Staff Reports
The Hertz saga continues as the rental car company dramatically rolls back its electric vehicle (EV) fleet to make room for good ol’ gasoline-powered cars. In a filing with the government, Hertz admits it’s cutting a whopping 20,000 electric vehicles, representing about a third of its EV fleet. Why, you may ask? Well, according to Hertz, these EVs are just too darn expensive to repair and are losing their value faster than a melting ice cube in the summer sun.
Hertz honchos are pointing fingers at Tesla for slashing its prices on new EVs, which has sent the resale value of their current EVs plummeting faster than a lead balloon. This means Hertz is stuck with a bunch of shiny, but rapidly depreciating, Tesla cars that are about as appealing as week-old fish at the market. Tesla’s aggressive pricing strategy has made people turn up their noses at used EVs, leaving Hertz with a big, expensive problem.
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Now, what’s really interesting is that just a few months ago, Hertz was all hyped up about going green. They were boasting about how they wanted a quarter of their massive fleet to be electric by 2024. They had grand plans to snatch up a cool 200,000 EVs from Tesla and Polestar and even kissed hands with Uber for a fleet rental deal. Sounds like they were all in on the EV trend, singing “Kumbaya” around the electric campfire.
But now, in a plot twist that no one saw coming, Hertz is staring down the barrel of a $245 million loss because of these electric nightmares. That’s a lot of dough, folks. We’re talking about losing around $12,250 per electric vehicle. Ouch.
It looks like Hertz got a little ahead of itself with the whole EV craze, and now it’s paying the price. Who would’ve thought that electric cars could turn out to be such a costly headache for a company?! Well, as they say, “all that glitters is not gold.” And it turns out that the shiny, eco-friendly exterior of EVs may be hiding some pretty gnarly financial pitfalls.
