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It turns out buying a cheap EV that used to be a rental car isn’t the best idea.



Hertz gambled and lost when it placed its big EV bet on Tesla a few years ago. It was a chance for the rental car company to shake up the industry, instead the company bought 30,000 Teslas, got scared away by depreciation and expensive repairs and now wants to get rid of them. While all those used Teslas looked to be great used car deals, it turns out high mileage EVs that were formerly rentals are horrible to own as New York Magazine reported.

Hertz had ambitions to make 20 percent of its rental fleet EVs, and it was going to start with a massive Tesla deal that saw the company purchase over 30,000. Expensive maintenance that the company didn’t account for spooked the company enough to start to sell off it’s fleet. This made for incredible used EV buys, especially when you factor in the used EV tax credit of $4,000. People scrambled to Hertz dealers buying them up. One salesman at a Hertz dealer in Smithtown, New York told New York Magazine that they were selling as many as 30 Teslas a week at one point. A slowdown came when buyers finally started to realize just what they got themselves into.

Take Bijay Pandey of Irving, Texas. He went and purchased a 2022 Model 3 Long Range for just $25,000 for his wife earlier this year. Problems with it started not long after he purchased it.

After getting a temporary title, he found the car wasn’t reading voltage correctly. Soon, a body shop found a quarter-size hole in the undercarriage he hadn’t seen before, which led to revelations of deeper issues inside. “The high-voltage battery pack is damaged and could cause extreme safety concerns,” a Tesla technician texted him.

The hole in the battery pack turned out to be damage that was classified as “exterior damage,” resulting in a repair bill of over $13,000. Of course, that amount wasn’t covered by warranty. Surprisingly, Hertz told Pandey they would let him swap the car for another. Unfortunately that meant two months of waiting while Pandey still made his $500 car payment. Pandey says this is when it dawned on him why Hertz was trying to offload these EVs. “I realized why they were trying to get rid of those Teslas. If anything happens to a Tesla, then the bill is too high.”

Pandey isn’t alone in this realization. Places like Reddit and Tesla forums are full of people asking whether or not it’s a good idea to buy a used Tesla from Hertz. And a good number of people are telling them to steer clear. Many seem to forget that these were rentals, and rentals often have hard lives. Some suggested that it would make more sense to buy a used Model 3 from Tesla than Hertz.

The battery abuse these have received makes a purchase from Hertz a dealbreaker. My prior experience with purchase of a used rental does factor. Most rental cars don’t see much abuse, however many of these were Uber rentals, lots of fast charging, using all the range there is, the abuse is such it falls on the poor slob that buys one. I would buy a used Tesla from Tesla, that’s about it.

We reached out to Hertz for comment, but Hertz isn’t saying much about the used Teslas. It seems the company just wants to get rid of them and be done with it. In a statement to New York, a spokeswoman said the company expects to be done selling the remaining 20,000 Teslas by the end of the year. If you’re in the market for one of these things and are tempted by the low prices, all I can say is good luck.

Do not buy from Hertz.

doesn't fast charging fuck up any kind of battery? that alone should steer you clear of them completely.

Well no shit.  A rental car that was abused and fixing evs is expensive.  And in other news water is wet and democrats are retarded.

"There's a sucker born every minute"
P. T. Barnum

FIFY

Someone please explain to me why there's a $4k credit on used EVs?

Rental EV?  Yee-ha!  Let's see what she'll do, Earl!  

Can't imagine how much money Hertz lost on these.

Remember that many of these anti-Tesla stories are really anti-Musk stories. The media wants to destroy the Einstein of our time because he doesn’t agree with them ideologically.

What excessive maintenance would there be on these? Rental companies keep cars until the warranty runs out. Wouldn't mechanical issues be covered?

Duh.
You'd have to be living under a rock to not understand this.

And they are nonstop. Daily stories anti Tesla.

Travel agent here, of the thousands of cars I booked in last 3 years, less than 1% were electric. Nobody wanted them when offered, even at cheaper rates.

Uhh, mainly the $12,000-$20,000 battery.

If you buy a tesla for $20k and then have to drop another $20k on a battery in less than a year, you’d be pretty pissed.

And it’s a rental. Rode hard, put away wet. Yeah, not an ideal combination.

Dont buy rental cars, especially ones that are fun to joy ride in.

Because Biden wanted to incentivize used EV sales. There were stories of fields full of used EVs  that nobody was buying

I keep thinking about buying a used box truck. It would be so nice for moving anything. But the rental part always kills it for me. Once the kids get to college i may look harder

It's laughable that Musk is the "Einstein of our time".

He's more like a railroad baron or wealthy industrialist. A Henry Ford of our time perhaps.

I'm not saying he's not a reasonably bright individual.

I'd take one for 5-8k depending on condition

Kinda sorta, but not really.

Tesla batteries are hundreds if not thousands of individual cells connected both in parallel and in series. As such it's impossible to monitor each cell. The reason it's so critical to not let a Tesla battery get too low on charge is that if an individual cell goes bad, the whole pack becomes unusable.

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We bought one for our daughter when Hertz declared bankruptcy a couple of years ago. Not a Tesla, but a 2018 Nissan. It’s been a great car. We’ve had it about 3 years and the only thing I’ve done to it is replace the battery.

This exactly. I worked for Hertz many years ago. I would never buy a used rental car

Who wants to have to plug in a car. Isn't it bad enough having to plug in your phone all the time?

Hertz Tesla is the best rental car I've ever gotten. Nothing like letting the car drive itself to the airport while you're tired.

It was a low end model 3, but still impressively fast and nice on the inside.

I've owned 5 ex-police cars and an Army truck. I've bought plenty of previously-raped vehicles.

I've had good luck with all of them, though.

See post above.


If you pay USA taxes, you are the sucker.

On the other hand, flipping EV's could be a side hustle worth looking into (assuming you get the $4K each time).

Like strings of Christmas lights from many years ago?

That's NOT a P. T. Barnum quote.

A used EV? pass
A used rental EV? hard pass

According to the Social Security Administration, 216,004 people were born in the United States in 1880.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 3,591,328 babies were born in the United States in 2023.

If the sucker proportion has remained unchanged there are currently 17 suckers born every minute.
Observation of current society indicates that the rate has greatly increased though.

I won’t buy a used battery operated power tool, buying a used electric car - that was also a rental - fuck no

Warms my heart that people are getting exactly what they deserve for supporting stupid ideas.

A non-violent FAFO.

Whoa. This is the real story here.

I legit did not know travel agents still exist. Seriously. I’m shocked.

You should do an “ask a travel agent in 2024 anything” type thread. It would be wildly popular.

This instead.

Buying a rental car is akin to getting a wife from a whorehouse

EV THREAD BOIS

Not really unless you supercharge it constantly and to 100% which would be silly. Superchargers are 150 or 250kw max depending on the version. They’re fine to use however often, just not to 100 all the time.

IMO a Model 3 or Y wouldn’t make for a good rental car. If someone knew their way around one or had just a little knowledge they’d likely be ok. But there’s a whole bunch of reasons why they may not. If it’s your own car and you can park that home and charge it’s pretty nice.

Yep, right after he bought Twitter, the negative stories ramped up into high gear. They continue to trash Space-X for everything when it was once their masturbation material, because Musk could land and reuse rockets.

If you have a home charger, it’s no big deal to plug it in when you park for the night.

I really like my M3P for commuting, but I wouldn’t buy a used Tesla from Hertz.

Not really, the charge acceptance on LI chemistries is really good up until about 80% or so.

On other chemistries it's actually good for them (up to a point) as it keeps the electrode surface areas large and spongy,
the worse thing for most batteries is trickle charging as it causes electrode plating and reduces the surface area impacting
capacity and peak current handling. The "up to a point" is when you're stressing the battery at physical limits, e.g. too high
temperatures, etc. That's a big deal for lead acid and a non-event for something like NiCd which is endothermic during
charge absorption and the cooling effect offsets the resistance heating from the high currents.

I can buy aftermarket batteries and battery cells for my hybrid cars.  Eventually SOMEONE has to make a Tesla replacement battery or cells that aren't 20K.

I would think Tesla would push this hard,  given that the dead battery risk is hugely impacting their resale value

It’s what happens when the Government decides what we buy instead of the market.

It always ends badly.

Is the article implying that these were rented for use as Ubers, or that people were buying the rentals to use for Uber?

Hertz partnered with ride share drivers. Lots got used for ride share driving.

I wouldn't buy a Tesla, used or new, from anyone...but you do you.

"fuck up" is too extreme. It can cause quicker wear than slower charging. As can charging to 100% and deeply discharging frequently.

But what the issue sounds like is that renters beat on them because even the base 2WD Model 3 is quicker than almost everything else out on the road. They got beat on and apparently clapped out.

What they should have done is required more insurance or put more of the cost of damage onto the renter. You break it, you're gonna fuckin' buy it!