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Hertz has announced that it will sell off roughly 30%, or 20,000 vehicles, of its EV fleet. The move came after it announced a scale-back from its original goal of electrifying 25% of the rental fleet. Hertz's original goal was to acquire 100,000 Tesla and 65,000 from Polestar over five years. Teslas make up roughly 80% of the Hertz EV fleet. At the time of this writing, there are 631 Teslas for sale on Hertz's website and only 40 EVs from other brands. In a statement, Hertz cited substantially higher than average repair costs "for EVs" with extended wait times for parts availability. Additionally, Hertz reported that manufacturers' new lower retail prices hurt the resale values of the existing fleet, leading to substantial depreciation losses. Hertz is expecting to take a $245 million write-down on the vehicles, or an average loss of $12,250 per vehicle. Unlike other brands, Teslas purchased by Hertz were purchased at the same retail price the general public pays without any volume discount. Our take While many in the anti-EV crowd see this as an indictment against EVs, it is really more of an indictment against Tesla. Tesla's use of the Gigapress, while revolutionary technology, means that even minor collisions can be catastrophic to the vehicle. But this technology is coming to other brands as well. General Motors has purchased a Gigapress manufacturer and Volkswagen is planning on using Gigapress in their future vehicles. Additionally, Tesla does not have a deep reserve of spare parts, leading to long wait times for repairs. Tesla's erratic pricing moves have also made it difficult to accurately predict resale value of their vehicles. For an individual, it is an annoyance but for a corporation that buys 100,000 vehicles, it can cost hundreds of millions of dollars. But Hertz's loss could be your gain. If you have been looking at purchasing an EV but don't want to pay the high prices of a new one, a wave of Tesla Model-3 and Model-Y are about to hit the market. Couple that with a $4,000 tax credit for pre-owned EVs and there will be good deals to be had. Even if you do not buy one of the Teslas from Hertz, this move will likely drop the price of used EVs on the market, so keep your eyes open for a deal. View full article

Will be interesting to see what the mileage on the additional Tesla EVs that go up for sale as so far the ones they have listed are all high miles so it does not seem to be that folks are not renting them to drive as 50K to 70K miles to me is a high mileage rental auto. Agree that they FAILED in properly setting up folks to be successful with renting an EV as people are interested, but will give up when it is harder than a traditional ICE auto to rent.

This was only announced yesterday, so you're not seeing any of the 20k destined to be sold off on the site yet. The regional offices haven't had time to react. Also, they still need to acquire ICE vehicles to replace the fleet, so it will depend on how soon they can get those ordered and delivered too. I wonder if the order with Polestar is getting cut also or if this is just Telsa without them saying its just Tesla. 65,000 Polestars is a lot for them.

I don't think it will fly as a 2-door, but stretch it to a 4-door and make it about the size of the Renegade or Compass and this will print money and put VinFast on the map.