Hertz Selling Lots Of EV’s; Vehicles Are Costly To Repair And Unpopular With Customers

One of the rental car heavyweights is adding more gasoline-powered cars to its lineup at a time when the federal government and several state governments, are pushing for an all-electric fleet of cars and trucks within the next few years.

In a government filing, Hertz has decided it plans to sell 20-thousand of its electric vehicles, because rental car customers don’t want to rent them, and because fixing an electric vehicle is more expensive than fixing a gasoline-powered car.

EV’s currently make up one one-third of the fleet and cars and trucks at Hertz.

Now Hertz has two main jobs.   Provide rental cars for its customers, and make a profit while renting those cars to visitors in cities and airports across the country.

The sale of all those unwanted EV’s started in December 2023, and Hertz is looking to sell all those cars over the next year.

This is a stark turnaround for Hertz, which was looking to buy more than 1-hundred-thousand EV’s from Tesla and General Motors as recently as 2022.

The big problem is, people who rent cars while on vacation, most likely don’t know where recharging stations are located in a city they are not familiar with.

Finding a charging station, and having several hours available to wait around while your car is recharging is an inconvenient reality.

During windstorms, rainstorms, snowstorms, periods of high winds and extreme triple-digit heat, waiting around for an EV to recharge is not practical.

A woman plugging an electric charger into her car.

Photo from Alpha Media Portland OR