Hertz put a first-time EV driver in a Tesla that was half dead, then tried to hold her financially accountable for getting stranded on the side of the road.
Hertz put a first-time EV driver in a Tesla that was half dead, then tried to hold her financially accountable for getting stranded on the side of the road.
Now that EVs are filling out rental fleets around the U.S., drivers are going through an adjustment period full of hazards and inconveniences. A mother and daughter from Gurnee, Illinois, became trapped inside of a Tesla from Hertz, which the company rented out to them in lieu of an ICE-equipped sedan the woman had reserved in advance. After the dead Tesla stranded them, Hertz tried to put the woman on a do-not-rent list, despite being responsible for much of the trouble, as the woman tells CBS News.
When Becky Liebau and her daughter arrived to the Hertz counter, they were told the only car left on the rental lot was a Tesla. Liebau had never driven an EV; she had booked a reservation for a gas-powered car, but rental companies are notorious for taking reservations though not holding onto them. According to Liebau, this was around closing time and she had no other choice but to take the Tesla, which appears to have been a Model 3 based on the CBS report:
Disaster ensued for the mother and daughter, who had booked the trip to scope out prospective colleges for the 16-year old scholar. We could easily say this was due to driver error, but it’s not that simple. User error figures into the problems that left the woman and teenager stranded, but the onus rests on Hertz now that it’s bolstered its rental fleet with over 50,000 EVs. Especially when dealing with first-time EV drivers like Liebau.
And it’s not like it was for lack of trying on the part of the mother and daughter. Liebau says her daughter tried getting up to speed on the Tesla EV, going on the internet to learn how to to operate the fully-electric car.
Hertz had given the pair an EV that was reportedly under 50 percent state of charge. The Tesla showed approximately 90 miles of range left, which may have been enough to get Liebau and her daughter to a charger. Hertz, however, did not provide them with an adapter to use charging stations that don’t conform to Tesla’s charging standard. Hertz later suggested these adapters are often targeted by thieves. It’s hard to see why that matters, or why Hertz would mention this — other than to suggest it was acting in its own best interest.
The Tesla’s tires were also low on air and would have benefitted from a top up. What Hertz basically did was hand Liebau the keys to a less than half-charged EV with low tire pressure and a missing adapter for use at nearby chargers. The Tesla went dead as Liebau searched for a charging station, trapping the two inside the cabin. Liebau and her daughter had no idea how to get out of the dead EV, and their phones were running out of battery, too. Again, that’s user error, but no one at Hertz explained the proper procedures to Liebau.
No roadside assistance came from Hertz. The two were eventually towed by a driver they had tracked down on their own, who taught them to override the electric door locks. They were taken to a hotel nearby, and had to pay one of the maintenance workers there for a ride across the state.
Presumably, back to their home. A hefty bill was waiting for them, as Hertz tried to pin the blame on Liebau. She refused to pay the invoices, and the company put her on a do-not-rent list. Hertz only happened to reverse course after CBS investigators reached out to the company. CBS says that Hertz has now refunded all charges and has reimbursed Liebau for the expenses she incurred.
Hertz shouldn’t have gone with Tesla for EV’s. People not driving EV’s and are renting want something as similar to their current car as possible. Both my leaf, and my current Kia Niro operate mostly like an ICE. The torque is different. The acceleration is different. But the biggest difference is the shifter and that is still simple enough that you could figure it out in about 30 seconds. Other than that it’s a normal car. Anyone can get in and drive it. They don’t need to worry about figuring out the touch screen crap or how to turn on windshield wipers like a lot of people need to figure out with Teslas. Tesla’s used to be the pinnacle of EV’s but now they’re cheaply made, over teched out garbage.
I'm probably at least average intelligence and rented a tesla recently because it was what was available. I've never driven one before and was so frustrated with the experience.
As a renter, you only have the key fob which has a really vague drawing of how to use it that only makes sense after you figure it out. I had no idea you had to press it against the door column to lock/unlock it. How is that intuitive? why wouldn't it be against the handle?
Had to sit and watch YouTube videos in the car to figure out how to do everything. It was really unclear how to easily turn off the car and the only way I could figure it out was diving into the settings menu to find a shutdown button, only to accidentally turn it on again as I'm leaving.
The manual door release is designed to be discreet! THE MANUAL DOOR RELEASE IS DESIGNED TO BE DISCREET!
Like, I get it that a person who buys the Tesla will take the time to learn it, but it's a terrible rental experience. Especially when a lot of the tutorials are catered toward people who have the car tied to their phone, which you can't do as a renter.
I wouldn't say the women in the article are blameless, but it's definitely not "adjust the mirrors and you're good to go" like every other rental I've had.
The more I learn about those cars, the more I'm convinced that no thought at all went into their design beyond "hey that's cool" (if even that, it probably was more along the lines of "hey, that's cheap").
Rental companies should try putting some stickers inside the vehicle which indicate where the manual door release is. It wouldn’t cost much and would at least save people unfamiliar with Teslas from getting trapped like this.
Or maybe the damn door release should work regardless of power? I shouldn't need special training to get out of a car in an emergency. Making an interior "manual release" that is hidden just seems like dangerously negligent design.
I have trouble believing any engineer was part of that decision. The default is always human safety. Hotel doors electronic locks will disengage during a blackout, elevators will stop in place rather than introduce a new risk by moving the humans further, your seatbelt is still uncomfortable and will always be and keep you alive, if an industrial machine senses danger the solution is too cut power to anything that moves.
Electricity is less reliable than a human, and if the human is dead it won't matter how the door is opened.
The driver and passenger manual door releases are literally in the most intuitive spot (in a Model 3 and Y at least, I haven't been in an S or X to compare myself). So much so that I have issues with most new passengers trying to use that instead of the actual button that's out in the open and very conspicuous on the top of the door arm rest, to open the door on my 3.
Even if someone is oblivious enough or has never opened a variety of car doors in their life to think of where a manual lever might possibly be located, and not find it on the door, it's not that hard for someone to just Google it with the magic box we all carry now in our pocket/purse.
Even then though, how does someone run out of charge completely without noticing? The damned vehicle works just like an ICE, it tells you when it's low. If you're navigating somewhere it will even tell you whether you need to charge on the way, or if you need to slow down because you don't have enough charge at a higher speed to make it. For fuck's sake, it will even navigate you straight to the closest charger, you just have to tap okay on the screen. The article says they ran out of charge while searching for a charger. 80 miles of range when they picked it up... And they used it all searching for a charger... The car has a button on screen to show all nearby Tesla chargers. Any Hertz location renting EVs will be for sure within 90 miles of a Supercharger. This is 100% on the driver, sorry.
So many articles regarding EVs just give stupid people a free pass for having no common sense, instead shifting blame to the vehicle or a company instead of just calling a person out for being an idiot.
Okay, I know this is going to personally offend you, but stupid people are allowed to have a life and do things in public. People with cognitive or executive disabilities are also allowed to rent a car. People with ASDs, people that come from an anti-tech religious family, people who have difficulty transferring knowledge from a familiar domain to an unfamiliar one even though it seems like it's trivial to you -- all sorts of people are allowed to use commercial services and expect reasonable accommodation. Honestly, I don't even understand half the shit you just said, and I wouldn't expect someone who's never been exposed to an EV and is stupid etc to be able to deal with it on the fly while other stressful shit that happens when you travel is also going on.
These are the most common things people shit on. If you don't like Tesla I totally get it. Some of the quality issues and design issues are obnoxious. The CEO is very publicly an asshole manchild. There's plenty to hate. Yet somehow it's always the same 3 talking points of:
Doors are hard.
EVs can run out of power
EVs can catch fire
Each of these is immediately revealed as silly when you use one or even just Google people talking about their experiences outside of all the headlines complaining about doors. The vast majority of people need less than a few seconds to figure out the manual release, most do it by accident and the car tells them to stop. The car actively tries to get you to charge it with increasingly dire warnings and mitigations as you get closer to zero. EVs catch fire less often than gas cars.
Hertz is a horrible company. If you have any other option, use it. If you have no other option, just walk into traffic. It's less painful than dealing with their scams.
Plenty of rentals, Hertz included, go out on less than full. You are only required to fill it where you got it. E.g car goes out with half, you return it with half.
the best part about this is that the rental company will charge you for not filling up to make up the difference.. but then not bother filling up the car and just send it out with half a tank.
I've never gotten anything other than full-to-full from Avis. But yeah, I've gotten that with Hertz and Enterprise - usually along with other problems.
Is situations like this where it's a last minute swap, normally they'll either have you return it at or above the current level or simply tell you that fuel is on the house.
The manual release is what most people grab by accident in the Tesla Model 3/Y, it is generally more obvious then the electronic release and doesn't require any power to the vehicle.
Jeez, that's even worse than I was expecting. I was expecting an unlabeled lever somewhere, but this isn't just unlabeled, but also looks like it isn't even obviously a lever!
I got stranded in a rental moving truck because they gave it to me with a low tire that turned out to be damaged. I'm still not sure if I handled it right, but I ended up denying the charges for an extra day since it was 100% their fault (still waiting to see if my bank agrees...). Nice to see these people were refunded, but still they were put on the blacklist. Fuck these companies.
A few months ago I made a reservation to rent a car with hertz. When I showed up, the only available car was a mostly dead EV. I'm glad I did a little research before agreeing to it because I would have had to go way out of my way to charge it, and the charging process would have taken HOURS to achieve the charge I needed for my trip.
I'm pro-EV in general but rental companies shouldn't be offering them in their current state imo
A charged battery should be expected from a rental EV, totally. It's not difficult for Hertz to install a fast charger at their locations to handle that for their vehicles and just cycle through the to keep their inventory charged.
Now 100% may not be realistic. Just like your phone getting from say 80% to a full charge can take as long or longer than from 0% to 80%. But a full charge isn't necessary most of the time, and there are a lot of public chargers, even without the adapter to use 3rd party chargers on a Tesla for instance.
and the charging process would have taken HOURS to achieve the charge I needed for my trip.
I see people post this, and honestly it's usually just not true. It is entirely a lack of understanding and/or education and just assuming you need to treat it like your gas vehicle. Which isn't unexpected of course, it's just that fully charging is not necessary in an EV and will just waste your time. Now I'm not saying that the car battery would not take hours to fully charge, that is true... It does take a very long time to take a car battery from 0 to 100%... but you just don't need to fully charge most of the time. Especially if you're driving a longer distance.
Fully charging Lithium-Ion batteries actually damages the battery a LOT more than partial charges do, just like on your phone. And charging at a low state of charge is a lot faster than when the battery is nearly full. They're both using Li-Ion batteries after all. It is actually quite fast to charge from say 20% to 60% on a DC fast charger or Tesla Supercharger. You don't need to fully charge every time you plug in, on a trip you only need to charge enough to make the next leg of the journey.
In most EVs, you just enter your destination in the navigation and it will take into account your charge level and automatically include needed charging stops along the way. I can tell you from personal experience that in a Tesla, most of my stops during longer trips are no more than 15 minutes long because of how the fast chargers are spaced out. That 15 minutes usually will shove about 50% charge into the battery via a Supercharger. It will have you arrive at the charger with as little charge as possible on purpose because a lower state of charge means power can be sent to the battery faster (within reason, it tries to leave about 20% as a safety buffer). Unless you're driving to a very remote location, you're probably pretty close to a charger at any given time.
A screenshot of Tesla's current US charging map for an example](https://i.imgur.com/xMrkhMT.png)/. You can check their website if you want to look at your area to see. Destination chargers are located at places like malls, hotels, etc. and are usually an amenity for guests to help charge slowly overnight or while shopping. Superchargers on the other hand will shove power into the pack to charge as fast as possible and get you on the way.
I think that actually reinforces my point about rentals though- I'm a relatively tech savvy individual and I didn't know much of that, and would have been unlikely to be able to easy learn that information in an environment/situation such as "need a rental car now".
I don’t own an EV, so I don’t know how all this works. But I find this behaviour very weird. The amount of energy needed to move a car is gigantic compared to, well, everything else inside the car. Even without power to move the vehicle, there should be enough charge to open the doors, operate the computer and so on.
When my phone shuts down from lack of power, if I immediately put it in the charge, it will light up the screen to show the battery symbol. So, even if there’s not enough juice to power all the components of the phone, there’s still some charge to turn the screen on to show the battery status. Only if I don’t charge it for a long time is that the screen will take time to start showing me the battery symbol.
Not sure about other phones, but Apple made their devices purposefully shut off before they're totally dead, so that they have enough power to be located for 1-2 days if lost.
Phones do not show you the real battery state. The % of real charge left when your battery shows 0% will differ depending on OS and version, but no smartphone will allow you to continue running it when approaching empty.
This is because the closer you get to a really empty battery, the more risk of wear there is on components. Suddenly undervolting components because your battery physically cannot supply enough power is not good.
None of these batteries completely discharges. None.
Ignoring that, there is zero reason the vehicle needs to shutdown all powered accessories. It is more than capable of leaving enough charge to operate the door.
Thinking about this, how do the emergency lights work? Dead in the side of the road with not indicators available should be illegal.
It's even weirder than that, there is an entirely separate 12v battery that powers the doors, screen, accessories, and everything else except the motors. The big high voltage battery literally only powers the motors and charges the 12v one. If the HV battery dies, the rest of the car works as normal just without being able to drive. So I don't understand how this happened
I rented from them once, didn't have a choice, my car was totaled. They tried to make me pay a late fee for something I returned on time, my insurance agent chewed them out for that hardcore. I didn't pay those fuckers a dime, and I sincerely hope someone was fired.
This sucks because it was one desk person, one supervisor, one general manager... Each reaffirmed the poor decision creating a terrible headache for all involved including the higher ups that dealt with this.
Headline should be : Hertz rending Teslas now, definitely not a terrible idea and average Americans not good at pulling levers that aren't incredibly obvious
Giving someone a car with less than 90 miles of range and limited charging options without included adapters is pretty shitty. Definitely a bit of user error, but if you're renting out EVs they need to be close to fully charged. Having to find a charger and wait for the car to charge right after you pick it up is pretty shitty.
Yeah, I get dinged if I return a gas vehicle with less than 3/4 tank, and yet Hertz is handing out EVs with under half a charge?? That's some major bullshit.
Some people are really stupid. Like seriously when it comes to every day functions many people struggle. Especially when it comes to vehicles, some people just know that there is on and off and forward and backwards... never take anything else into account. It's because of this that flying cars would be a disaster, you can't have these things breaking down all the time or running out of gas. I've seen people literally lock themselves in vehicles before, never change their oil, put antifreeze in the washer fluid canister, drive on a flat until the tire ripped apart, evevtually fell off and had to buy a new rim. Some people should really not be allowed to drive without passing some sort of "basic knowledge about vehicles and what to do when something goes wrong" course.
Some people should really not be allowed to drive without passing some sort of "basic knowledge about vehicles and what to do when something goes wrong" course.
And yet we hand out drivers' licenses like candy because the alternative is being trapped at home with no bike or transit infrastructure.
I mean, the article does say they had never used an EV and rented a gas car but got given the Tesla anyway. I don't think that's a basic knowledge thing. They weren't trying to drive something that they were unfamiliar with. Why would they know how the charging works?
There hasn't been much of a reason for someone who doesn't drive an EV to know about charging, which is very different from filling up a car with gas. And heck, every gasoline car uses the same gas nozzle, which isn't the case for Teslas. Plus gas stations are never more than a stone's throw away, which is more than can be said about EV chargers (let alone Tesla compatible ones).
A video on "how to open a door" is more than ten minutes long. Oh, Youtubers. You're no better than those recipes that come prepended with the author's life story sometimes.
If you require a video on how to open doors at all there is a problem with the car, let alone a 10 minute video that includes explanations about how the manual release can damage the car.
A video isn't necessary at all. The manual release is in a normal spot on both the driver and passenger front doors. New passengers try to open my Model 3 doors by pulling that lever all the time instead of using the normal button.
This is the second article I've read about someone getting trapped in a Tesla. It's a shame that a lot of people will opt to blame the user when this is obviously a stupid design decision by Tesla.
The woman agreed to operate a 2000lbs+ machine w/o doing her due diligence. I'm sure the paperwork she signed stated that she was capable of operating such a machine, which means she lied. Hertz may be a crappy company, but this woman is irresponsible.