own. BS. Cheaper by far than any gas car, in time and money! Half the cost to fuel. No more emissions check. No more oil changes. No more visits to the gas station. As the article says, collision repairs are extremely expensive I suspect this is also BS. That's par for the course with media outlets w/Tesla.
My own experience with having our (now-lease-returned) Model 3 backs up collision repairs being more expensive. I live a major metro that has a single repair shop certified to work on Tesla vehicles. They have a multi-month wait, and they charge more to repair Tesla vehicles than the equivalent luxury vehicle because they can. A newer luxury SUV with an MSRP 2x of our Model 3 had a lower collision premium on our car…