The Hertz Meltdown Reveals the Scale of the EV Debacle

The Biden administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has revealed its ambition: to phase out gas-powered cars in favor of electric vehicles (EVs). Incredibly, this announcement comes as we are flooded with overwhelming evidence that EVs are a market loser.

Indeed, the artificial boom and then meltdown of the EV market is a modern industrial calamity. It was created by government, social media, wild disease frenzy, far-flung thinking, and the irrational chasing of utopia, followed by a rude awakening by facts and reality.

CEO of Hertz Stephen Scherr has been booted out due to a vast purchase of an EV fleet that consumers didn’t even want to rent. The company has now been forced to sell them at a deep discount and in a market where consumers are not particularly interested.

Looking back, however, Scherr’s decision to bet everything on an EV boom was a disaster that was highly praised at the time. Only last year, the company bragged: “This morning, [Hertz] was recognized by The White House for our efforts to expand access to electric vehicles across the country. Demand for EV rentals is growing and we’re here to help our customers electrify their travels.”

The demand turned south fast in a real-world test of drivers. But that’s not all. Hertz could not make their investment pay no matter what they did.

Repairs are much more expensive, if you can get them done at all, and take longer.

Any motor vehicle accident that impacts the battery can lead to repairs higher than the value of the car, that is totaled with so much as a scratch.

To top it all over, there is no longer any financial advantage to the driver. It now costs slightly more to charge under many conditions than to refuel with gasoline.

The novelty of driving one for a day wears off after the first day. At first they seem like the greatest thing that ever happened, like an iPhone with wheels. That’s great but then the problems crop up and people start to realize that they are fine for urban commutes with home chargers and not much else.

They make truly terrible rentals. Obviously, under rental conditions, people have to use charging stations rather than a charger in the garage. That means spending part of your vacation figuring out where to find one.

Not all are superchargers, and if it is a regular charger, you are looking at an overnight wait. If you do find a station with fast chargers, you might have to wait in line. They might not work. You waste hours doing this. And you likely have to reroute your trip even to find a station without any certainty that you will get a spot with a functioning charger.

No one wants to do this. When you rent a car, all you want is a car that goes the distance. And typically car rentals are for going some distance else you would just take a taxi or a Lyft from the airport. You might need to drive several hours. And god forbid that this takes place in cold weather because that can reduce your mileage by half. Your whole trip will be ruined.

Why in the world would anyone want to rent one of these things rather than a gas-powered car? You might be better off with a horse and carriage.

Did Hertz think of any of this before they spent $250M on a fleet? Nope. They were just doing the fashionable thing.

Again, I’m not knocking some uses for EVs. If you think of them as enclosed and souped up golf carts, you get the idea. They can be wonderful for certain urban environments so long as you don’t overuse them and have to get them repaired. You also have to be in a financial position to afford the higher costs all around, from financing to insurance to repairs and tires. And you have to be prepared to take a big loss on resale, if you can even manage to find a buyer.

There is money to be made in this market, as there is with any niche good or service. But that is covered with normal market conditions, not massive subsidies, mandates, and frenzies. The Hertz case proves it. It is a perfect clinical trial of these machines. We now know the answer. They cannot work.

And thank goodness because if the United States truly switched over in a big way from gas to electric, we would face other disasters. The wear and tear on roads is much worse due to the sheer weight of the cars, which is 25 percent higher than gas cars on average. Many parking garages would have to be rebuilt with new reinforcements.

Then there is the strain on the grid. There is no way the industry could handle the demand. Brownouts and travel restrictions would be essential. All this would pave the way toward 15-minute cities.

Please remember how this craze began. It was lockdown time and automakers suspended orders for parts and chips. They stopped cranking out cars. When demand intensified, the chip makers had moved on to other things, so delays escalated. By the summer of 2021, there was a general panic about a growing car shortage.

At that point, consumers were willing to buy anything on the lot, among which EVs. The sales records were completely misinterpreted. The manufacturers made huge investments, and the car rental companies did too. But the product had not really been tested. That test is taking place now, and the EVs are completely failing.

We keep hearing that this is still too early, that development has a long way to go, that more charging stations are coming, that manufacturers are going to overcome all these problems in time. All of this sounds very similar to what the producers of mRNA shots say: this was just a trial run and they will get better the next time.

Maybe but doubtful. There is a huge problem in the investment market right now. EVs are massive losers. Consumers, manufacturers, car rental companies, and every other market in which these lemons are made available are running away from them as fast as possible. They had their day in the sun and got fried.

There is another problem: surveillance. The car can be tracked anywhere and shut off at a moment’s notice. This is obviously a great thing if the government desires a social-credit system of citizens control.

At this point, it is doubtful that the industry can recover. And yet, even now, the Biden administration is planning more subsidies, more mandates, more restrictions on gas cars, and digging themselves even deeper into this hole.

“The Biden administration on Wednesday issued one of the most significant climate regulations in the nation’s history, a rule designed to ensure that the majority of new passenger cars and light trucks sold in the United States are all-electric or hybrids by 2032,” reports the New York Times.

You simply cannot make up nuttier stuff. At some point, we could see manufacturers making the cars just to satisfy the central planners but otherwise preparing to chop them up and throw them out. They would likely be happy to dump them in the ocean but that isn’t allowed either.

“Therefore, choices in the 2030s will quickly boil down to discontinue use of personal motorized transportation and therefore be forced to move to an urban location or pay up for a useless EV and try to continue living outside of urban centers but with sharply limited transportation.”

Sounds very dystopian and very doomer not to be confused with boomers. I live far outside the core of DFW in a semi rural exurb. My very next car will be a Model 3 RWD with LFP cells for exact opposite to what you are saying. The dotgovs can shut down gasoline sales in a few hours by telling the dozen or so refineries to stop.letting trucks come get fuel at the plant gate or else. Valero will comply bank on that or face nationalization. Same for the natural gas grid Atmos and Chesapeake both will shut the valves if told too or else.

However the govs cannot shut off the great thermonuclear fireball in the sky as is showers my property with energy well above the needs of not only my home but also any driving distance I chose to go in an EV. I have two 50 amp plugs already on the garage walls that will fully charge a Tesla overnight. I have Taiwan made 25 year lifespan panels 15kw with space for another 15 should I choose to upgrade. The inverters are 8000 watts each. Those inverters have a internal frequency source they can and have gone into island mode 100% off grid. The whole point of the project was to have a source of power independent of any grid or.gov action to turn off a grid.

I would expect that independence minded people would jump at the opportunity to be grid free. My commute at times is 106 miles round trip that’s farther than 99.99% of all daily commutes the avg is 40 miles or under. A model 3 will make the round trip three times before running empty. So regardless of what the govs do I have a 150 mile out and back range. People seem to think that gas pumps will always be stocked with fuel available for purchase. Harvey and Katrina show that is not the case at all and less of the Gov desired to stop sales by fiat.

“No one is talking about what is going to replace the Federal and State gas tax? You got it. A per mile charge as they track your every movement.”

The fed and state gas taxes already don’t come anywhere near funding the road infrastructure. The average person drives 14,500 miles per year at an average 25mpg that means they would burn 580 gallons of gasoline doing so.

Federal Motor Fuel Taxes ; Gasoline tax: $0.184 / gallon ; Diesel tax: $0.244 / gallon ; Aviation fuel tax: $0.194 / gallon ; Jet fuel tax: $0.219 / gallon*.

So the avg driver is only contributing $106.72 per year to the Federal hwy fund. Does anyone honestly believe that covers even a fraction of a percent of what that driver uses in infrastructure value. Hint it doesn’t even come close. Interstate highways are a million dollars a mile or more to build.

State taxes vary but the highest is PN with 57.6 cents per gallon on gasoline.

So the avg driver in PN would pay another $334 in state fuel tax. Again a tiny percentage of the infrastructure capital expense and ongoing maintenance costs

Texas is 20 cents per gal so the avg Texan pays $116 in state fuel tax @25mpg most cars get way better than that the Camry hybrid I had for 6 months was averaging 45 mpg long term and 58 on the hwy only.

Texas just put a yearly tax on all EVs because they don’t pay fuel taxes the rate is $200 per year due at resignation so double what the average Texas driver would pay at 25mpg.

I drive 38,000 miles per year at 28mpg so the state gets $272 a year from me it would save me money to switch to commuting with an EV not to mention not buying 1357 gallons of fuel at 3.07 a gal today that’s over $4100 per year in fuel.

my panels will charge an EV for free they already payed themselves off cost wise with the energy I sold to the grid and not having to buy 15-18 cent per kWh over the last 4 years.

“Sorry, but semis manage to beat them in the weight department.”

You are right. A typical semi will cause 16,000 times as much wear per mile driven vs any light duty vehicle. There are a dozen peer reviewed studies showing this.

“The curb weight of the F-150 ranges from 4,021 pounds to 5,740 pounds.”

A 2024 Tesla S is 4,561 to 4,766 lbs

2025 Ford explorer curb weight 4,344 to 4,766 lbs

Every one of these vehicles is on 20 inch alloy wheels so the tire patch foot prints will be virtually the same square cm area.

2023 S60 curb weight 3730–4470 mine is the T5 AWD and 4000+lbs

Model 3 Tesla 3,862 to 4,034 lbs the RWD with LFP pack is the 3862lb the AWD LR performance is the 4034#

These last two cars are within one inch of each other in length and width both seat 5 and are both comparable luxury sedans. They also both ride on identical sized 245/45R18s so the tire patch foot prints are identical. The ICE S60 is heavier than the model 3 by a good bit.

Road wear is a direct mathematical function of psi of tire patch foot print. It’s not a linear function it’s polynomial exponentially increasing as tire patch psi increases. Semis by a large margin account for most of the wear on road surfaces their diesel taxes don’t come close to covering the maintenance costs even at 200000+ miles driven per year. The tax payers via the general fund subsidise the Federal hwy fund and semi trucks by proxy.

I rent EVs on a two week or 21 day cycle. More than 25 times since 2022. Later this year I will be getting a Tesla Model 3 RWD with FSD when I come off contract and am in DFW for the last 6 months of the year.

As for fire the Model 3 uses lithium Iron Phosphate cells not Nickel Manganese Cobalt. LFP cells cannot thermal runaway nor is the electrolyte very flammable. The Tesla cells are the same cells used by BYD in their Bladepacks. There is a great video showing BYD driving a steel spike right through the heart of a full charged bladepack it doesn’t catch fire not even exceed 400 degrees it simply vents a little and sits there after. LFP cells are so safe the FAA let’s you fly with them checked in the cargo hold and shipped bulk as cargo you can’t do that with NMC or Li-Ion. So no I am not worried about fire with LFP cells they won’t burn on their own. If you soaked them in diesel and set them alight you might get them to pop off.

I have driven Tesla S of various flavors my best buddy and one of my lawyer’s Tesla plaid is scary fast. Two of my other friends have a Model 3 both love it. I have also driven for weeks at a time model Y, and model 3s. Model S is a status symbol every one I know who owns one traded a $80,000 plus car for it. Large BMWs or Benzs. The model 3 is one fourth the cost and a near perfect commuter car for anyone who has free charging at work or has 50/60 amp plugs in a garage for the mobile connect cord.

The FSD tech and the ability to be grid free with my panels is why I will have one. The gov can and probably will turn of gasoline sales at some point same for the gas grid they cannot turn off the sun my home will always have more power than it uses if the grid is down then they lose the power not me since I sell my surplus too the grid.

Tesla is a tech company first, car company second the car is just a mobile supercomputer. Soon to be integrated with Starlink global broadband network. They already are 5G connected with AT&T , people have put gen 3 Starlink flat panels under the glass sunroofs of Teslas and driven them out to far from cell phone service works flawlessly. Exciting tech to say the least.

This is important to my needs as I can do geological analytics wherever I have at least 2 mbps Wi-Fi I rarely am on a rig only if they are super small time and don’t have telemetry data to 4/5G or Vsat. I spend time in Houston networking plus I like the 170+ differ nationalities food and second to none nightlife, same for Austin or New Orleans time well spent.T&E is deductible so try to stay 50+ miles from my “home” zipcode I can do my 14/21 from anywhere with a internet connection as long as the rig/rigs have telemetry.

Starlink V3 is mobile you open the little feet under the flat panel set the dish at an angle pointed North and in seconds it’s 200+ mbps anywhere on the planet with global roam turned on. Really the feet and the point North is to appease the Geosat/ FCC guys the flat panel works laying flat and in motion as long as you are under 200 knots speed tried in motion in a Cessna it cuts out above 200kn.

Tesla starlink is a paradigm shift for digital nomads. Having 5G or Starlink in the same location means as long as I am a few hundred feet away and in Wi-Fi range of either router the whole planet is now profit generating space. Add some portable solar panels to run the Starlink hardware and you can stay deep off grid for weeks at a time camping on a beach or forest while charging by the day for it.

I have kayak,flyfish and camped with a my cohort Evan’s Model Y and solar panels plus we took my 15,000w trifuel generator on a hitch mounted shelf. It made me wonder why Tesla doesn’t offer a RangeX module that is just a 40kw two cyl running a 480v three phase commercial alternator, feed that directly to SiC diodes and rectify it to 480V DC feed that via a dedicated plug on the battery bus you could charge on the move and not stop for 600+ miles plus having three phase AC off grid in spades. A little 2cyl would easily fit on a class two trailer hitch mounted shelf behind a Tesla.

Turns out that you can plug a Tesla into a generator’s 50amp 240v plug if you ground the forth pin to the earth with a metal tent stake and some insulated wire other wise the mobile connect cord sees a floating ground and won’t energize. A model Y will take up to 45 amps off that plug and fully charge over an 8 hour period from 20% to 80% if one wanted to do this while camping far from a Suoercharger or L2 plug. Since we ran the generator for led lights, music system speakers, amps, guitars we set the Y to take 30 amps leaving 20 more for camp use.

The Y went from 50% to 80% the first night and validated the experiment. It was my idea the engineer,trumpet and base player of the group. We were running the generator anyways and it runs most efficient at 75% load point. Measuring the gas we burnt vs how much range was added it worked out to 28 mpg equivalent but that included the camp loads too so it would have been higher just charging the Y. For occasional far off the beaten path use it is a perfect set up and begs for Tesla to make a real RangeX rentable module. For those twice a year guys trips too the boonies.

My S60 weighs more than any model 3 in any configuration.

The model S at its heaviest is the same as a Ford Explorer.

The model S is lighter than every F150 that is not a V6 single cab. So you are saying the Model S is too heavy for the roads by the Ford Explorer or F150 are not?

How about all the fake rednecks I see every day in Dodge 3500 dualies well over 6000 lbs that don’t have a trailer hitch or a scratch in the bed those trucks have never seen a work site. They drive from the suburbs to a office parking deck see those every day all over the place.

Point is the increased wear is SUVs and trucks replacing midsized sedans but even mid-sized S60 are over 4000 lbs now.

Soccer mom’s in giant escalade,Yukon or expeditions all well over 5000lbs curb weight. With dadbod in a platinum edition new F250 4*4 that has never seen dirt let alone mud. Add in all the rolling coal Cummins bro bros also never seen a work site.

I own a ten year old diesel F250 it pulls a boat or a fifth wheel and that’s all it does or go off pavement to rig sites that no car could reach billed to the client at that. It sees under 5000 miles per year it serves a purpose and is the highest cost per mile of any of my stable of vehicles.. It’s bed is beat up from hauling dirt, cut firewood in other words it’s a truck used for truck stuff. I love my sedan and it gets driven most I am fully confident I will love my FSD model 3 even more than the Volvo.

The point is not to just put fingers in the ears close eyes and scream EV BAD EV BAD EV BAD. That doesn’t help the argument that government shouldn’t mandate winners and lossers in a free market. Elon makes a solid technology product that for a lot of use cases makes not only fiscal sense but also practical sense. If you have access to garage charging, and / or work L2 charging them as a commuter car especially with the FSD tech there is little equal. For the very small set of people living in BFE then no EVs make little sense. Given that the vast majority of people in the USA live in urban counties and most don’t drive more than 40 miles a day those with work L2 or a garage will likely see a improvement in cost per mile. For rural areas hybrids make the most sense they improve fuel economy by 100% which reduces real pollution such as NOx and particulates. Electric drivetrains are the future every car maker is moving away from gears and fluids to electrons the mechanical simplicity alone drives this. Toyota the king of the hybrids is only selling its flagship Camry as a hybrid next model year one of the best selling cars in the world that says the number one automaker on earth is going fully electric drives sooner than later. Having a very efficient ICE to drive a generator is a no-brainer then. Every diesel electric locomotive does this every day with great efficiency.

I think Toyota is going to be the big winners in the long run. That correctly recognize that EVs do not work everywhere for every use case. Especially in rural or developing nations where there is no real electrical grid such as Africa.

Toyota is a global car maker so they need to cover all the various cases. For places like China who are liquid hydrocarbons short and coal heavy with very high density cities and a strong power grid EVs are the way forward hence their dominance in that market now.

Toyota will get rid of manual and automatic transmissions all together the Camry is just the first model after the Prius to go to a electrical drivetrain. Their power split drive is perfect for blending mechanical ICE at average load with peaks covered by the electric motors. With a single one way dog clutch you can go fully electric at any speed allowing for plug in hybrid modes.

One platform,one electric drivetrain five or six choices of drive power. First is normal hybrid where the ICE spins above 45mph always and a tiny battery only used to capture regen brake and peak loads this has been proven to double MPG in the city and improve hwy by 25+%.

second mode same EDU (electric drive unit) with dog clutch with allows both motors to power the vehicle torque need while any mechanical connection is not rotating. In other words this EDU has a pure electric drive mode. This version has a mid sized battery pack sized to cover 50 miles in the USA or 30km globally. Those are the average daily drives and would shift all but the longest 5% of trips to electric mode with great second law efficiency. This pack is dual chargeable it can take AC from the grid or be charged on the move with one of three power sources all it the pack cares is DC voltage at the right amps. The source of that DC voltage is a very efficient ICE Toyota makes the world’s most efficient spark engine in a vehicle it drives the Prius and rhe Camry hybrid at 38% BSFC. Or run that same over expansion ICE on hydrogen Toyota already has hydrogen ICE in racing car form. Hydrogen allows for 5 min refuels or less. 10Kg per minute H2 gas rates have been demonstrated for trucks one Kg H2 is equal to the LHV of one gallon of gasoline. Finally if you are going hydrogen then a fuel cell would be twice as efficient vs ICE in converting H2 into DC voltage halving the Kg need to go 100 miles or 100km which is how the rest of the world measures fuel efficiency how much to cover 100Km in L/100Km or Kg/100Km. Japan has zero liquid hydrocarbons but a strong history of nuclear power and is going back big into nuclear power they will use it to make hydrogen by the millions of tonnes bank on that.

The last option is to have a very large battery pack sized for 200 to 400 miles and have fast DC 400kw V4 standards plus three phase AC charging in the EU where 3 phase is common at the residential level. Here again Japan has high density cities ,nukes and a strong grid perfect for EVs.

With a single platform Toyota can cover all the different use cases globally this is how they will be going forward the Camry is just the first model after the Prius to go fully EDU every other Toyota will follow shortly.

Their 2.5 engine in the Camry platform can be run off alcohols as well at even better efficiency than gasoline VVT slow a for variable compression and expansion ratios with E85 or E98 you can go to 16:1 and get into the mid 40% BSFC range that’s approaching heavy MCCI ranges with
out the particulate or NOx limits. Brazil and equatorial Africa come to mind both places can and in Brazil’s case does grow massive amounts of ethanol. A properly designed engine runs cleaner and last longer on ethanol,methanol or isopropyl Clearflame has the independent data to back that up at the class 8 size and Brazil for decades has used pure ethanol for a sizable portion of their vehicle
fleet of all sized trucks to motorcycles.

Toyota won’t go fully EV nor should they the global market cannot be fully EV especially in Africa and Latin America where there is no infrastructure for it people still live in hand made dwellings with micro solar power or no power at all

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