SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the but-but-but-the-fancy-brochure-said dept.
CNN Reports: https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/11/business/hertz-tesla-selling/index.html
Hertz, which has made a big push into electric vehicles in recent years, has decided it's time to cut back. The company will sell off a third of its electric fleet, totaling roughly 20,000 vehicles, and use the money they bring to purchase more gasoline powered vehicles.
Electric vehicles have been hurting Hertz's financials, executives have said, because, despite costing less to maintain, they have higher damage-repair costs and, also, higher depreciation.
"[C]ollision and damage repairs on an EV can often run about twice that associated with a comparable combustion engine vehicle," Hertz CEO Stephen Scherr said in a recent analyst call.
And EV price declines in the new car market have pushed down the resale value of Hertz's used EV rental cars.
[...] For rental car companies like Hertz, which sell lots of vehicles in the used car market, depreciation has a big impact on their business, and is a major factor when deciding which cars to have in their fleets.
SoylentNews previously reported when Hertz was expanding their EV fleet.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 31 2024, @11:52AM (2 children)
A co-worker travels on business frequently and for the last couple of years has been requesting electric cars for his rental. He normally drives these rentals much less than their range, and can usually find someplace to plug them in and return fairly well charged (which, iirc, is what Hertz requests).
Recently he got to an airport and the Hertz manager said that they did have a Tesla 3 but they couldn't rent it to him. It had been brought back with 100 miles remaining and would take hours to charge up on their charging station. My co-worker said that he was only going to be driving 15 or 20 miles and 100 would be plenty...but no dice, Hertz wouldn't rent that car. They rented him an ICE SUV instead.
I wonder how often this happens--an asset (car in the rental fleet) that can't be rented to a willing customer because of the time it takes to charge?
Related question, did Hertz consider this when making the decision to go electric in a big way, or is this the kind of thing that gets pulled out of the data after the fact?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ledow on Wednesday January 31 2024, @12:43PM
It's definitely a factor, not sure if it's the main one but probably quite up there on the list.
Customer brings back an empty ICE car, it takes your guys about 10 minutes to get it into a rentable state again (and your fees for doing that cover all the costs of driving it to a fuel station and refuelling it).
Customer brings back a dead electric car, you just have to wait X hours for it to charge.
That means more storage space required, less vehicles available to rent, etc.
And I bet that most Hertz locations didn't have enough full-speed chargers, in general.
And what if the reason it's returned dead is because the local area doesn't have many chargers? That's hardly fair, if you've given them that car to rent in such an area.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Friday February 02 2024, @08:25PM
It shows the cluelessness of CEOs and boards of directors. Tesla? You're going to equip your fleet with vehicles from one of the most hated people on Earth? The Nazimobile isn't the only EV, you know.
If I was renting cars, I would have a fast charger or two installed and charge a little more than most fast chargers. My Hyundai is said to charge in 18 minutes, but I charge it from the 110v outlet on the house by the driveway, there's no hurry.
I suspect that this article I haven't read is one of the anti-EV articles, many disguised as pro-EV but damning with faint praise. This one is clearly anti-EV.
The car magazines and others like CNN who automobile manufacturers, mechanics, auto parts stores, and oil companies advertise in aren't about to bite the hand that feeds them by being honest about EVs. The EV is to a piston car what a Model T was to a horse. The last buggy manufacturer was Studebaker.
What happened a century ago is happening again.
Our nation is in deep shit, but it's illegal to say that on TV.