Hertz put a first-time EV driver in a Tesla that was half dead, then tried to hold her financially accountable for getting stranded on the side of the road.
Now that EVs are filling out rental fleets around the U.S., drivers are going through an adjustment period full of hazards and inconveniences. A mother and daughter from Gurnee, Illinois, became trapped inside of a Tesla from Hertz, which the company rented out to them in lieu of an ICE-equipped sedan the woman had reserved in advance. After the dead Tesla stranded them, Hertz tried to put the woman on a do-not-rent list, despite being responsible for much of the trouble, as the woman tells CBS News.
When Becky Liebau and her daughter arrived to the Hertz counter, they were told the only car left on the rental lot was a Tesla. Liebau had never driven an EV; she had booked a reservation for a gas-powered car, but rental companies are notorious for taking reservations though not holding onto them. According to Liebau, this was around closing time and she had no other choice but to take the Tesla, which appears to have been a Model 3 based on the CBS report:
Disaster ensued for the mother and daughter, who had booked the trip to scope out prospective colleges for the 16-year old scholar. We could easily say this was due to driver error, but it’s not that simple. User error figures into the problems that left the woman and teenager stranded, but the onus rests on Hertz now that it’s bolstered its rental fleet with over 50,000 EVs. Especially when dealing with first-time EV drivers like Liebau.
And it’s not like it was for lack of trying on the part of the mother and daughter. Liebau says her daughter tried getting up to speed on the Tesla EV, going on the internet to learn how to to operate the fully-electric car.
Hertz had given the pair an EV that was reportedly under 50 percent state of charge. The Tesla showed approximately 90 miles of range left, which may have been enough to get Liebau and her daughter to a charger. Hertz, however, did not provide them with an adapter to use charging stations that don’t conform to Tesla’s charging standard. Hertz later suggested these adapters are often targeted by thieves. It’s hard to see why that matters, or why Hertz would mention this — other than to suggest it was acting in its own best interest.
The Tesla’s tires were also low on air and would have benefitted from a top up. What Hertz basically did was hand Liebau the keys to a less than half-charged EV with low tire pressure and a missing adapter for use at nearby chargers. The Tesla went dead as Liebau searched for a charging station, trapping the two inside the cabin. Liebau and her daughter had no idea how to get out of the dead EV, and their phones were running out of battery, too. Again, that’s user error, but no one at Hertz explained the proper procedures to Liebau.
No roadside assistance came from Hertz. The two were eventually towed by a driver they had tracked down on their own, who taught them to override the electric door locks. They were taken to a hotel nearby, and had to pay one of the maintenance workers there for a ride across the state.
Presumably, back to their home. A hefty bill was waiting for them, as Hertz tried to pin the blame on Liebau. She refused to pay the invoices, and the company put her on a do-not-rent list. Hertz only happened to reverse course after CBS investigators reached out to the company. CBS says that Hertz has now refunded all charges and has reimbursed Liebau for the expenses she incurred.
Hertz shouldn’t have gone with Tesla for EV’s. People not driving EV’s and are renting want something as similar to their current car as possible. Both my leaf, and my current Kia Niro operate mostly like an ICE. The torque is different. The acceleration is different. But the biggest difference is the shifter and that is still simple enough that you could figure it out in about 30 seconds. Other than that it’s a normal car. Anyone can get in and drive it. They don’t need to worry about figuring out the touch screen crap or how to turn on windshield wipers like a lot of people need to figure out with Teslas. Tesla’s used to be the pinnacle of EV’s but now they’re cheaply made, over teched out garbage.
I’m probably at least average intelligence and rented a tesla recently because it was what was available. I’ve never driven one before and was so frustrated with the experience.
As a renter, you only have the key fob which has a really vague drawing of how to use it that only makes sense after you figure it out. I had no idea you had to press it against the door column to lock/unlock it. How is that intuitive? why wouldn’t it be against the handle?
Had to sit and watch YouTube videos in the car to figure out how to do everything. It was really unclear how to easily turn off the car and the only way I could figure it out was diving into the settings menu to find a shutdown button, only to accidentally turn it on again as I’m leaving.
The manual door release is designed to be discreet! THE MANUAL DOOR RELEASE IS DESIGNED TO BE DISCREET!
Like, I get it that a person who buys the Tesla will take the time to learn it, but it’s a terrible rental experience. Especially when a lot of the tutorials are catered toward people who have the car tied to their phone, which you can’t do as a renter.
I wouldn’t say the women in the article are blameless, but it’s definitely not “adjust the mirrors and you’re good to go” like every other rental I’ve had.
The more I learn about those cars, the more I’m convinced that no thought at all went into their design beyond “hey that’s cool” (if even that, it probably was more along the lines of “hey, that’s cheap”).
I still don’t really see what’s cool about it other than: it goes really fast when your battery is charged. I guess some people are blinded by the big screen, but the whole interior looks like a concept car that was never ment to be released that way. It’s all cheap tricks an gimmicks
I would say that a basic safety feature that is specifically designed to be hidden from public View, is incompetence in engineering.
I mean, almost all safety features in cars are hidden. Airbags barely have labels.
Are you technology connections? Lol.
I’ve never even heard of him until you commented so I don’t know if that’s a compliment or not lol. A quick google doesn’t tell me much
I would personally take it as a compliment. But then, I like the guy’s rants and deep dives into tech. Your mileage (heh) may vary
He goes on short eloquent rants about bad “technology”.
And sometimes he explains how they’re “connected”.
Often through the magic of buying two of them.
Technology Connections is a YouTube channel hosted by a guy who explains various electronic gadgets, new and old. He had a series on analog TVs, he’s talked about VCR’s both VHS and Beta, (fun fact, beta failed because it was objectively worse) he had an episode on auto turn signals, and even an ancient juke box. It’s worth checking out.
I really enjoy his stuff. He’s a well-educated, practical down-to-earth technology nerd.
This is why i love lemmy, fucking nerds ❤️❤️❤️
TC is in the Midwest
Rental companies should try putting some stickers inside the vehicle which indicate where the manual door release is. It wouldn’t cost much and would at least save people unfamiliar with Teslas from getting trapped like this.
Or maybe the damn door release should work regardless of power? I shouldn’t need special training to get out of a car in an emergency. Making an interior “manual release” that is hidden just seems like dangerously negligent design.
he was burned alive in his car cause couldn’t operate the ridiculously complicated door
Oh he should’ve just watched this 10-minute tutorial on how to open the door on YouTube after crawling to either the front seat or trunk!
If you use the manual door release in Teslas it can apparently damage the trim when you close the door again. Wonderfully designed cars.
I have trouble believing any engineer was part of that decision. The default is always human safety. Hotel doors electronic locks will disengage during a blackout, elevators will stop in place rather than introduce a new risk by moving the humans further, your seatbelt is still uncomfortable and will always be and keep you alive, if an industrial machine senses danger the solution is too cut power to anything that moves.
Electricity is less reliable than a human, and if the human is dead it won’t matter how the door is opened.
To be fair, most modern frameless window cars have this issue and also roll down the window just a bit when opening and closing the door.
To be fair, those are also terribly designed cars if that requires power and doesn’t work with a manual release.
Then why single out this specific company? I get that their public leader is being controversial and doing stupid/terrible things, but it’s more helpful and honest to talk about actual problems with their vehicles, such as the data privacy issues that have been uncovered over the past ~year. This artificially decreases their standing when compared to their competitors, and those guys really don’t deserve this benefit.
I didn’t.
The stickers have been prone to theft, so they don’t like to replace them very often. They’re saving some time and money so you don’t have to.
Who steals already applied stickers? Vandalism, sure, but theft?
Hertz customers who had to pay a $500 deposit on a debit card just to be able to rent the car that might not be there after paying the rental fees.
The driver and passenger manual door releases are literally in the most intuitive spot (in a Model 3 and Y at least, I haven’t been in an S or X to compare myself). So much so that I have issues with most new passengers trying to use that instead of the actual button that’s out in the open and very conspicuous on the top of the door arm rest, to open the door on my 3.
Even if someone is oblivious enough or has never opened a variety of car doors in their life to think of where a manual lever might possibly be located, and not find it on the door, it’s not that hard for someone to just Google it with the magic box we all carry now in our pocket/purse.
Even then though, how does someone run out of charge completely without noticing? The damned vehicle works just like an ICE, it tells you when it’s low. If you’re navigating somewhere it will even tell you whether you need to charge on the way, or if you need to slow down because you don’t have enough charge at a higher speed to make it. For fuck’s sake, it will even navigate you straight to the closest charger, you just have to tap okay on the screen. The article says they ran out of charge while searching for a charger. 80 miles of range when they picked it up… And they used it all searching for a charger… The car has a button on screen to show all nearby Tesla chargers. Any Hertz location renting EVs will be for sure within 90 miles of a Supercharger. This is 100% on the driver, sorry.
So many articles regarding EVs just give stupid people a free pass for having no common sense, instead shifting blame to the vehicle or a company instead of just calling a person out for being an idiot.
Okay, I know this is going to personally offend you, but stupid people are allowed to have a life and do things in public. People with cognitive or executive disabilities are also allowed to rent a car. People with ASDs, people that come from an anti-tech religious family, people who have difficulty transferring knowledge from a familiar domain to an unfamiliar one even though it seems like it’s trivial to you – all sorts of people are allowed to use commercial services and expect reasonable accommodation. Honestly, I don’t even understand half the shit you just said, and I wouldn’t expect someone who’s never been exposed to an EV and is stupid etc to be able to deal with it on the fly while other stressful shit that happens when you travel is also going on.
Anyone who thinks even minor changes to a common user control system are easy should watch the average user when given a phone with a new OS for the first time and told to change a setting (lifetime iOS user -> android or vis versa).
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I don’t think I will ever buy a new car.
I love my Tesla… but it isn’t clear to new drivers where they can and can’t charge, without some research. I can easily see someone assuming it works like a gas station and that they are all interchangeable.
How can you claim it’s not clear where to charge?This may have been true years ago with older interface versions, but not in the current interface. At least not on the Model 3/Y with horizontal screens. Not sure how the S/X with the vertical screens and separate dash cluster change the interface. But the vehicle in the article is a Model 3.
Even if you ignore the dedicated supercharger button on the right of the map, which can be hidden, the screen literally shows the navigation search box ALL the time on top of the map. When you tap on it one of the top suggested options is for charging, even without having to type anything in, and shows you all the nearby superchargers.
Things that are intuitive for you are obviously not intuitive for people who have to watch a bunch of YouTube tutorials to understand how the car works.
I think it’s probably the case of it being intutive for them now that they’ve used it. Once one gets used to a process or device it becomes intitutive for them. So it can look strange when people who aren’t familar with said device are struggling. e.g. riding a bike is easy once you know how. At least that’s what it looks like to me.
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Even if you are completely right about everything being as simple as you say, nobody wakes up and says “gee, I’m going to be stupid/self-destructive/neurodivergent today and cause myself a lot of pain.”
The answer is to use it as a case study to improve the design or perhaps provide a leaflet, QR code to a PDF, or a laminated card to assist renters with controls that are safety critical or unique to the vehicle
You’d think someone so clearly dealing with massive social challenges would have more empathy, but perhaps that is part of his deficiency.
The Car: The battery is low please go to this place I’ve mapped out for you to charge up.
The driver: DON’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO
From the article:
“and a missing adapter for use at nearby chargers. The Tesla went dead as Liebau searched for a charging station,”
It sounds like they did try to charge it. It sounds like they couldn’t use the nearby charging locations without the adapter.
Anything I am familiar with is simple and easy to understand. Anyone who does not know what I know is an idiot.
Thank you, I agree. I have enough brain cells to type this comment and believe that I’m self-aware.
Even if we ignore EVERYTHING in the vehicle itself that will help you charge the car… How hard it it to pull out your phone and search for “electric vehicle charger”. I’m sure the first result is going to be Google or Apple Maps telling you how to get to a charger.
Even if we ignore that and just talk about not being able to get out because the battery is completely dead… The manual door release is in a normal spot where many other non-Tesla vehicles put their door latches. It’s not hard to find, nearly every first time passenger in my Model 3 tries to open the door with that instead of the normal button to pop it open automatically so it clearly is an intuitive location.
Here’s a picture of exactly where it is and how it works, for those that have never been in a Tesla. It’s not hidden at all.
I’m sorry, apparently expecting a person to be able to type “car charger” into a search box, or either taping on the charger icon on the display or tapping on the navigate search bar and then “charging” to show nearby chargers is apparently too much to expect of someone with a driver’s license.
They couldn’t use a normal charger because they didn’t have an adapter. Apparently no one told them that they needed to find a Tesla charger. And did Tesla run out of color when they created that door knob? I wouldn’t even try to pull on that part of the button cluster.
They couldn’t use a normal charger because they didn’t have an adapter.
There really isn’t a “normal” charger since there are several different standards that have been used both in the US and worldwide. If you really want to go there and try to get pedantic about it though, the “Tesla” charger is now the North American Charging Standard. The standard that everyone is switching to, where other manufacturers are going to be providing adapters to their existing customers with old CCS plugs since new models will use the same Tesla connector and those old chargers won’t work on the new models going forward anyway.
Apparently no one told them that they needed to find a Tesla charger.
They also apparently didn’t think of looking for anything on the screen inside the vehicle itself that will literally navigate you to the closest charger either. Or look anything up on Google on their phone about it either. They just let the battery completely drain while driving around without trying to do anything to find a charger it seems.
Having a door with a very obvious, ergonomic mechanical handle that just opens the fucking door is very intuitive also.
You’re right. That’s exactly why the manual release in an intuitive place where many other vehicles have their handles. It’s not hidden or behind some sort of panel or anything. It’s right there.
https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/images/GUID-3E788A87-9F37-487E-ABB0-82FD910F6B90-online-en-US.png
I own a Tesla and it’s not even remotely intuitive. Most people who have ridden in my car have a hard time figuring out how to get in/out of it.
And I have had the exact opposite experience with most new people in my Model 3. So apparently annecdotal evidence is useless here.
Clearly every other random commenter here knows best about everything related to a Tesla because they can read a headline and comment on the internet.
I’d like to say “oh, I see, thanks!" But that isn’t where any vehicle I know of has a handle. Every other car I’ve ever seen has them horizontally on the door, not where the power window controls are.
they should be further towards the rear of the door to help you check over your shoulder when exiting the vehicle
the Tesla setup is just plain ole dumb
I would never have guessed that could be lifted.
Yeah… I’d never think of a door handle being there or being so tiny. That said, I’d fiddle with everything I saw until the door opened.
Hertz, however, did not provide them with an adapter to use charging stations that don’t conform to Tesla’s charging standard.
That’s honestly not an issue 99% of the time unless you WAY outside civilization. That still leaves he entire Tesla supercharger network to use, which is and mapped directly into the car’s navigation interface and automatically used by the vehicle to let you know when and where to charge.
If you’re using the in-car navigation it will automatically include stops at Superchargers as needed to reach your destination. It even notifies you if you’re navigating to an area outside outside the range of the supercharger network based on your current charge level.
Even if we assume they totally ignored the in-car navigation on the big screen smack dab in the middle of the damned dashboard… Google maps includes EV charging info now for all the major charging networks.
Tesla’s software does A LOT to help prevent you from running out of charge. The only way it happens is if you ignore it all, or there’s a hardware issue with the vehicle, which doesn’t seem was the case here.
Captain Hertz over here
Elong Hurts
As someone who has never been in an ev, FUCK YOU
Hertz, however, did not provide them with an adapter to use charging stations that don’t conform to Tesla’s charging standard.
These are the most common things people shit on. If you don’t like Tesla I totally get it. Some of the quality issues and design issues are obnoxious. The CEO is very publicly an asshole manchild. There’s plenty to hate. Yet somehow it’s always the same 3 talking points of:
- Doors are hard.
- EVs can run out of power
- EVs can catch fire
Each of these is immediately revealed as silly when you use one or even just Google people talking about their experiences outside of all the headlines complaining about doors. The vast majority of people need less than a few seconds to figure out the manual release, most do it by accident and the car tells them to stop. The car actively tries to get you to charge it with increasingly dire warnings and mitigations as you get closer to zero. EVs catch fire less often than gas cars.
Examples and sources:
https://www.motortrend.com/features/you-are-wrong-about-ev-fires
https://www.edmunds.com/car-news/what-happens-when-your-tesla-dies.html
I hate Teslas, but I looked up a video and you’re completely right. Some people are too stupid to function.
Hertz is a horrible company. If you have any other option, use it. If you have no other option, just walk into traffic. It’s less painful than dealing with their scams.
Is that the company who reported cars as stolen whenever they forgot about renting one, leading to lots of honest customers being arrested
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/dec/17/hertz-car-rental-accused-customers-auto-theft
Had to rent a car last year for the first time in about 9 years or so. I was amazed that even with Lyft and Uber nothing has improved.
I’ve never once had an issue with Hertz after probably 7 or 8 rentals.
So I’m expected to drop off a car with a full tank after hiring, and I expect it to be full when I pick it up.
Is that not the same for EV’s when you hire?
Plenty of rentals, Hertz included, go out on less than full. You are only required to fill it where you got it. E.g car goes out with half, you return it with half.
the best part about this is that the rental company will charge you for not filling up to make up the difference… but then not bother filling up the car and just send it out with half a tank.
More often than not I’ve found they don’t care and won’t charge you. I’ve had several times where I didn’t care told them to change me and they said I was good.
I’ve never gotten anything other than full-to-full from Avis. But yeah, I’ve gotten that with Hertz and Enterprise - usually along with other problems.
Is situations like this where it’s a last minute swap, normally they’ll either have you return it at or above the current level or simply tell you that fuel is on the house.
That also sounds like a serious safety problem if you cant get out when the battery dies
The manual release is what most people grab by accident in the Tesla Model 3/Y, it is generally more obvious then the electronic release and doesn’t require any power to the vehicle.
From the picture someone else linked, that doesn’t look obvious at all. I would never try that without prior knowledge.
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So how do we get guidance but still act?
You can, but it doesn’t look super obvious to me:
Why tf isnt it labelled?
It’s tricky because you’re not supposed to pull it except in emergency (i.e. dead battery). There’s a door release button that lowers the window slightly since they’re frameless windows. Pulling the manual release has a small chance of damaging the window if you push out before it’s had a chance to lower.
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They’re literally some of the safest cars on the road. This is a minor issue that is blowing up.
Jeez, that’s even worse than I was expecting. I was expecting an unlabeled lever somewhere, but this isn’t just unlabeled, but also looks like it isn’t even obviously a lever!
Hope it doesn’t fall into some deep water, or catch on fire…
I got stranded in a rental moving truck because they gave it to me with a low tire that turned out to be damaged. I’m still not sure if I handled it right, but I ended up denying the charges for an extra day since it was 100% their fault (still waiting to see if my bank agrees…). Nice to see these people were refunded, but still they were put on the blacklist. Fuck these companies.
A few months ago I made a reservation to rent a car with hertz. When I showed up, the only available car was a mostly dead EV. I’m glad I did a little research before agreeing to it because I would have had to go way out of my way to charge it, and the charging process would have taken HOURS to achieve the charge I needed for my trip.
I’m pro-EV in general but rental companies shouldn’t be offering them in their current state imo
I think offering them is fine, provided it has 100% charge and the expected travel is less than the available range.
A charged battery should be expected from a rental EV, totally. It’s not difficult for Hertz to install a fast charger at their locations to handle that for their vehicles and just cycle through the to keep their inventory charged.
Now 100% may not be realistic. Just like your phone getting from say 80% to a full charge can take as long or longer than from 0% to 80%. But a full charge isn’t necessary most of the time, and there are a lot of public chargers, even without the adapter to use 3rd party chargers on a Tesla for instance.
and the charging process would have taken HOURS to achieve the charge I needed for my trip.
I see people post this, and honestly it’s usually just not true. It is entirely a lack of understanding and/or education and just assuming you need to treat it like your gas vehicle. Which isn’t unexpected of course, it’s just that fully charging is not necessary in an EV and will just waste your time. Now I’m not saying that the car battery would not take hours to fully charge, that is true… It does take a very long time to take a car battery from 0 to 100%… but you just don’t need to fully charge most of the time. Especially if you’re driving a longer distance.
Fully charging Lithium-Ion batteries actually damages the battery a LOT more than partial charges do, just like on your phone. And charging at a low state of charge is a lot faster than when the battery is nearly full. They’re both using Li-Ion batteries after all. It is actually quite fast to charge from say 20% to 60% on a DC fast charger or Tesla Supercharger. You don’t need to fully charge every time you plug in, on a trip you only need to charge enough to make the next leg of the journey.
In most EVs, you just enter your destination in the navigation and it will take into account your charge level and automatically include needed charging stops along the way. I can tell you from personal experience that in a Tesla, most of my stops during longer trips are no more than 15 minutes long because of how the fast chargers are spaced out. That 15 minutes usually will shove about 50% charge into the battery via a Supercharger. It will have you arrive at the charger with as little charge as possible on purpose because a lower state of charge means power can be sent to the battery faster (within reason, it tries to leave about 20% as a safety buffer). Unless you’re driving to a very remote location, you’re probably pretty close to a charger at any given time.
A screenshot of Tesla’s current US charging map for an example](https://i.imgur.com/xMrkhMT.png)/. You can check their website if you want to look at your area to see. Destination chargers are located at places like malls, hotels, etc. and are usually an amenity for guests to help charge slowly overnight or while shopping. Superchargers on the other hand will shove power into the pack to charge as fast as possible and get you on the way.
You forgot to start your post with “well actually”
Sorry for the contribution to a discussion and including personal experience directly related to the topic being discussed.
I’ll let you all get back to your circlejerk. Make sure to thank your partner.
People shouldn’t need to know the ins and outs of charging a half full EV when they rent a car for a short trip.
You don’t need to, you can ignore all that. The car will tell you where the closest charger is. You just have to tap the button and it will take you there. You can treat it like a regular gas car, you just may be wasting time by doing so and charging to 100% all the time.
That map shows that you’re severely fucked in huge parts of the country. Are you sure that’s what you wanted to show?
Thank you for that added detail.
I think that actually reinforces my point about rentals though- I’m a relatively tech savvy individual and I didn’t know much of that, and would have been unlikely to be able to easy learn that information in an environment/situation such as “need a rental car now”.
I don’t own an EV, so I don’t know how all this works. But I find this behaviour very weird. The amount of energy needed to move a car is gigantic compared to, well, everything else inside the car. Even without power to move the vehicle, there should be enough charge to open the doors, operate the computer and so on.
When my phone shuts down from lack of power, if I immediately put it in the charge, it will light up the screen to show the battery symbol. So, even if there’s not enough juice to power all the components of the phone, there’s still some charge to turn the screen on to show the battery status. Only if I don’t charge it for a long time is that the screen will take time to start showing me the battery symbol.
Not sure about other phones, but Apple made their devices purposefully shut off before they’re totally dead, so that they have enough power to be located for 1-2 days if lost.
Phones do not show you the real battery state. The % of real charge left when your battery shows 0% will differ depending on OS and version, but no smartphone will allow you to continue running it when approaching empty.
This is because the closer you get to a really empty battery, the more risk of wear there is on components. Suddenly undervolting components because your battery physically cannot supply enough power is not good.
You do not know what you are talking about.
None of these batteries completely discharges. None.
Ignoring that, there is zero reason the vehicle needs to shutdown all powered accessories. It is more than capable of leaving enough charge to operate the door.
Thinking about this, how do the emergency lights work? Dead in the side of the road with not indicators available should be illegal.
I’m gonna upvote you because you are right, even though you need to work on your reading comprehension.
That’s pretty much what I said.
You should reread the comment you replied to. They never said phone batteries completely discharge. They said users don’t see the real “percentage of charge” when a phone “dies”. They actually said that the reported 0% isn’t actually 0%.
Further, they were accurate about undervolting components. I’ll add that the damage would of course happen sooner to the battery than the components, but the point stands. No use throwing shade here.
I’m more familiar with desktop components than mobile devices, so that was my frame of reference there with undervolting. Didn’t know about the battery damage, thanks for the interesting tidbit.
It’s even weirder than that, there is an entirely separate 12v battery that powers the doors, screen, accessories, and everything else except the motors. The big high voltage battery literally only powers the motors and charges the 12v one. If the HV battery dies, the rest of the car works as normal just without being able to drive. So I don’t understand how this happened
Hertz is a dumpster fire of a company. I always rent from Enterprise. They cost more but I’ve never had an issue with them or their cars.
I rented from them once, didn’t have a choice, my car was totaled. They tried to make me pay a late fee for something I returned on time, my insurance agent chewed them out for that hardcore. I didn’t pay those fuckers a dime, and I sincerely hope someone was fired.
Hertz strikes again
I’ve had good experiences buying used cars from them, too. No haggling, just pay the price or don’t.
Well - hertz just lost all my future business.
This sucks because it was one desk person, one supervisor, one general manager… Each reaffirmed the poor decision creating a terrible headache for all involved including the higher ups that dealt with this.
Headline should be : Hertz rending Teslas now, definitely not a terrible idea and average Americans not good at pulling levers that aren’t incredibly obvious
Giving someone a car with less than 90 miles of range and limited charging options without included adapters is pretty shitty. Definitely a bit of user error, but if you’re renting out EVs they need to be close to fully charged. Having to find a charger and wait for the car to charge right after you pick it up is pretty shitty.
Yeah, I get dinged if I return a gas vehicle with less than 3/4 tank, and yet Hertz is handing out EVs with under half a charge?? That’s some major bullshit.
Imagine a rental car that needs 8 hours of downtime to rent it again. Now imagine being management at Hertz and the fact they don’t even understand THAT much. Imagine how dumb the average American is and now think about the fact 1/2 of them are dumber than that- can’t find a door handle and are unashamed of that fact.
That’s charging from empty on a level 2 charger. A DC fast charger can charge it in 15-30 min.
Having one or two fast chargers at a large hertz probably makes sense for emergencies, because people probably are usually returning them mostly charged.
Downtime isn’t an issue if you allot enough cars to always have your rental fleet in rotation. Have 55 total for every 50 rental cars. Have level 2/3 chargers to cut charge time/etc.
Lots of ways to make it a non issue, but Hertz doesn’t care. They will just fuck up instead and bill you for it unless you can get a lawyer or the national news involved.
It also doesn’t take more than 30 minutes to charge it from empty to 80%.
It probably takes a good chunk of that time just to do the paperwork.
Handing out/driving away from a charger at 80% is standard practice and fine. Starting at 40% at the home base is unacceptable. It’s such an easy problem to solve.
Some people are really stupid. Like seriously when it comes to every day functions many people struggle. Especially when it comes to vehicles, some people just know that there is on and off and forward and backwards… never take anything else into account. It’s because of this that flying cars would be a disaster, you can’t have these things breaking down all the time or running out of gas. I’ve seen people literally lock themselves in vehicles before, never change their oil, put antifreeze in the washer fluid canister, drive on a flat until the tire ripped apart, evevtually fell off and had to buy a new rim. Some people should really not be allowed to drive without passing some sort of “basic knowledge about vehicles and what to do when something goes wrong” course.
Some people should really not be allowed to drive without passing some sort of “basic knowledge about vehicles and what to do when something goes wrong” course.
And yet we hand out drivers’ licenses like candy because the alternative is being trapped at home with no bike or transit infrastructure.
I mean, the article does say they had never used an EV and rented a gas car but got given the Tesla anyway. I don’t think that’s a basic knowledge thing. They weren’t trying to drive something that they were unfamiliar with. Why would they know how the charging works?
There hasn’t been much of a reason for someone who doesn’t drive an EV to know about charging, which is very different from filling up a car with gas. And heck, every gasoline car uses the same gas nozzle, which isn’t the case for Teslas. Plus gas stations are never more than a stone’s throw away, which is more than can be said about EV chargers (let alone Tesla compatible ones).
This reminds me of that Seinfeld episode about car reservations.
Good video on how to open the doors. The read doors seem real tough. youtube
A video on “how to open a door” is more than ten minutes long. Oh, Youtubers. You’re no better than those recipes that come prepended with the author’s life story sometimes.
Thats SEO. Google rewards longer word count or more keywords or something
According to YouTube advice people, monetization works best for videos between 7 and 15 minutes. That’s changed now though as they’re focused on Shorts, their TikTok knock off. Probably even easier to advertise between a bunch of 30-60 sec videos.
Fuck shorts with a rusty nail
The worst part is that you can only make it go away for 30 days. I will never care for shorts.
If you require a video on how to open doors at all there is a problem with the car, let alone a 10 minute video that includes explanations about how the manual release can damage the car.
A video isn’t necessary at all. The manual release is in a normal spot on both the driver and passenger front doors. New passengers try to open my Model 3 doors by pulling that lever all the time instead of using the normal button.
https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/images/GUID-3E788A87-9F37-487E-ABB0-82FD910F6B90-online-en-US.png
They are lucky it wasn’t 35 degrees outside. They would be dead.
We need more EV charging infrastructure and Hertz should have provided better guidance about charging since the car was already somewhat low.
