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Hertz to sell 20k EVs in shift back to gas-powered cars
621–630 of 834 posts
Re: Hertz to sell 20k EVs in shift back to gas-powered cars
#622Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel like rental cars are one of the worst places for the current generation of EVs. This was my recent experience. I was offered an EV car as a rental upgrade in a major city because the local rental place didn't have an EV charger. I figured what the hell because it was a relaxed holiday vacation. Turns out that was a hilariously bad idea. Ended up spending at least 5-6 hours of my week vacation trying to avoid t…
Yeah - I was getting excited about having booked an EV for my Christmas holiday visiting family in the UK (with Hertz). Fortunately researching charging knocked some sense into me and I switched back to a ICE vehicle. - Even though I was staying in their house there was no way I could charge it without buying an expensive cable, or risking some cheap crap from Amazon (blow up the house or the rental car perhaps?) - E…
> Every damn thing needs an app (and an account and registration - fun if you don't actually live in the country in question). Seriously just put up a charger and a contactless payment reader. Imagine if every petrol pump needed an app to start? May as well go back to having to put pound coins in a meter...
This actually isn't true. It is law in the UK that every public charger must have a contactless reader on it. Many of them have apps but you don't need to use them.
Your point about the price is very valid though. With the exception of Tesla Superchargers they are extremely expensive. For some reason Supercharger prices range from 12-35p. The Supercharger network in the UK is pretty good, but driving anything other than a Tesla is a nightmare.
Re: Hertz to sell 20k EVs in shift back to gas-powered cars
#623Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel like rental cars are one of the worst places for the current generation of EVs. This was my recent experience. I was offered an EV car as a rental upgrade in a major city because the local rental place didn't have an EV charger. I figured what the hell because it was a relaxed holiday vacation. Turns out that was a hilariously bad idea. Ended up spending at least 5-6 hours of my week vacation trying to avoid t…
> ... trying to find chargers with the right plug, ones that aren't broken, ones that were available, downloading various apps, etc. Then when I did find a charger I sat in the parking lot waiting for it to juice up. These considerations are why I think we'll eventually move to battery swapping, when the market is mature enough to have standards for batteries. When there are as many battery swapping stations as there…
What makes you think complicated swapping stations are going to be ubiquitous compared to chargers?
Re: Hertz to sell 20k EVs in shift back to gas-powered cars
#624Re: Hertz to sell 20k EVs in shift back to gas-powered cars
#625People are happy to fiddle with EV's in their hometown, but it adds a lot of stress to figure out apps and charging, especially in a foreign country.
Re: Hertz to sell 20k EVs in shift back to gas-powered cars
#626Earlier quoted context omitted.
Storage of H2 is a challenge in space and weight constrained devices such as cars. Plus, any well to wheels analysis shows H2 coming up behind the alternatives in efficiency. There aren't claims, these are physical constraints. For heavy vehicles such as trucks and busses (and trains) there might be a market, provided the H2 is an otherwise unused byproduct of some process and needn't be produced, but for the majorit…
We had a hydrogen powered Toyota in our fleet for a while and it was great, but we were also down the road from the National Physics Laboratory at Teddington where they had a hydrogen filling station…
This could be solved by regulation. Just start tracking National Physics Laboratory deserts to ensure that no house in the US is more than 300m from a National Physics Laboratory.
Re: Hertz to sell 20k EVs in shift back to gas-powered cars
#627I'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…
The market expanded just fine. It's just some EV manufacturers that are under performing. The growth dropped slightly from a stellar 60% in 2022 to a still very impressive 30% last year.
Re: Hertz to sell 20k EVs in shift back to gas-powered cars
#628Earlier quoted context omitted.
Storage of H2 is a challenge in space and weight constrained devices such as cars. Plus, any well to wheels analysis shows H2 coming up behind the alternatives in efficiency. There aren't claims, these are physical constraints. For heavy vehicles such as trucks and busses (and trains) there might be a market, provided the H2 is an otherwise unused byproduct of some process and needn't be produced, but for the majorit…
Yet there are 3 separate car manufacturers, with h2 passenger vehicles, all with 500km+ range, all being sold for 1/2 a decade. Seems like it isn't a physical constraint?
Being sold in absolutely tiny volumes.
The biggest issue is the need to build out an entirely new fueling infrastructure with a highly explosive fuel. EVs can piggyback off of the existing electrical grid.
Re: Hertz to sell 20k EVs in shift back to gas-powered cars
#629Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Not a knock on EV's really, mostly the charging infrastructure and the rental experience. But why not knock on them? They had a lot of promise and a lot of hype when they were being touted as simpler and cheaper and just overall better. Somehow they ended up being more expensive, unless we're talking about Chinese brands, more costly to insure, a longer time to charge than a corresponding IC car and incompatible ch…
If you have a Tesla the charging story is wonderful. The car finds chargers on it's own. It shows you exactly what's available at each charger. Hardly anything is ever broken. EVs are far easier and more convenient than gas cars. It's the non Tesla infrastructure that just sucks.
> EVs are far easier and more convenient than gas cars.
EVs certainly have some advantages, but for most of the world's population "convenience" isn't one of them.
If you live in a house with a garage where you can install a charger and you use your car mostly as a runabout, it's great.
The majority of the western world lives in cities with street parking and fewer chargers than vehicles, though, and in that situation it's far more convenient to spend five minutes at the gas station on your way to the office than it is to find a spot to charge your car for three hours which may or may not be anywhere close to where you actually need to go.
Re: Hertz to sell 20k EVs in shift back to gas-powered cars
#630Whoever thought it made sense to use EVs for commercial use such as cabs hasn't dealt with the problems that EVs pose.
1. The number of public charging points available is very small compared to the number of gas stations. Very difficult to use EVs outside very urbanised areas because of this one reason.
2. Even at the base, you will need a large number of charging points and also access to much larger electricity load - all of which costs a lot more money and infrastructure.
3. It takes time to charge - and even the fastest charging units are usually a bit slower than doing a gas refill.
4. The costs can easily jump if the batteries need to be replaced for whatever reason.
5. Very difficult to put out fires etc.