[metadat]

Strange claim, because Hertz's fleets are comprised of new and almost brand new vehicles, which usually only require oil changes.

Then they sell them off after accumulating 10,000-25,000 miles, before any real maintenance is required.

20,000 miles is what, 4-6 oil changes?

[belval]

An explanation could be that people driving Hertz cars are not optimizing for car longevity which breaks more stuff earlier? Also 10,000-20,000 miles in pure city environment can still take a toll on the brakes which the EV would be more resistant too because of regenerative breaking.

[pjc50]

The article mentions failures. Presumably it's quite an expensive hassle if a customer's car fails and you have to provide them with another one on top of the cost of the actual repair.

Interestingly JD Power claim that EVs have more problems https://techcrunch.com/2022/06/28/jd-power-evs-and-and-plug-... .. but mostly in the infotainment system? Maybe that matters less to rental drivers. Maybe that depends on brand.

[toast0]

> 20,000 miles is what, 4-6 oil changes?

Most new cars have a 10,000 mile factory oil change interval. PHEVs usually go for 20,000.

Rental cars sometimes have a hard service life, but I'd put that range at maybe 1-2 changes. Which isn't much at all.

More likely there's a usage difference; if you're puttering around from the airport to the hotel and back, you might pick an EV, but if you're renting a car to drive a longer distance one-way trip, it's mostly going to be an ICE, and you're gonna put some miles on it at high speed, etc.

[metadat]

Thanks for the info, toast0.

Minor clarification: Highway miles are actually gentler than city / town miles. Less wear and tear due to stop and go traffic, 90 degree turns, and fewer potholes.

[toast0]

They're generally gentler, but it kind of depends on the highway. The speeds also mean more consequences of any pothole or other obstruction, too.

But mostly the observation is that you'll likely get a lot more miles on the car in such a rental than a local rental. So a rental company that keeps a car in their fleet for 2-years or 20,000 miles is going to likely send most EVs out for age and more ICEs for milage (in my estimation, anyway), and so sure, ICEs will have oil changes in that interval, but they'll also have more of the every car needs maintenance sort of proportional to use (runtime and/or mileage), because they'll see more use.

[CydeWeys]

I would be curious to see absolute values on this rather than percentages. Not having to do oil changes could easily be a 50% decrease, but oil changes also really aren't that expensive overall on a few tens of thousands of miles, right?

[dsfyu404ed]

Some employee has to take those cars to jiffy lube (or whatever oil change place is contracted with that Hertz location to provide fluid changes) to the tune of $20/hr. I can see that dominating costs.

And on top of that the average EV probably has low(er) rolling resistance tires (to get a few more miles of range) which get replaced every 40k instead of whatever sticky tires the OEM slapped that only last 30k so you're doing that routine less too.

[fiftyfifty]

Oil changes probably explains the difference. We have 70,000 miles on my wife's Tesla and it's never gone in for any maintenance. We've replaced the tires on it twice now (Tesla's do eat tires) and I've replaced the cabin air filter a couple of times and fill up the windshield washer fluid about once a year.

[diamondo25]

I think the main issue is how people drive these cars. If you have a lot of short trips, or overrevving, or just in general abusing it (because rental), is much more common on ICE cars compared to electric ones?

[bluedino]

Probably closer to 3 if they are following the cars oil life monitoring system

[oxfordmale]

I wonder if the second hand price of EVs makes a difference. Until recently you could pretty much drive a Tesla for free for the first two years, as the second hand value hardly deprecated.

[ip26]

Here’s an interesting question- do they need to sell off EV’s after only 25,000 miles? Does simple maintenance reduce the turnover rate & associated costs?

[asciimov]

Rental Companies are notorious for not doing scheduled maintenance on cars.