I had a feeling this would happen. My blog from yesterday about electric cars drew some reactions.
On LinkedIn I read:
The headline (above the article) should be: "Why electric cars won't work in the rental fleet at AdRem Maastricht".
Sure. Electric cars are being rented out fantastically all over the Netherlands. It's only those dumb Limburgers who haven't yet realised how smart it is to rent an electric car…
Or this one:
I've been driving electric for years and I have NEVER experienced this. Could it be down to knowledge, planning and how I use an EV? Between Eindhoven and Maastricht there are 4 fast chargers (charging time 15 min) and there are plenty of charging options in Eindhoven too. So where does it go wrong?
The writer knows everything about EVs (electric vehicles = electric cars). And the renter was just a dope, or it hadn't been explained to him properly.
Check it out at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/waarom-elektrische-autos-niet-gaan-werken-frits-pieper/
So here are 5 reasons why electric car drivers are a bit pitiable.
1. In the vast majority of cases they are the driver, not the owner of the electric car.
The car belongs to the boss, to the leasing company or to the company they work for. In any case they pay nothing or almost nothing for the car – after all, the taxable benefit-in-kind (bijtelling) is 0% or 4%.
2. If they are also the owner of the electric car, I find them really pitiable.
Who on earth pays well over double the price of a normal car while getting less range out of it? Unless it really makes no difference to you how much a new car costs because you simply happen to have loads of money. If that's how you think, I find you pitiable too.
3. They think they know how the world works.
See the first reaction to my post. People shout: electric cars are simply the future – there is no other option!
I know someone who owned a company that rented out only electric cars. Unfortunately that company went bankrupt because of all the problems he had, mainly with Tesla. But none of the religious Tesla believers want to hear that. Just take a look at https://www.ec-rent.nl/
4. They think that drivers who don't drive an electric car are stupid.
See the second reaction, from the D66 gentleman, to my post. If something goes wrong with an electric car, then it simply wasn't explained properly. On top of that, EV drivers think they are the clever ones who take advantage of a low benefit-in-kind rate and all sorts of other subsidies around electric cars.
5. They turn a blind eye to the misery that the production of batteries brings with it.
I have never yet come across an EV driver who responded to this by saying: yes, I ought to think about that more carefully. I always get a long-winded spiel about why driving electric is better than petrol or, even worse, diesel, and blah blah blah…
We did our absolute best to rent out the electric cars we had successfully.
We are a rental company, not a car park. Those cars cost us money, and a whole lot more than conventional petrol cars. They had to earn their keep. Except that didn't work out by a long shot.
We talked ourselves blue in the face to get people into those cars. And whenever someone did come to rent one, the renter got a thorough set of instructions.
Maybe the Limburger who rents a car from Adrem is much smarter than most EV drivers.
You don't need to own a car in order to drive one.
You don't have to stop at 4 fast chargers on the way from Eindhoven to Maastricht to charge your car. On a single tank you can easily drive there and back 4 times.
Pick a car here that will easily get you to Eindhoven and back at least 4 times without any hassle: https://adremlimburg.nl/goedkoop-huren/auto-huren/
