Meanwhile, I rented a Model S from Turo (essentially Airbnb for cars) and had a great experience.

The car was clean, well maintained, fully charged and already parked in my hotel’s parking lot. Charging was free at any Tesla charger over the three days I had the car…I just had to plug it in and tell the car how much charge I wanted. When I was done with the car, I just had to snap a few photos and leave it in the same lot. And because the pickup/drop off point was at my hotel, I avoided paying for the car for the day I flew in and out since the hotel provided a shuttle to/from the airport.

It’s amazing that some guy named Marco who bought 6 used Teslas can do a more competent job of renting EVs than a multibillion dollar rental agency with huge economies of scale.

Car rental is awful in general. I just use ride share and don’t rent unless I need to do a lot of driving.

These companies seem horribly managed dumpster fires. I’ve never had a good experience. Acceptable most of the time but often bad.

Yeah, tbh, I always thought rentals would do ok because of how well Teslas have rented on Turo.

But then again, Turo is a small fragment of the market, and the hosts care about renting them out. They are also selected by the renter intentionally.

The rental companies went too far on purchases and way short on support, and often gave them out to people that didn't even want them.

How to make electric cars fail; established entities can intentionally neglect and drag their feet, half ass implementation. Over time it fosters routine of negative experience, fostering a viral meme that ultimately squashes demand.

On a long enough time horizon those that won’t drive electric won’t be driving. It’ll just cost us all a ton more the longer we wait to transition.

I think it's the opposite. No one will be driving except the elite class. That's all EVs are a transition to - an elite status.

Mandatory EVs will remove the access of freedom of movement that the lower and middle classes came to enjoy in a way that use to be impossible le

The same is happening with air travel.

Not to rain on your conspiracy, but air traffic is getting cheaper, not more expensive.

https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/airfare-infl...

Obviously technology since 1960-ish has made flights cheaper, but I don't really care about long term trends. I'm talking about now and into the future.

If you think the imposition of Net Zero, Carbon Taxes, energy transition etc etc is going to make flights cheaper I'd be interested to see how you think this will be achieved [1]

Still, as the saying goes "In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges". All the FAANG employees and VCs and other tech bros will be able to fly to the Caribbean and Europe. It will only really effect your average blue collar employee, and who cares about them, right?

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-03-21/flights-a...

That’s just conspiracy nonsense, why would they bother with EVs and not just ban gas cars altogether then?

Have you heard of Low Traffic Neighbourhoods?

No, they just aren't as convenient yet. Who wants to rent an EV on a vacation and worry about where to charge it. Eventually they will be better in general but they aren't yet.

This isn't done grand conspiracy against EVs.

Don't be ridiculous. Hertz is a for-profit corporation. They're not intentionally trying to lose money in order to sabotage EVs as some sort of grand conspiracy. They're just incompetent.

Probably some new exec just wanted to make a splash. They can always move on well before failure is apparent.

Incorrect. Hertz was the biggest corporate supporter of EVs other than the manufacturers themselves. Two different Hertz CEOs essentially bet their careers on an EV future. Your characterization of intentional neglect or feet dragging is absolutely not the case, they made big, bold Tesla purchases and aggressively deployed them in the field. The problem was that customers simply did not want to rent them.

https://www.morningbrew.com/daily/stories/2021/10/28/hertz-b...

https://boardstewardship.com/hertz-ceo-stephen-scherr-steps-...