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Hertz increased its fleet of EV rental cars – then, profits exploded

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Re: Hertz increased its fleet of EV rental cars – then, profits exploded

#81

Post by jqpabc123 »

alexfromapex wrote: post #49
jakewins wrote: post #28

I’m 100% in the EV train, but this article is weird. It says they ordered a ton of EVs, and that EVs have lower cost of maintenance, awesome - but it provides no evidence that EV maintenance costs actually contributed to the improvements here? The statements they have from Hertz say “we made $$$$ from demand coming back to rent cars” and “we spent that $$$$ on buying EVs”. The quotes and facts in the article are not…

I think a large majority of these EV analyses suffer from short-term biases as well. It will be interesting to see if the cost of maintenance remains super low when these vehicles need battery replacements.

It will be interesting to see if the cost of maintenance remains super low when these vehicles need battery replacements.

Just like what happens to the cost of maintenance when fossil fuel vehicles need engine and transmission replacements.

Anything is possible but there is no indication that a battery replacement will be a typical or expected repair during the normal lifetime of an EV. An 8 year, 100,000 mile warranty on the battery pack is quickly becoming the norm.

Re: Hertz increased its fleet of EV rental cars – then, profits exploded

#82

Post by agumonkey »

jqpabc123 wrote: post #55
agumonkey wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That said, a lot of EV have transmission and more fluids due to the need to improve temperature control. Until someone solves the battery chemistry problem again.

That said, a lot of EV have transmission and more fluids due to the need to improve temperature control. Most EV's don't even have a transmission. And any battery cooling fluids are often sealed up inside the battery pack. Some EVs have air cooled battery packs, Nissan Leaf for example. If anything, you must be thinking about hybrids.

No, Porsche added gears for better efficiency. Other manufactures talked about similar ideas since.

Battery cooling I'm not sure though, it's still circulating right ? which would mean a pump of some sort.

Anyway things are not as vanilla as they used to be in the early days, I hope that trend doesn't keep up.

Re: Hertz increased its fleet of EV rental cars – then, profits exploded

#83

Post by jqpabc123 »

agumonkey wrote: post #82
jqpabc123 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That said, a lot of EV have transmission and more fluids due to the need to improve temperature control. Most EV's don't even have a transmission. And any battery cooling fluids are often sealed up inside the battery pack. Some EVs have air cooled battery packs, Nissan Leaf for example. If anything, you must be thinking about hybrids.

No, Porsche added gears for better efficiency. Other manufactures talked about similar ideas since. Battery cooling I'm not sure though, it's still circulating right ? which would mean a pump of some sort. Anyway things are not as vanilla as they used to be in the early days, I hope that trend doesn't keep up.

No, Porsche added gears for better efficiency.

Only applicable at autobahn speeds --- which explains why Porsche is the only manufacturer thus far to see a need for this.

I seriously doubt this will become typical --- simply due to cost reasons.

Battery cooling I'm not sure though, it's still circulating right

No, natural thermal convention in most cases.

Re: Hertz increased its fleet of EV rental cars – then, profits exploded

#84

Post by Fatnino »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #57
MontyCarloHall wrote: post #48

As others have pointed out, attributing the higher profits to lower EV maintenance costs makes no sense, since rental cars are purchased new and sold after 10-20k miles, which is long before any major ICE-related repairs need to be performed. The only ICE-specific maintenance in the first 10-20k miles is 2-3 oil changes, which seems negligible. I did notice that Hertz charges a flat $35 fee if you return an EV with l…

Wow! That’s obscene considering they have chargers at the lot to recharge the vehicles and the power costs them almost nothing. The perk should be able to return it on empty, as they can plug them right in at arrival. If Hertz wants to be able to turn the vehicles faster, they can install fast DC chargers at their facilities.

Rentals sometimes charge 10 dollars a gallon if you return it below where you got it.

It's not because they then go to a gas station to refill it. They just rent the car to the next customer with only 3/4 of a tank and hope that second customer returns it full.

Re: Hertz increased its fleet of EV rental cars – then, profits exploded

#85

Post by nebula8804 »

yazaddaruvala wrote: post #23
Majestic121 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While those numbers are extremely encouraging, the fact that this is on a new fleet is to be kept in mind. What we know now is that they 50-60% cheaper to maintain during the first couple of years. Let's hope that they are also 50-60% cheaper to maintain over their whole lifetime, but this might not be as assured as one might think due to batteries which are a huge cost.

The best part about exponential curves: By the time the battery needs to be replaced batteries will be 90% cheaper.

we'll see about that. It does not seem to be true for the Leaf batteries. These early 24kwh models have replacement batteries costing like 11-12k. Based on the rapid depreciation of the car's value(how many people want a car that can only go 80ish miles?) that battery pack price makes it a non starter for many people.

I am looking forward to third parties hopefully releasing their own packs. How would you warranty and insure them though? Also forget about third party packs for Tesla. They have so much integration that I doubt you'll see anything other than replacement packs from Tesla.

Re: Hertz increased its fleet of EV rental cars – then, profits exploded

#86

Post by jsnell »

hef19898 wrote: post #69
alexfromapex wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a large majority of these EV analyses suffer from short-term biases as well. It will be interesting to see if the cost of maintenance remains super low when these vehicles need battery replacements.

Those are rentals, so they run quite a few more charging cycles than private owned cars. On the other hand, rental companies write there cars off, and sell them early enough to maintain an up tondate fleet. So maybe batteries don't need replacement during the rental live, and companies don't care that much about resell value since the car is written off the books anyway.

That is not how write-offs work. It is strictly better for the company to sell the vehicles for their fair market value than to write them down to below market value and sell them at that lower value. (You would not write them off entirely - that would be absurd.)

Writing something down/off means that you're asserting the asset has less/no economic value left, and you can basically treat the delta between its book value and the written down value as an expense for taxation purposes. But if you e.g. write off a car from its real value of $10k to $0, it'll reduce your corporate taxes by $3k, and means you can't rent the car or sell it. So why write it off, rather than sell it for $10k? $10k > $3k.

Re: Hertz increased its fleet of EV rental cars – then, profits exploded

#87

Post by CydeWeys »

wintogreen74 wrote: post #74
CydeWeys wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's widely known that maintenance costs way less on EVs than on gas-powered cars. There are plenty of data points everywhere to confirm this. EVs are much simpler with way fewer moving parts and fluids to worry about.

It is NOT clear this is true for the first 10,20 or 50K miles though, and that's about as long as a rental company owns the car, so attributing financial gains from EV vs. ICE seems spurious at best.

If you own a large fleet of vehicles, and especially with the way people treat cars that aren't theirs, some non-trivial percentage of those cars are going to need service that goes beyond mere fluid replacement, even within the first few ten thousand miles. This may not apply to the modal rental car, but it will apply to some of them, enough to bring the average up non-trivially.

Re: Hertz increased its fleet of EV rental cars – then, profits exploded

#88

Post by toast0 »

metadat wrote: post #64
toast0 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 20,000 miles is what, 4-6 oil changes? Most new cars have a 10,000 mile factory oil change interval. PHEVs usually go for 20,000. Rental cars sometimes have a hard service life, but I'd put that range at maybe 1-2 changes. Which isn't much at all. More likely there's a usage difference; if you're puttering around from the airport to the hotel and back, you might pick an EV, but if you're renting a car to drive a lo…

Thanks for the info, toast0. Minor clarification: Highway miles are actually gentler than city / town miles. Less wear and tear due to stop and go traffic, 90 degree turns, and fewer potholes.

They're generally gentler, but it kind of depends on the highway. The speeds also mean more consequences of any pothole or other obstruction, too.

But mostly the observation is that you'll likely get a lot more miles on the car in such a rental than a local rental. So a rental company that keeps a car in their fleet for 2-years or 20,000 miles is going to likely send most EVs out for age and more ICEs for milage (in my estimation, anyway), and so sure, ICEs will have oil changes in that interval, but they'll also have more of the every car needs maintenance sort of proportional to use (runtime and/or mileage), because they'll see more use.

Re: Hertz increased its fleet of EV rental cars – then, profits exploded

#89

Post by agumonkey »

jqpabc123 wrote: post #83
agumonkey wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, Porsche added gears for better efficiency. Other manufactures talked about similar ideas since. Battery cooling I'm not sure though, it's still circulating right ? which would mean a pump of some sort. Anyway things are not as vanilla as they used to be in the early days, I hope that trend doesn't keep up.

No, Porsche added gears for better efficiency. Only applicable at autobahn speeds --- which explains why Porsche is the only manufacturer thus far to see a need for this. I seriously doubt this will become typical --- simply due to cost reasons. Battery cooling I'm not sure though, it's still circulating right No, natural thermal convention in most cases.

Oh ok the liquid is passively cooled ? what the "heatsink" here ? the lower surface of the pack ?

Re: Hertz increased its fleet of EV rental cars – then, profits exploded

#90

Post by hef19898 »

jsnell wrote: post #86
hef19898 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are rentals, so they run quite a few more charging cycles than private owned cars. On the other hand, rental companies write there cars off, and sell them early enough to maintain an up tondate fleet. So maybe batteries don't need replacement during the rental live, and companies don't care that much about resell value since the car is written off the books anyway.

That is not how write-offs work. It is strictly better for the company to sell the vehicles for their fair market value than to write them down to below market value and sell them at that lower value. (You would not write them off entirely - that would be absurd.) Writing something down/off means that you're asserting the asset has less/no economic value left, and you can basically treat the delta between its book va…

There is a difference between book value of an asset, which is a symbolic 1 $ after it is completely written off, and the price you get for said asset on sale to the open market. Nobody forces you to sell, e.g., a 20 year old CNC machine for one dollar...

Edit: Just realized, the correct term is depreciation... That's what you get after a long day, and word by word translating from German to English...

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