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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: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday January 31 2024, @06:15PM (3 children)
>lack of a secondary market for batteries.
And the discovery of a gigantic lithium deposit in the wasteland otherwise known as the Salton Sea [undark.org] just cut the knees out from under the US lithium battery recycling market.
Any value left in past-end-of-life lithium battery packs will be overwhelmed by the risk of fire in most use cases.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by khallow on Thursday February 01 2024, @02:11AM (2 children)
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday February 01 2024, @02:39AM (1 child)
Tesla would seem to be the only upstart with enough funds to make a serious market play.
Stellantis (Ram) is ponderously approaching market, hopefully they can launch models that make enduring profits. Chevy and Ford seem to have rushed out poorly conceived models and market research prototypes that have proven unsustainable rather quickly.
I hold great hopes for the VW ID.Buzz, but I'm afraid it will hit the US highly overpriced. Canoo is already near or on market with similar interesting vehicles, but they seem as financially shaky as Rivian and the rest.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Friday February 02 2024, @08:46PM
Studebaker was a buggy maker that was dragged kicking and screaming into the automotive age, the last one. Ford and Chevy are today's equivalent.
Impeach Donald Saruman and his sidekick Elon Sauron