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Demand for electric car rentals unplugged by range anxiety

It's the hurdle that electric vehicles must clear to be launched into the mainstream: range anxiety. But this time it isn't prospective customers who worry about running out of juice, Bloomberg reports, but renters who return to car rental agencies before their lease is up and trade their EVs in for more traditional gasoline-powered autos and gas-electric hybrids.
"People are very keen to try [electric vehicles], but they will switch out of the contract part way through ... they think they can't get to a charging station," says Lee Broughton, head of sustainability at Enterprise. Enterprise customers who rent EVs reportedly trade them in 1.6 days into the rental period on average, which compares unfavorably to the six- to seven-day rental periods of traditional, fuel-burning automobiles.
Christopher Agnew, an analyst at MKM Holdings LLC, says that longer range would help rental customers' range anxiety, especially since they are usually renting vehicles in unfamiliar places.

2014 Nissan Rogue

When I first started in this whole automotive journalism biz, I held a sort of hodgepodge receptionist/gopher/production assistant role, and each morning as the staff filed in, I'd ask them how they liked whatever car they were assigned to drive the previous night. Most of my colleagues would regale me with anecdotes about how good or bad a vehicle was, but one co-worker, every single morning, would answer my query with the exact same phrase: "It was fine."
I always assumed this was just a brush-off, an "ask me again after I've had a cup of coffee" sort of response. But then I found myself in a similar moment of brevity following the launch of the 2014 Nissan Rogue earlier this week. After returning home, a friend asked me what I thought of the new Rogue, and I replied, word for word, "It was fine."
And, well, it was. Nothing worth wasting exclamation points over, good or bad. Aside from something like the interesting-to-drive Mazda CX-5 or funky-looking Jeep Cherokee, nothing in this class really tries to set the world on fire. And that, right there, is fine. Nissan doesn't need to do anything crazy with its second-generation Rogue. It just needs to offer a well-equipped crossover that's handsome, functional, efficient and priced right - sticking to the same formula that made the first-generation model so successful while offering the latest crop of creature comforts in a more modern package.

With Nissan dragging it down, Renault predicts a worsening year

PARIS — Renault warned revenue may decline this year, scrapping a previous goal, after first-half profit was hit by weakening car demand and an earnings collapse at alliance partner Nissan in the wake of the Carlos Ghosn scandal. Net income slumped by more than half to 970 million euros ($1.08 billion) in January-June as revenue fell 6.4% to 28.05 billion, the French carmaker said on Friday. Operating profit also dropped 13.6% to 1.65 billion euros. "Given the degradation in demand, the group now expects 2019 revenues to be close to last year's," Renault said — abandoning an earlier pledge to increase revenue before currency effects. A broad-based auto sales downturn has rattled the sector, prompting profit warnings and compounding challenges for Renault and Nissan as they struggle to turn the page on the Ghosn era. Their former alliance boss is now awaiting trial in Japan on financial misconduct charges he denies. Renault's bottom line was hit by an 826 million-euro drop in earnings from its 43.4%-owned partner. Nissan is cutting 12,500 jobs globally after an earnings collapse that it is keen to blame on Ghosn's leadership. But Renault's own performance - reflected in an operating margin that declined to 5.9% from 6.4% the year before - compares less favorably with domestic rival PSA Group. The Peugeot maker bucked the downturn with a record 8.7% profit margin unveiled on Wednesday. Alliance tensions flared after Ghosn's November arrest, worsened when Renault tried in vain to merge with Nissan then Fiat Chrysler, and may be affecting operational performance, investors fear. Citi analyst Raghav Gupta-Chaudhary flagged a lower-than-usual 258 million euros in joint purchasing savings for Renault. "We thought this would be weak in light of the well-documented difficulties with the alliance," he said. Renault blamed falling sales in France, as well as Turkey and Argentina, for a 7.7% revenue drop at its core automotive business, whose profit margin slid to 4% from 4.5%. Operating free cash flow also suffered, coming in at a negative 716 million euros as investment jumped by 742 million euros to 2.91 billion. Renault, which is counting on model launches including a new Clio mini to boost performance in the second half of 2019, nonetheless reiterated pledges to deliver positive full-year cash flow and a margin close to 6%. Renault shares were down 0.5% at 52.02 euros as of 0800 GMT in Paris, after initially falling as much as 2.7%.