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: 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.