Hertz will sell a third of its EV fleet
to buy gasoline cars instead
Detroit Free Press,
by
Jamie L. LaReau
Original Article
Posted By: plomke,
1/11/2024 1:55:51 PM
Rental car company giant Hertz, which made big news in 2022 when it announced it planned to buy 175,000 electric vehicles from General Motors to diversify its fleet, now says it plans to sell about a third of its global evs this year and use the proceeds to buy gasoline powered cars instead.In a government filing Thursday, Hertz Global Holdings Inc. said it started selling about 20,000 evs from its U.S. fleet last month. It said it will continue the sale throughout the year, citing higher expenses on evs
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Isn't it heartening when the free market prevails?
34 people like this.
Reply 2 - Posted by:
NorthernDog 1/11/2024 2:34:51 PM (No. 1634120)
A friend of our family recently rented an EV while on vacation. They were optimistic at first. But on Day 2 they could not find a charging station that was working. Eventually they found one at a strip mall area. It took 4 hours to get 60% charged - lots of wasted time. They had to cut the trip short since the battery was getting low much quicker than predicted on Day 3. It ruined their trip.
36 people like this.
Reply 3 - Posted by:
john56 1/11/2024 2:38:38 PM (No. 1634121)
Somebody once told me of showing up at an Cali airport and needing a car rental. Got there and he had his pick of the remaining cars, all EV. Asked the attendant if that's all they had and was told that the gas fueled vehicles always go first.
Problem is that you have to return the EV with an 85% charge or you get hit with an overpriced recharging fee (you know, like the $9.99 gal gas if you don't fill the tank).
I don't know about you, but when I'm on my way to the airport, finding a few minutes to get fuel near the airport is tight. I don't even want to think about finding an EV charger and spending a few hours waiting for the recharge.
26 people like this.
Reply 4 - Posted by:
DVC 1/11/2024 3:11:12 PM (No. 1634152)
To whom? Those prices better be REALLY cheap because nobody wants these things when used.
And they ought to get rid of all of them. Nobody wants to rent them, either.
17 people like this.
Reply 5 - Posted by:
padiva 1/11/2024 3:23:42 PM (No. 1634164)
Would you want to buy an EV that had been used as a rental?
29 people like this.
Reply 6 - Posted by:
formerNYer 1/11/2024 3:40:50 PM (No. 1634171)
My car was in for repairs for a rental I got a mitsubshi plug in hybrid, what a pice of crap it held the chage for 30 minutes and then ran on gas, why bother. Meanwhile my electric build was 60% more than the month beofre.
11 people like this.
Reply 7 - Posted by:
Strike3 1/11/2024 3:51:33 PM (No. 1634178)
Higher expenses or customers not wanting to pay top dollar to spend hours of valuable business time waiting for the car to charge? The EV craze is dying a slow and painful death, especially for the corporations that bought into it to please the democrats.
14 people like this.
Reply 8 - Posted by:
WV.Hillbilly 1/11/2024 3:57:18 PM (No. 1634185)
In order to sell them, they have to have buyers.
16 people like this.
Last year, my wife and I drove from Sacramento to Denver and back. While driving through the Great Salt Basin, and Wyoming, did not see one EV. Only in the cities. I just looked it up. In both Denver and Salt Lake City,, the predicted 'high' temperature is......15 degrees. I wonder how far they will get in a fully charged EV? Also, the EV batteries have to be warmed before charging. Just what will be the source of that warming? Natural Gas, oil, coal?
6 people like this.
Reply 10 - Posted by:
Hermoine 1/11/2024 5:01:04 PM (No. 1634246)
#5 -- More than likely, it was never used ;-)
4 people like this.
Reply 11 - Posted by:
Starboard_side 1/11/2024 5:04:09 PM (No. 1634248)
The EV;s are higher costs for them?
What happened to those claims of how cheap they are to run/operate?
Remember, the Paris Accords gave the world until 2100 to meet the goal of 1.5 C which is 76 years from now.
Why do they think we need to never go over 1.5 C at any time?
After all, we have time to find new technologies, etc... to get there within 76 years.
1 person likes this.
Reply 12 - Posted by:
DVC 1/11/2024 5:45:35 PM (No. 1634266)
My bet is that if they sold more than this, the market would be so flooded that they couldn't give them away. This is probably the most that they think that they can 'slide into' the market without further lowering the already low prices for cars that don't actually work.
5 people like this.
Reply 13 - Posted by:
stablemoney 1/11/2024 6:37:02 PM (No. 1634293)
Hertz will have to sell the other 2/3's.
5 people like this.
Reply 14 - Posted by:
Scribelus 1/11/2024 6:38:54 PM (No. 1634295)
Hertz is relying upon the estimates of the millions of Democrat voters in the country. With so many confirmed suckers, they surely will recover their bad investment.
1 person likes this.
Reply 15 - Posted by:
Hazymac 1/11/2024 6:47:18 PM (No. 1634302)
The one-third is a preliminary figure. In time, the other two-thirds will have to go because almost no one wants to rent one. No one in charge gave e-vehicles much thought before making them mandatory. Terrible mistake. Many heads ought to roll.
9 people like this.
Reply 16 - Posted by:
DiegoDude 1/11/2024 8:02:23 PM (No. 1634345)
Sell these road flares at a discount? Can't give them away.
2 people like this.
Reply 17 - Posted by:
Californian 1/11/2024 8:09:08 PM (No. 1634349)
Some facts not in this article.
When hertz dug into their numbers they realized that the Tesla S they had long term leased to Uber drivers had higher accident rates than the rest of their fleet, likely due to the fact that Uber drivers are younger than the average car renter.
The model S they're dumping are all >2 years old which is how long they keep rentals in the fleet before cycling them out.
The non Uber cars were cheaper to own and maintain than the non Uber cars and their non EV fleet.
Sorry to ruin a good narrative with facts. But don't go posting about this story elsewhere or you'll get clowned by someone else who knows these details.
Now then, numeric financial facts aside, EV rentals are still a bad idea because most people aren't used to dealing with them and people on business/vacation trips don't have time to figure it out. This is one of the worst use cases for EVs. They should sell over 95% of them and at best keep a handful for the small number of people who want one for whatever reason.
1 person likes this.
Reply 18 - Posted by:
PismoPat 1/11/2024 8:38:00 PM (No. 1634362)
Not surprising since Hertz gives no orientation on how to operate the car other than an emailed video a couple of days before pickup. One driver wrote about only having 56% charge on pickup.
2 people like this.
Reply 19 - Posted by:
Geoman 1/11/2024 8:45:36 PM (No. 1634363)
My last rental vehicle was a full size Nissan pickup with a V8 engine. I habitually check gas mileage the old fashion way, by a little subtraction and long division. In combined city and highway driving it averaged 24 mpg, whether hauling square bales of hay or with just me in it. The onboard computer predicted a 536 mile range on a single tank of gas but in reality its range on the highway was closer to 550 mi. While I didn't run the actual numbers, I dare say the Nissan causes far less pollution than the act of mining tons or ore for a single EV battery. The forced retirement of fossil fuels is a far greater threat to the wellbeing of individual Americans and our society at large, than terrorism and any effects of climate change stacked together.
4 people like this.
Reply 20 - Posted by:
Rumblehog 1/12/2024 8:52:00 AM (No. 1634601)
No coal-fired car will ever cast a shadow in my driveway.
Think about how crappy these EVs are for a rental car company. Imagine how many of these things were left parked in a hotel parking lot, or by the side of the road because the customer was "surprised" that he had to wait THREE hours to charge it, but he's due at an important business meeting in less than ONE hour! Or, he's thinking he has enough charge to make it from his hotel to the customer office, but overnight it turns really cold and now the battery has lost 70% of its charge! Or, how about the fact that most hotels do NOT have EV charging stations, and those that do won't have them for every manufacturer's plug type? EV's are a TERRIBLE idea for a rental car agency. And what with their exploding battery problem, they're also a bad idea for Trucking, Off-Roading, Emergency Vehicles, School Buses,...
The EV, and that curly-Q lightbulb, are what happens when the U.S. Congress (and humanities majors) attempt to Engineer.
1 person likes this.
Reply 21 - Posted by:
broken01 2/28/2024 1:58:48 PM (No. 1667018)
Where I work there are 4 government issue vehicles 2 gas powered trucks, one gas powered sedan and an EV minivan. The EV looks like a huge toy plugged into the wall but the fed employees I work with love the darn thing. I'm just glad I don't have to deal with it.
0 people like this.
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Not so easy to put us peons into EVs