How Hertz’s bet on Teslas went sideways
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39928913
Hertz is ditching even more electric cars
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This article doesn't mention it, but the other problem Hertz has is that Tesla has lowered the price of their vehicles. This is great news for new buyers, not so much for people who want to trade or sell their vehicles. Incidentally, this is why other OEMs offer cash-back or other limited time or limited scope offers - they can have less effect on trade-in values.
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Incidentally, this cycle of downward pressure on new vehicle price is a partial cause of GM's decline. GM had a goal to remain the #1 North American automaker by sales volume - to do this they sold a lot of cars to rental fleets - those rental cars come back on the market after about 1 year at a discount and compete with new car sales and put downward pressure on price.
Again, if you are a consumer looking for a low price, this is nice; if you are looking to run a company that can invest in product engineering, not so much.
Have they actually come back down?
Years ago I read this advice "Find an under-served market and serve it cheaply."
There's an opportunity here for a 3rd party to service and repair Teslas at a reasonable price.
Looks like selective quoting to me, the quarter sized hole was under the battery pack, which was damaged.
Since the hole was punched upward from the ground, it counted as exterior damage.
So $13,078.58 to fix the hole and battery pack issue.
That makes a used Tesla a less attractive option, and makes any Tesla more expensive to insure. In the long term that also makes new Tesla's less attractive. Low resale value and high insurance costs both increase the monthly cost of owning one, which is the number the majority of consumers will look at.
My bets are on supply chain or Tesla refusing to honor warranties if you get work done elsewhere.
At least until people start to consider them unrepairable.
> Only new Tesla parts, Tesla-approved fasteners, and Tesla-approved structural adhesives must be used when performing repairs on Tesla vehicles.
https://service.tesla.com/docs/BodyRepair/Body_Repair_Proced...
What’s not clear: how much are those “new Tesla parts”?
Tesla uses some scary language to make it seem like they are the only ones that can repair their product.
They have taken a page out of the Apple playbook.
I didn't read all the was too the fine print, but these statements are patently nonsense. Maybe doing the things they don't like will void your warranty or something, but adhesives don't get stickier just because Tesla decrees it.
They may well advise you on what to do, or even try to fuck up your car's software if they detect you've defied them, but they can't just issue commands or make statements about the impossibility of letting someone else fix your bumper.
For me, thinking in broad strokes seems sufficient here:
(1) Tesla has a reputation for lengthy, extremely costly repairs.
(2) Tesla is led by Musk, whose leadership strikes me as erratic and unreliable in the best of times.
(3) Tesla seems to be in financial trouble, which I'd expect to only exacerbate (1) and (2).
(4) Tesla just called into question the availability of their U.S. charging network, which reminds me that a Teslas are local-only vehicles unless you're confident there's a charging network to support your trips.
(5) I can't afford to spend $30k on an unreliable vehicle, nor a reliable one with $5k+ repairs.
I'm curious if looking at this more carefully would change my mind. And if so, is there a way I could have recognized that before contenting myself with the broad strokes mentioned above?
Then you should get a Tesla, because once you get past the FUD on HN, Reddit and the media, in the real world Consumer Reports found that Teslas had the lowest repair and maintenance costs compared to other car brands. Yes, even Toyota and Honda.
https://www.kbb.com/car-news/consumer-reports-names-cheapest...
The submitted story is passing off one anecdote as if it applies to all used Teslas sold by Hertz, and it already showed up multiple times on HN's front page from different media outlets. You can make a story out of that for any brand, but curiously there's a pattern there. There's a lot of anti-EV propaganda in the media and social media in the past year. And it's working very well, given comments like yours.
(have over 200k miles collectively on three Teslas)
Somewhere in the neighborhood of $0.70/kWh vs $5/gallon of gas, someone else can go deeper into the math.
https://www.wired.com/story/why-teslas-totaled-in-the-us-are...
> 8 years or 100,000 miles, whichever comes first, with minimum 70% retention of Battery capacity over the warranty period.
https://www.tesla.com/support/vehicle-warranty
In reality, an NMC battery would last 1000+ cycles. If you get 200 miles to a charge then you’re looking at 200k miles. LFP will be 2 - 3x this.
I know Tesla themselves do it if you buy a pre-owned car from them.
That is the fundamental takeaway.
These are specialized machines, with specialized parts, and specialized repairs.
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And to be fair, this isn't all that much different than other luxury cars like BMWs and Audis.
It's different in that those have much larger and more readily available 3rd party repair shops, parts, and used parts. You can often shop around and get alternatives. With Tesla you're a lot more locked in.
And...I'm sure it's better than Tesla in this regard, but it was still extraordinarily painful anytime something went wrong.
(Part of this was the engineering of the car itself. Like, something as basic as replacing the fan belt is basically full disassembly of the engine compartment.)
And by work on I mean I've done the intercooler, downpipe, brakes, rotors, calipers, plugs, injectors, and silly things like airfilters, fluids, etc.
The official diagnostic software from BMW is available for only $2700 per year. Plug it in, click a few buttons and it tells you exactly what is wrong with any BMW, troubleshooting steps, diagrams of the parts and what parts to order etc: https://bmwtechinfo.bmwgroup.com/
If you're not an official shop and don't care about the legalities, the same can be downloaded for $10 at home...
You must watch a LOT of advertising.
I imagine you are fans of Disney and Nintendo too? Maybe throw in some Samsung if you arent too infatuated with Apple.
A Lamborghini is 3s+.
I'll call that an amazing piece of hardware.
For example, a down payment for a home :)
$30.000 is a lot, I know it's a luxury car, but a new model 3 is still "only" 50.000USD. The discount simply isn't high enough and $30.000 is more than I would want to spend on a new car anyway. I can get a Hyundai i10 for $20.000 which functionally does the exact same thing for me. Sadly it's not electric.
Yeah, that's not going to do it. By, like, an order of magnitude.
The rest of the world outside the US exists? 150K gets you a very nice studio/loft in a brick building in central Budapest/Krakow/Belgrade.
But FSD 12.3.6 looks amazing.
I'm not sure why Waymo or Mercedes gets ranked ahead of Tesla - clearly, Tesla is a few years ahead of them in terms of self-driving technology.
For electric vehicle it is even more important. I would lift the car during test drive in random repair shop, go by myself under it and check the bottom. Battery is most expensive part there. And most fragile too. And also easy to check without special tooling.
I also wouldn’t buy a car with 70000 miles on it. That’s the mileage when things start to fail. It is also out of warranty. Battery might be still under warranty, but that’s not very useful. Tesla solved these issues in the past. Other thing is that these were rental cars. So they were treated extremely poor for years. The buyer of Herz Tesla should be well prepared for all possible expensive surprises.
Edit: I wouldn’t buy a car made after 2005 with 70000+ miles on it. The family cars made before outlived the ones made after 2015. 7 data points at the moment.
Edit2: CAN-Bluetooth dongle with an app isn’t really a tool. Not having it while buying a car for 25k is a gamble. Add also tool for paint thickness measurement. Everything else is naive. Nobody sells very good car for a very good price.
In an ICE sure (and that is even questionable, had a '96 Honda Civic go 300+k) but what wears on an EV aside from batteries? Bearings? There's so much less mechanical crap that an EV should really outlast a gas bunner by decades. Then again all the plastic crap and junk electronics have crippled automobiles.
To be honest, I really think a newer car will be in the shop sooner than my vehicles will have a hiccup. My friends that buy Audi, BMW, jag, are usually in the shop soon after purchase for something random.
What on earth are you taking about?
Physical damage to the case, maybe. But physical damage to the cells, no way. Water damage from the cooling system will only be inside. And battery capacity is only visible in the battery management system. Which is only available from CAN with vendor-specific software.
California, the state with the highest EV sales especially for Tesla, mandates that batteries be warrantied for 10y/150k miles. 70k leaves most of the warranty intact.
