
Mercedes got caught trashing a rental Tesla Model X - prostoalex
https://qz.com/1146259/mercedes-got-caught-trashing-a-rental-tesla-model-x/
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imroot
This is actually fairly common, and it's actually standard to rent the
vehicles.

When I was a contractor for MAC tools, they would rent cars for the week from
the local Hertz branch, documenting the tear down for one of their products,
and then disassemble, and then reassemble them during that work week,
returning the rental vehicle on Friday.

Hertz didn't seem to mind -- I asked the Hertz manager the next time I was
renting a car from there why they did it, and he openly told me that he could
charge them 6 times the normal weekly rate (which looked good for his
numbers), he would drive any vehicle returned for the next week to make sure
there weren't any issues, and that the dealership would still warranty any
damages, so, he saw it as a win/win...

...I'm not so certain that I'd take a risk like that, though.

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milkytron
>... tear down for one of their products, and then disassemble, and then
reassemble them during that work week, returning the rental vehicle on Friday.

> ...the dealership would still warranty any damages...

Does disassembling a car not void the warranty?

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alphabettsy
Not usually. Only modifications will usually do that.

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pintxo
Just for the record, the first linked article from spiegel.de is not about
Daimler and Tesla, but about Daimler and Deutsche Post (the former federal
Postal Service, no a semi-private company). The latter has just recently
developed its own electric delivery truck, and Daimler rented a demonstration
vehicle via a letterbox company, but got caught by a GPS tracker in the car.

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jore
From what I know, this is not only a normal thing to do, everybody is doing
it. The reason for renting the car and not buying it is not only because it is
much faster to get your hands on the car, much cheaper and much easier, but
what would they do with do many cars that should be bought after disassembling
them and doing whatever they want to do? They do not do this for every car,
but with so many manufacturers and car models every year this could well be 50
cars a year. An interesting thing I know is that it could take 2 days to
disassemble the rented car, one day of photoshoot and then two days of
assembling the car back. And even for experienced people like them breaking
some parts while disassembling is also a normal thing. So very often cable
ties are used to hold some plastics or other parts together. Important is that
they are not visible during visual inspection when they return the car back

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failrate
The article didn't address why Daimler rented the car instead of purchasing
it. Were they just being cheap? Was stock of the car unavailable? Did they
anticipate counterespionage from Tessa if they purchased a unit above board?

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steve_adams_86
My best guess was that they couldn't get their own car on the necessary
schedule (I have the impression you can't just go ahead and buy one and have
it inside of a week, but it could just be a stock issue like you suggested),
so maybe they were willing to face the consequences of repairing a rental
instead of delaying. Perhaps they had a short window of time to work with
special people/equipment.

Definitely an interesting story.

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laurent123456
This is so weird, I'm curious why would a company like Mercedes do something
like this? Surely they can afford to buy it, and then they won't have to go
around vandalising other people's cars.

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locusm
They do it this way so there is no 'special treatment' from the manufacturer.
They know they are getting the same build that any Jo Public would.

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copperx
They could just send an undercover Jo Public to buy a car. There must be
another reason, like saving money (!).

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thebiglebrewski
Lmao seriously? How could they not afford to just buy one for their own uses?
I can't believe the level of unprofessionalism here.

