Posted on 03/23/2024 9:10:43 AM PDT by george76
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.”
Pleasing the Biden administration is not the same as pleasing consumers.
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.
The key issues with EVs are as follows.
The cost upfront is much higher.
Financing charges are higher.
They depreciate at a higher rate than internal combustion cars.
The insurance is more expensive, by at least 25 percent.
Repairs are much more expensive, if you can get them done at all, and take longer.
Tires are more expensive and don’t last as long because the car is so heavy.
Refueling is not easy and missteps here can have nightmarish consequences.
They are more likely to catch fire.
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.
Too bad the country's newspapers can't figure this out...The key is to pleasing customers. NOT DC's thugs and goons and perverts.
Some Tesla customers actually make a rational, calculated choice. I was in NYC recently and was picked by a West African Uber driver in a Tesla. He told me it was his best option, as the city was not issuing medallions to gas vehicles, but he could get one for his Tesla right away
Being a DC area resident, they do know. Many have traveled throughout the US whether for their work and/or pleasure. It’s just they don’t care.
The reason is people have no business being so far from the huddled masses. Why live in Valentine, NE when you can live in Omaha? They want to empty the rural west and this is one way of making it happen.
Here’s a point I didn’t think of at first. Heard a guest on a radio show say he drove the 70 miles to another station and back and the only cars left at the rental place were EVs. No choice.
Is that true of a lot of smaller rental destinations with not much variety available?
That could make the CEOs and government think people accepted the idea of rental EVs.
A key plan of the great reset is 15 minute cities. All population will be concentrated in urban areas. The interior of the country will be empty. Oh, and the population will be greatly reduced as most people are unneeded.
About a year ago, I rented a car from Hertz or mine was gonna be in the shop for a couple days. I went with something like a step above from the tiny economy cars, as there was only gonna be two days, and I only need to get to and from work. When I went to pick up the rental, the local lot was out of that class of car and offered a “free” upgrade to some EV.
I declined. A bit of clicking later, and the only things they had available were full-size sedans, or SUVs.
I have driven a Tesla, and I’m not going to deny that they’re nice cars. However, there’s a very niche market for people who want them.
And to think these elite bozos want electric tanks for wars?
LOLOLOLOL !!
“... if the government desires a social-credit system of citizens control”...
THAT is right around the bend, in this corrupt govt’s plan for us, as is CBGC/ digital bank currency... plus more.
Solyndra was also a great idea.
Tesla’s do
IMHO, there is a market for a car rental company to have a few EV's on hand (way less than Hertz did). I know a few people who rented an EV before buying one. Some liked it and bought an EV, some hated the experience and chose not to buy one. Renting one gave insight beyond the hype.
Here's what the real issue is with EV's. From the article: 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.
Free market is always the answer. To the EV question and pretty much everything else, get government out of the way.
I like and appreciate my old vehicles. They are reliable and I have most of the tools I need to work on them myself. They aren’t filled with the over complicated gimmicks that make cars so much more difficult and expensive to maintain with, in my opinion, a net negative to the driving experience.
As far as I am concerned, we are in an automotive low point similar to the 70s and 80s, and again the cause is government interference with the market.my newest vehicle was bought new almost 16 years ago and was near the peak of modern vehicles before the crash in 2008/2009. The things they do to shave a fraction of an MPG are not worth the cost and trouble they cause to the durability of the vehicle- stop-start, cylinder deactivation, high strung turbos all make for premature and expensive repairs. The so-called features like adaptive cruise control, lane assist, infotainment systems, etc annoy me far more than enhance the experience. When forced to drive newer cars I quickly figure out how to deactivate the nannies so they don’t drive me nuts. There is no way I want to pay for that crap in a new car.
Electric cars are fine for a limited set of use cases but are far from ideal for everyone. If you have a garage you can keep a charger, a short commute and another ICE powered vehicle for longer trips then they are great. If you live in an apartment or urban area where you cannot charge overnight or out in the country with a long commute then they aren’t so great.
As a rental I don’t want to spend hours sitting around waiting for the stupid thing to charge and I have yet to see a hotel with charging options. I am either traveling for business and have a tight schedule or for pleasure and don’t want to waste my vacation time at a charging station.
I rented a Jeep plug-in hybrid in January. When I picked it up, the battery was at 0% and that’s how I returned it. I was surprised the gas engine didn’t keep the battery topped off. The battery usually had enough juice to get the car up to 10 mph at a stop light, then it switched to the gas engine.
Their intention is to put people on foot and make their lives so desperate they will either move to a 15-minute city or die.
Any and all travel more than 15 minutes will only be accomplished with government approval and by government means.
You forgot: they are much heavier and so destroy roads and guardrails much faster
They are actually worse for the environment.
Yes, but he'll probably get a big fat job with some environmental-wacko outfit.
EV sales are in the pits so the feral government drives up gas prices to make EVs seem like a more attractive alternative.
Don’t forget how highly subsidized and privileged the EV industry has been. If you have a good product at a reasonable price, you shouldn’t need subsidies, much less government mandates to purchase your product.
“the vehicle must be fully charged before its returned”
If that is in fact the case, hertz should be run out of business for that stupid policy alone.
Rental vehicles are supposed to be cleaned and vacuumed between rentals, why not charge it then?
Putting the burden of recharge on the customer is asinine to say the least.”
I have rented Tesla EVs from HERTZ at least 25 times they are my go to car for Houston gridlock traffic , same for Vegas or New Orleans. The automatic vehicle follow feature,hand free lane center, and hand and foot free stop and go.traffic modes beat any tech by any other vehicle.
If you don’t pre pay for a return charge usually ten bucks where you can return the car @10% SOC then you will need to return it at 70% or higher SOC. When you pick up the Tesla it will be at 70%+ SOC they always charge them before renting them out unless you want to take one at a steep discount with a <50% SOC and by steep I mean a free day of use the EVs are already under $20 a day for LLC weekly rates if you hold a valid TIN number for corporate rates.
As for charging while renting a EV a Model S has a 400 mile range rarely while renting in Vegas or Houston do I put more than 200 miles total a rental for the whole week. My hotel or airnnb is usually half a mile or so from where I need to be if its a training or contract trip. The daily trips are food at lunch and dinner plus nightlife. The last trips are usually uber or lyft if I intend to drink while out. Those uber and lyft trips will end up costing more than the whole weeks worth of EV rentals. Uber has a $6 to 8 minimum charge per trip.
On trips where I do exceed 300 miles in a week most American cities are blanketed with chargers especially if you are in a Tesla with its special plug that excludes other EVs from their network. That is changing as adapters have been made in both directions. I bought and had Amazon one day deliver to my hotel in the energy corridor a $16 adapter for CCS/J1772 that’s the other universal standard with that adapter a Tesla can charge at every type of plug and charger network in North America.
https://chargefinder.com/us/search
Open this link then zoom to Houston,Vegas , Dallas,Austin ,LA...set the limit to 50kw or above those are your DC fast chargers then look at all the Red dots those are Tesla chargers, blue and purple are CCS and open to Teslas with that adapter that’s rated for 250kw so V3/4 superchargers too. The major cities are blanketed with chargers.
I have never had an issue charging if the Tesla needed it the tech shows you where Tesla chargers are in your area or path ,let you see how many are open and reserve a spot that won’t allow anyone else to use it until you get there you pay the the minute for reservations and wait time if your Tesla is full and you don’t move it to encourage people to not camp out at spots. Usually a dollar or two a minute above a certain income level a couple of bucks a min is throw away money. Your time is worth multiple hundreds of dollars an hour $60 is pocket change and no one leaves a spot blocked for an hour or more. Ten min at most to reserve a spot and drive up too it is the most I have ever needed to ensure my spot was ready and wanting.
Out of the last 20 rentals I needed a charger less than half of them as my weekly distance was less than what the Tesla had in the pack I always pay the “fuel” fee to return it near empty.
That said I have taken a Model S out.of New Orleans and all the way to Pensacola then back to New Orleans, and on to Houston and home to the DFW area really closer to Oklahoma than Dallas area. That was an 1800 mile trip using Tesla superchargers at 150 or 250kw rates never spent more than 15 min at a SC while I empty my bladder the real limit of driving distance 3 hours or 200 miles and the car stops for my bladder and tummy grumbles.
On the open highway a Tesla can go hands free at a set cruising speed it only slows down for traffic in front and will speed back up again if they yield or you tell it to pass on the right which it can also do hands free. My lawyer and I were in his new model S this last week in the rain at 80 mph hands free on IH35 South bound the wipers turned on by themselves and the car asked if we wanted to slow down by 10mph due to weather conditions it could sense the rain and probably the wheel spin rates for hydroplaning. Impressive tech to say the least.
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