Hacker News Reader

Comment by alexose | Hacker News Reader

The headline doesn't really match the point of the article, which is that they're using half the vehicles for rideshare, thus causing more wear and tear than a typical rental. Apparently they didn't factor this into their math and had to fess up during their earnings call.

The bigger problem is that their Teslas are so expensive to fix. I suspect a lack of replacement parts and/or qualified techs is to blame. Too bad, because if they had better repairability then Tesla would have a real claim to lowest cost-per-mile.

View on HN

Yep, we rented a Tesla from Hertz during a recent vacation. Took a small pebble in the window causing a 1-inch spider crack on the lower part of it. Over $1200 repair bill sent to us for it, luckily we had insurance through our credit card.

That sounds like a typical price for a dealer-replaced window including sensor calibration. If you're willing to skip calibration, cost is about half that - some people say calibration is not strictly necessary, but it's a safety system, I wanted to make sure it's working.

This is based on getting my 2020 non-EV car's windshield replaced, the local glass shop said they can do calibrations for many cars, but didn't have the right procedures/equipment for my model.

Tesla-sized and shaped glass is not available from general glass shops. I had a large crack appear in mine. My insurance and multiple glass shops in the bay area told me it had to be fixed by Tesla. No one else would be able to.

Tesla did fix it for free though, because they weren't sure it wasn't an installation issue (no impact point, just a hairline crack running down the glass).

Safelite said they can replace a Tesla windshield including calibration for $1300 -- for my non-EV car, it's $1100 for a windshield and calibration.

I recently replaced a windshield (plus calibration) for a Honda Accord and it was $350.

The model X’s windshield is massive and very hard to make. Only one OEM supplier in Peru was making it. Model 3s any Ys have more “mass minded” designs, not hard to make by third parties for aftermarket.

I've had some windshields replaced by a friend of mine who runs a business in this domain and the typical cost of the windshields is on the order of 100 to 200 bucks depending on make & model, and about $50 worth of materials to put it all in according to factory spec. He can do one in an hour and a bit and it's very good money if you have a steady stream of work. He also said that if he was better at sourcing he could probably increase his margins quite a bit still but they're already more than good enough. Dealers will be happy to rip you off on stuff like this, shopping around is always smart. Except when the company has a monopoly (such as in the case of Tesla).

Those aftermarket windshield replacements (Safe-Lite, etc.) in my experience (have had a few over the years) always end up leaking. Always. If I had insurance coverage that applied I'd insist on a dealer replacement with OEM seals and glass.

I've yet to have a problem with any of the ones that were replaced, and they're approved as part of the safety structure of the car if glued in place with the right kind of glue and process. Technically it can't really be the windshield that leaks, usually it is a sign of wrong glue or an inappropriate application of the glue or process. This as well as good prepwork are key to an optimal result.

Yes, I meant that the seal eventually leaks and I get rainwater coming in and running down the inside of the glass or at the corners of the windshield.

Crappy operators tend so save on the quality of the adhesive they use, that saves a couple of bucks and looks just the same right after you leave their place of work but it comes back to haunt you in the long run. A 'proper' operator will use the exact same glue as the manufacturer originally used. Another common error is to not properly glean the surfaces the glue will have to bond to both mechanically and from various residue. This can cause the glue simply not to stick at all. The first is greed, the second is usually crappy instruction. The guy I know has worked for manufacturers on mass windshield replacements, so he has done thousands according to manufacturer spec and that makes a big difference in workmanship, but he says that there is no guarantee that a dealer will do a better job, there is the guarantee that if the dealer fucks up you usually get your next replacement for free and some of those window replacement businesses are 'fly by night', the worse the quality the bigger the chance that you will need them to honor their warranty, but also the bigger the chance that they will no longer exist. Insurance companies sometimes work with a bunch of preferred installers. Here in NL besides by friend I've also had reasonably good experiences with Carglass, not all without trouble but they want to stay in business. Over the course of now close to 40 years of driving I've lost a whole stack of windshields, especially near construction zones but the last couple of years have actually been pretty good. I probably shouldn't jinx it though :)

I have an auto glass place I've been using for 20+ years, on the "wrong" side of town. I don't think I've paid more than $200 for the entire job, and none of them have leaked, or are obviously misaligned or anything. And the glass is seemingly as good as the dealer glass when it comes to getting hammered with rocks/etc.

At those prices, I imaging the glass is as you would expect at wholesale not more than $50 or so if they can send me out the door for $140. But its not even really the price that keeps me returning every few years when invariably someone in my family gets a busted windshield, is the fact that I can call them to verify they have the windshield drive over and wait 15 mins in their waiting room and leave with a new windshield.

Adding my anecdotal info: ford front shield 500$

I have a 2018 Model 3 and the recalibration fee for a replaced windshield is complete BS. The tech that installed my replacement said they should self-recalibrate or I can just press the recalibration button in the service menu, which I did and the car had no issues adjusting.

Safelite wanted to charge ~$500 to press that button. I fortunately went with an OEM installer and although I paid a little more for the windshield, it was less than the cost of a non-oem with the recalibration fee.

Calibration is more than a button press, there's a calibrated target that needs to be set up (and at least some minimal skill in setting up the target correctly). Whether it's worth the $300+ that shops and dealers charge is open to debate, but it's not just a simple button press.

It was for me, and my autopilot functioned without issues after the recalibration period. My M3 windshield was replaced two months ago with a Tesla OEM one. The tech wasn't affiliated with Tesla, but had access to the OEM parts. The windshield was replaced from my garage with me observing the entire time.

To be clear, my experience is with my Model 3, not any other brand or make. I'm not saying other cars can be auto-fixed with a button press here.

Most of the time you can probably get by without any calibration at all, but since each windshield will have slightly different optical characteristics (and maybe it's possible to bump the camera housing and move it during uninstall/reinstall), if you want lane keeping and other safety features to work as well as possible, you need the calibration.

I suspect that if you were in an accident and tried to blame Tesla's autopilot or other automation for not working, they'll come back with "We have no record of recalibration when the windshield was replaced, we cannot be responsible for safety features with an uncalibrated camera system"

I don't think autopilot works if the cameras are not calibrated. I had to also drive a certain set of miles for it to operate again.

Your response corresponds to a lot of research I did on if I had to pay the recalibration fee or not (when I initially got a quote from Safelite) - the consensus online is mixed, but I'm speaking from my own personal experience here that I did not require recalibration tooling other than to press the recalibrate service button after my windshield was replaced and drove 20-30 miles before autopilot would be re-enabled again.

Although these are Model Y instructions, they pretty much reflect the experience I had:

https://service.tesla.com/docs/Public/diy/modely/en_us/GUID-...

The document does mention "Contact Tesla only if your Model Y has not completed the calibration process after driving 100 miles (160 km) in the described conditions.", which probably means you would need external hardware calibration tooling because it couldn't auto-calibrate.

This exact same thing happened to me in Hertz Las Vegas (except it was just under a $900 bill... I also had insurance though a credit card)

Whatever rock it was, it was large enough to make a loud noise. But I still was surprised at how much of a crack it made. My personal vehicle (BMW) which I've driven over 200x as much has never taken that level of windshield damage on similar roads with occasional rocks.

I looked carefully at the Tesla windshield afterwards and had the OEM mark on it, so it didn't appear to be a case where Hertz had already replaced the windshield with a cheaper aftermarket one (like I'd initially suspected).

Also, Hertz bought a fuckton of these things before Tesla did some fairly dramatic price drops. They basically doubled their depreciation hit right from that alone before you throw in the rideshare driver population /and/ price them low enough to make them attractive over a shitty econobox attracting... econobox driving behavior in a vehicle with expensive repairs and limited parts availability leading to the fleet being constantly downed for repair.

Some might know this, but:

Rental car companies make their money on re-sales. That is their margin. If the new equivalent drops in price, the margin is gone.

How is that possible? They make money on buying new cars in bulk and then selling them as used cars? I’m struggling to understand how flipping a depreciating asset is a profit center.

1. Negotiate lower purchase price.

2. Rent the depreciating asset to cover the cost of depreciation.

3. Insurance/financialization

A technicality perhaps? Like if say they buy $40k cars, depreciate it to $30k but earn $20k from rentals. Technically they got most of their money from selling the car used but it still ultimately works only because they are able to rent it out for more than the depreciation cost.

Consider that normally rental car companies get steep discounts on their bulk buys. They didn’t with their Tesla order which further hurts them. But, here is the overly simplified normal math:

(Resale Price + Rental Income - Maintenance - Purchase Price) / 2 years

Trick is that they generally flip these vehicles after 2 years and upsell an auto warranty which a big profit center as well. Resale price tanks and there goes all their profit.

I don't think "2 years" is valid anymore. It seems like the rental companies are hanging onto their cars for closer to 5 years, now.

This would also link into their "extra damage" problem.

I mean the Hertz/Tesla deal only started end of 2021 [1] and less than half of the ordered fleet was available by end of 2022 [2].

It’s kind of disappointing if they are getting noticeably beat up after a year.

[1] https://apnews.com/article/business-lifestyle-travel-car-ren... [2] https://electrek.co/2023/02/08/hertz-half-massive-tesla-orde...

Normally, they do this with sweetheart backroom deals with the manufacturer for a fleet of cars.

It can be lucrative, I recall the manufacturers put terms in the contract that prevent them from selling cars with less than a certain number of miles, to prevent them from just selling the cars immediately at a profit.

However with Telsa I don't think they had a negotiated price.

Too bad, because EV rentals directly lead to sales.

Ask any EV owner, and they will probably have dozens of conversations with non-owners who think it is impractical and would not fit in their life. But put them into an EV and many of these roadblocks evaporate.

> Too bad, because EV rentals directly lead to sales.

Yea, no. Electric cars are the cheapest option in most rental fleets because demand is tiny, compared to ICE. The rental EV experience is terrible, primarily because, unlike owners, renters don't have a home/garage charger they can rely on. Instead you have to hope that the hotel you're at has a charger, that it works, that it's compatible, that it won't take too long, that there isn't someone else using it. And if you don't return the car 80-90% charged, you pay a fee that's more expensive than filling a typical tank with gasoline!

This author nails it: https://archive.ph/yFwEo

Electric "floating" rental cars work very nicely. In many European cities there are fleets of rental EVs which you unlock with a smartphone. The cost is per-minute, or you can prepay a longer time, like a day.

I typically use them for moving bulky stuff around the city and small day trips outside the city.

There's a 20 minute free credit for ending the trip at a slow charger which is usually easy to do and means the cars are usually close to fully charged.

(I still wouldn't want a surprise EV from a normal rental company.)

That article talks about an unexpected EV rental experience. I would agree with the author.

A person renting an EV to try it on for size would have a different mindset. Also if you rent an ev through hertz, they bombard you with FAQ emails before your rental.

The article also was a chevy bolt. I think renting a tesla is a different experience than ccs/chademo because the supercharger network is well thought out with lots of locations with many many stalls, and it is well integrated into the nav system.

> The article also was a chevy bolt. I think renting a tesla is a different experience

Did the OP say "Tesla rentals directly lead to sales."? No, he or she said "EV rentals directly lead to sales."

They also didn't say "expected rentals only", and I can speak from experience that Hertz is not notifying renters that reserved ICE cars are oversold and upon arrival, your options are either EV or walking.

That article is moot if you rent a Tesla. I've done a 2000 km (1200 mi) roadtrip with a rented Tesla, and never actually charged at any hotel. You just navigate to your destination, and every now and then, the navigation tells you to stop at a supercharger.

However, the point of the article may still stand if you do not drive a Tesla.

And how long were each of these stops? How frequently did you stop? Were they never occupied? It's one thing to take a leisurely road trip with lots of time for sightseeing, no rush to get anywhere. It's a whole different experience, for example, when you land in some city to go to someone's wedding or a national park and you're stuck at a charger for an hour or more and end up late to your destination, or maybe you make it initially but don't have the range to get back. There are a million potential problems and just because YOU once did a long chill road trip where you weren't watching the clock or had to be somewhere at a specific time, hardly makes the problem "moot."

And when the rental car springs a surprise EV on you, you don't get to pick the brand.

There's a lot of sensor-integrated parts that are difficult or impossible to repair and very expensive to replace.

Saturn was also notorious for sensor integrated parts. That didn’t last very long.

Tesla has a first mover advantage, but the “sensor integrated parts” has been tested and failed already.

Interesting - I remember saturn tried very hard to have plastic panels that would be easy to replace, and was ahead of its time with employee relations. I guess it disappeared.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com