A few weeks ago, the news came that the car rental company Hertz, which ordered 100,000 cars from Tesla after the pandemic, would abandon its investment in electric cars.
Now comes the news that it is selling a whopping 20,000 electric cars from its existing fleet, in order to replace them with traditional cars with combustion engines.
It reports Reuters.
Hertz bet on Tesla – but few want to rent electric cars
Too high costs
Hertz commented on the sale of the electric cars in an official document on Thursday.
It read that “costs linked to accidents and injuries, mainly associated with electric cars, remained high during the fourth quarter”.
For that reason, the company has now decided to reduce its electric car fleet. The company’s share price fell 9 percent in connection with the news.
Hertz’s electric car fleet mainly consists of cars from Tesla and Polestar.
At the moment, there are over 700 electric cars for sale on the company’s salutorg for old rental cars, of models such as the BMW i3, Chevrolet Bolt, as well as the Tesla Model 3 and Model Y.
Dacia Spring is an electric car for SEK 140,000 – in Europe
A hard nut to crack
Although Hertz aims to reduce its climate footprint, it currently seems difficult to get the rental of electric cars to work together financially.
It has previously been reported how electric cars are often more expensive to both insure and repair than traditional cars.
Reuters has, for example, previously reported on how entire cars have to be scrapped if the battery is damaged in the event of an accident.
Just Hertz has also had problems with extended repair times on its Tesla cars.
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