NYT reporter blames Hertz for his own ignorance of EV range and charging
We’ve all read so-called “range anxiety” stories — and most EV owners know they amount to a hill of beans when it comes to the lived experience of electric cars. And yet, there seems to be a narrative in mainstream media that range anxiety is the key issue when it comes to EV adoption, one that they’re rather keen on pushing whenever the opportunity arises.
The New York Times published an article this week in which one of its climate reporters — one who claims to have had experience driving and charging Teslas in the past — describes an incident that ended with his depleted rental Volvo C40 Recharge being towed away by Hertz in rural Minnesota.
The blame, according to that Times reporter, lies at the feet of Hertz for not informing him of the few charging stations where he was headed (how would they know?), the C40 Recharge’s “slow” recharge speed (it supports 149kW DC), and the general state of US charging infrastructure (read: the one charger he found was too slow).
The reporter also briefly blames himself for choosing an EV for a trip into rural farming country without checking on the availability of charging stations, but this seems rather beside the overall story he’s attempting to drive home here: EVs and EV infrastructure aren’t “ready” for regular Americans. From the article:
But for now, if electric vehicles can’t get me from Minneapolis to the South Dakota border and back, they’re almost certainly not ready for the great American road trip.
The facts of the story are as follows.
- The reporter rents a C40 Recharge from Hertz in Minneapolis.
- He says the vehicle has 200 miles of indicated range (read: it probably wasn’t fully charged — the C40 offers 226 miles of EPA range), but knows that he has planned a 308-mile round-trip journey with deadlines.
- He finds a single (6kW) charger while en route and stops to use it, but it’s Very Slow (“2%” added in 30 minutes).
- He decides to go on anyway, hoping there will be more charging stations ahead (he does not appear to research this at all). There aren’t any.
- He arrives at a farm near the South Dakota border with 20% charge remaining (45 miles) and charges the car on an AC wall outlet for 15 hours, adding 20 miles of range (so, 65 miles, presumably — this will become important later).
- He decided that because there are no chargers within 50 miles of the farm, he has to call Hertz and have them tow the car, which they do, and he gets a ride with a friend back to Minneapolis.
- Hertz charges him a $700 tow fee, and he works with Hertz PR to get this refunded because he believes the fee is unjust.
A few things come to mind.
First, I can’t even begin to understand how any of this is Hertz’s problem. This person used a rental vehicle in a way that was likely to leave it stranded and is blaming the rental company for this? Is this any different than renting a Ford Mustang and then blaming Hertz when it gets stuck on a washed-out dirt road in the backcountry? Did he even tell Hertz what his route was? Did he truly expect them to say something like, “Hey, this is probably going to mean planning your charging carefully”? His justification here is borderline ridiculous.
But Hertz deserves some blame too. The company rented me a car that was slow to charge, and did nothing to warn me about the dearth of charging stations outside of Minneapolis. Surprising me with a huge fee poured salt on the wound.
Second, his assertion that this was a “slow charging” car. Now, this is just flatly wrong — the C40 Recharge supports 149kW DC fast charging. While you’ll be lucky to find something like that out in the Minnesota sticks (barring Tesla Superchargers), a 50kW charger plugged in for an hour would likely have avoided this whole debacle.
Third, the whole chain of events here is a comedy of errors. I bothered to actually do some Google Maps sleuthing, and everything about this outcome was utterly avoidable. The reporter claims that a 6kW Blink charger was the “only” option on his way back to Minneapolis, but that was only after he’d passed a 50kW ChargePoint about 60 miles into his journey, presumably with around 140 miles of indicated range remaining on the C40. Had he stopped there and charged near to full, he’d have been able to hit the same station on the way back for a brief second charge before returning the car the next day.
All this is to say: The person who ended up in this situation was a victim of their own ignorance. Nothing more, nothing less. In choosing to use a vehicle with an understood set of capabilities and limitations, he chose not to inform himself and instead ended up in a debacle whose summary analysis should have started and ended at “well, that was stupid of me.”
As icing on the cake, his claim about the car being unable to reach another charging station after adding 20 miles of range at the farmhouse overnight seems dubious. A ZEF 50kW station in Marshall, Minnesota, is at most 65 miles from wherever this person was headed, and likely a bit closer (I picked a town that would have actually made for a round trip longer than the 308 miles the reporter claimed).
The article says that the car showed no chargers “within 50 miles” of the farm, so presumably that means anything beyond that radius just… didn’t exist?
I get it: When traveling for work, considering the peculiarities and planning necessary for your means of conveyance is probably not the first thing on your mind. But when you’re taking a 300-plus-mile road trip in rural Minnesota in an electric car, you should probably be thinking about this stuff.
And as for Hertz refunding that $700 tow fee, while I’m not going to say I love anything about Hertz as a company, it sure seems like they did it to avoid the ire of The New York Times more than any belief this person had a valid grievance.
EVs aren’t complicated. This person’s trip was entirely feasible — with five minutes of planning. They chose not to put in that five minutes and ended up stranded. I don’t think electric cars or their infrastructure are to blame.
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After canceling the upcoming Airflow electric crossover and killing its popular 300 sedan, Chrysler only has one nameplate left in its lineup – but it doesn’t have to be this way. Stellantis already builds a full-size electric sedan that could prove to be a badge-engineered winner.
And, yes – it really should have been the new Chrysler 300. Meet the DS No. 8.
Stellantis’ US brands have had a tough go of the last few years, with Jeep trying and failing to bait luxury buyers willing to part with six-figure sums for a new Grand Wagoneer or generate excitement for the new electric Wagoneer S. The Dodge brand is doing to better with the Charger, a confusing electric muscle car that has, so far, failed to appeal to enthusiasts of any kind. Meanwhile, the lone Chrysler left standing, the Pacifica minivan, made its debut back in 2016. Nearly ten long model years ago.
All the while, Stellantis’ European brands have been forging ahead with desireable EVs – most recently launching the new DS No. 8 high-riding sedan, shown here, back in December … and I’m here to tell you that it really SHOULD have been the new Chrysler 300.
This, but with rich Corinthian leather
With a different grille, a Chrysler badge on the steering wheel, and a few different plastichrome numbers on the back, the DS Automobiles No. 8 could easily be a new-age Chrysler 300. Heck, even the interior’s avant-garde styling and architecturally-inspired stitching could tie-in to the Art Deco-style Chrysler Building in New York, further strengthening the big No. 8’s Chrysler-brand credibility.
Spec-wise, the DS meets the bill, as well. With a 92.7 kWh battery and the standard 230 hp electric motors on board, the electric crossover is good for 750 km (466 miles) of range on the WLTP cycle. With the same battery and a 350 hp dual-motor setup that sacrifices about 40 miles of range for a more sure-footed AWD layout and a 5.4 second 0-60 time that compares nicely to the outgoing Chrysler 300 V8.
The DS offers reasonably rapid 150 kW charging, too, enabling a 10-80% charge (over 300 miles of additional driving range) in less than thirty minutes.
Why it would work
Think of all the reasons the Wagoneer S and Charger Daytona EVs have failed to reach an audience. From the confusing Wagoneer “sub-branding” to the fact that no one was really asking for either an eco-conscious muscle car or a loud EV. On the flip side of that, the 300 is something different.
Since its first iteration seventy years ago, the Chrysler 300 (called the “C-300” back in 1955) has been a forward-looking vehicle. Even the most recent versions, developed off the Mercedes-Benz W210 platform Chrysler inherited while it was part of the “merger of equals” with Mercedes-Benz, looked forward from the malaise-era K-car brand to a bright, Mercedes-infused future.
With the DS No. 8, Chrysler could do it again. It could revive its classic American nameplate on a European-designed platform that wasn’t designed to be a Chrysler, doesn’t look like a Chrysler, and shouldn’t work as a Chrysler, but somehow does. The fact that it could also be the brand’s first successful electric offering in the US would just be a bonus.
Original content from Electrek.
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Powered by tech giant Huawei 5G-Advanced network, a fleet of over 100 Huaneng Ruichi all-electric autonomous haul trucks and heavy equipment assets have been deployed at the Yimin open-pit mine in Inner Mongolia.
With more than 100 units on site, China’s state-backed Huaneng Group officially deployed the world’s largest fleet of unmanned electric mining trucks at the Yimin coal plant in Inner Mongolia this past week. The autonomous trucks use the same Huawei Commercial Vehicle Autonomous Driving Cloud Service (CVADCS) powered by the ame 5G-Advanced (5G-A) network that powers its self-driving car efforts. Huawei says it’s the key to enabling the Yimin mine’s large-scale vehicle-cloud-network synergy.
Huawei is calling the achievement a “world’s first,” saying the new system has improved operator safety at Yimin while setting new benchmarks for AI and autonomous mining.
The autonomous mine project aligns with a broader push by Chinese government and industry to integrate AI and advanced connectivity into traditional industries – an approach we’ve already seen meet with great success in port environments by Hesai and Westwell.
And, if technology like Rocsys’ charging robots take off, these autonomous haul trucks won’t even need anyone to plug them in at the end of their shifts!
For their part, Huaneng Ruichi claims its cabin-less electric offer an industry-leading 90 metric ton rating (that’s about 100 imperial tons) and the ability operate continually in extreme cold temperatures as low as -40° (it’s the same, C or F), while delivering 20% more operational efficiency than a human-driven truck.
The Huawei-issued press release is a bit light on truck specs, but similar 90 tonne electric units claim 350 or 422 kWh LFP battery packs and up to 565 hp from their electric drive motors and some 2,300 Nm (1,700 lb-ft) of tq from 0 rpm.
Huawei executives said the Ruichi trucks reflect the company’s vision for smarter mining operations, with the potential to introduce similar technologies in markets like Africa and Latin America. The 100 asset electric fleet marks the first phase of a plan to deploy 300 autonomous trucks at the Yimin mine by 2028.
Electrek’s Take
From drilling and rigging to heavy haul solutions, companies like Huaneng Group are proving that electric equipment is more than up to the task of moving dirt and pulling stuff out of the ground. At the same time, rising demand for nickel, lithium, and phosphates combined with the natural benefits of electrification are driving the adoption of electric mining machines while a persistent operator shortage is boosting demand for autonomous tech in those machines.
The combined factors listed above are rapidly accelerating the rate at which machines that are already in service are becoming obsolete – and, while some companies are exploring the cost/benefit of converting existing vehicles to electric, the general consensus seems to be that more companies will be be buying more new equipment more often in the years ahead – and more of that equipment will be more and more likely to be autonomous as time goes on.
SOURCES | IMAGES: Huawei, South China Morning Post, and Supply Chain Digital.
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Tesla has started accepting Cybertruck trade-ins, something that wasn’t the case more than a year after deliveries of the electric pickup truck started.
We are starting to see why Tesla didn’t accept its own vehicle as a trade-in: the depreciation is insane.
The Cybertruck has been a commercial flop.
When Tesla started production and deliveries in late 2023, the vehicle was significantly more expensive and had less performance than initially announced.
At one point, Tesla boasted having over 1 million reservations for the electric pickup truck, but only about 40,000 people ended up converting their reservations into orders.
Now, Cybertruck inventory is sitting unsold for months and Tesla is having to offer heavy discounts to move them.
We previously reported that Tesla refused to accept the Cybertruck, its own vehicle, as a trade-in more than a year after starting deliveries.
Tesla didn’t share an explanation at the time, but we assumed that the automaker knew the Cybertruck was depreciating at an incredible rate and didn’t want to be stuck with more trucks than it was already dealing with.
Now, Tesla has started taking Cybertruck trade-ins, at least for the Foundation Series, and it is now providing estimates to Cybertruck owners (via Cybertruck Owners Club):
Tesla sold a brand-new 2024 Cybertruck AWD Foundation Series for $100,000. Now, with only 6,000 miles on the odometer, Tesla is offering $65,400 for it – 34.6% depreciation in just a year.
Pickup trucks generally lose about 20% of their value after a year and 34% after about 3-4 years.
It’s also wroth nothing that Tesla’s online “trade-in estimates” are often higher than the final offer as noted in the footnote o fhte screenshot above.
Electrek’s Take
This is already extremely high depreciation, but Tesla is actually trying to save face with estimates like this one.
As Tesla wouldn’t even accept Cybertruck trade-ins, used car dealers also slowed down their purchases as they also didn’t want to be caught with the trucks sitting on their lots for too long.
On Car Guru, the Cybertruck’s depreciation is actually closer to 45% after a year and that’s more representative of the offers owners should expect from dealers.
That’s entirely Tesla’s fault. The company created no scarcity with the Foundation Series. They built as many as people wanted. In fact, they built too many and ended having to “buff out” the Foundation Series badges on some units to sell them as regular Cybertrucks and as of last month, Tesla still had some Cybertruck Foundations Series in inventory – meaning they have been sitting around for up to 6 months.
Now, Tesla is stuck with thousands of Cybertrucks, early owners are already getting rid of their vehicles at an impressive rate, and the automaker had to slow production to a crawl.
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