About 18 months ago, my husband and I decided to trade in our two cars for one. The logic is irrelevant, but suffice it to say that this suburbanite now finds herself really wanting a second car again.
Fast-forward to a few weeks ago when I was looking for deals on long-term rentals. Everything has gotten so expensive, but way at the bottom of Hertz's list of local cars was a deal I couldn't believe. $224 a week for a Tesla Model 3? After taxes, it came out to about $300, but still, that's significantly less expensive than the $650 to $1200 a week rates I'd been seeing for even the most basic economy cars.
I quickly confirmed that there were Tesla Superchargers near my home and my longer-range destinations and grabbed the deal.
But what wowed me the most about the experience wasn't the cost, and it wasn't the car itself — which is admittedly a pretty sweet ride. What impressed me most was the Hertz and Tesla communication strategy. They treated my rental like an onboarding experience for a first-time electric vehicle (EV) user.
The emails came from Hertz, but the creative is cobranded Tesla and provided me with precisely the information I needed to feel good about my decision to rent an EV for the first time.
That first email linked to a Model 3 microsite, offering a master class in product marketing, onboarding, and customer experience… the likes of which I've never seen from a car rental company.
As a writer who has spent my career in digital Product Management, I know that a lot of human work went into executing a campaign of this scale and quality.
I had underestimated Tesla, a company I had, until then, thought of as the Apple of the 1980s — all style, no substance (yet). I began to challenge my assumptions about Elon Musk and the company he built.
The second email arrived two Fridays before my rental pickup and reiterated some of the information from the first email.
A third email covered charging and answered everything I'd been wondering. Yes you can charge it at any EV charging station, but it's faster to use a Supercharger.
And the final email, sent at midnight on the morning of my rental, was all about the touchscreen. It also explained how to start the car and how to get in and out — none of which I'd even thought about yet.
By the time I went to pick up the car, I felt comfortable getting in the driver's seat and figuring out the few details I didn't know yet.
The touchscreen is relatively intuitive, and with the exception of locating the AC controls (tap the temperature on the screen) and the windshield wiper controls (main menu, but you can create a shortcut), I was able to figure most things out quickly.
Another convenience? When you charge the car at a Tesla Supercharger, Hertz gives you an invoice at the end of your rental to pay the balance. In two weeks, I drove the car 410 miles and rang up charging costs of only $75. The charging session costs are displayed on the touchscreen, and, when I returned the car, the Hertz employee gave me my final tally — and the cost was broken out on the receipt.
I was impressed with the partnership between Hertz and Tesla and the integrations of their business and technical systems. This is more than convenience, this is an innovative marketing and distribution model. The rentals have created the demand for more charging stations, and Tesla is in talks to expand the infrastructure with traditional petroleum companies. Hold onto your energy stocks, people. This is going to get interesting!
P.S. My only complaint? The rented Tesla was programmed with a set speed limit of 70 miles per hour. And the car sounds an alert when you get to 68, which meant a lot of alerts on the Long Island Expressway for me.
Maura Charles is the founder of Keep it Human. As a Product Leadership Coach and Consultant, she is on a mission to help teams and organizations embrace human skills like communication and emotional intelligence in their ways of working.
She brings 25 years of experience as an editor, product manager, and digital business leader to bear on the challenges of building human-centered high-performing tech teams.
If you'd like to develop more human business and tech teams that hum together to drive results, check out Keep it Human and follow Maura Charles on LinkedIn.