[silverlyra]

> Hertz could have become the EV rental company if they turned every rental office they have in the US to a fast charging center

They did build out fast charging – but at some locations, the local electric utility couldn't support it:

> While the company had installed its own charging network as part of the electrification push that started in 2021, some older airports, such as New Jersey’s Newark, don’t get enough power from the electricity grid or lack the infrastructure to support the number of so-called Superchargers that Hertz needed to get EVs back on the road in a half-hour or less. Once a Tesla was returned to those locations, Hertz employees often had to drive them for miles to find a Supercharger[…]

The image of Hertz staff driving around Jersey, searching for an open supercharger any time a Tesla needed a fast turnaround … tragicomedy.

I would think that only a gradual pilot rollout of Tesla rentals could have saved this from getting out of hand. Instead they ordered 100,000 full-price Teslas, and congratulated themselves on getting a lock on a market … a market which proved to be much smaller and more expensive to serve than they'd imagined.