(NewsNation) — Rental agency Hertz is off-loading 20,000 electric vehicles after falling short of a goal to have more than 20% of its rental fleet made up of EVs by 2022.
The company ordered 100,000 EVs from Tesla, 65,000 from Polestar and up to 175,000 from General Motors to reach the 2022 goal. But it never got all the cars, in part because Tesla wasn’t able to fulfill the order.
By October 2023, the Hertz fleet only had around 50,000 EVs. Now, the company is selling 20,000 of those at a steep discount.
Hertz cited EV price cuts, especially from Tesla, during 2023 that increased depreciation on the vehicles and reduced the amount of money they would be able to salvage, along with higher repair costs for EVs compared to traditional cars.
The news could be good for consumers hoping to find a cheap EV, with many of the more than 700 cars currently for sale being offered at a steep discount. And that’s before federal tax credits.
But those affordable prices do come with a catch. The former rental cars come with high mileage and lots of use, especially Teslas which were frequently used by Uber drivers.
As for Herz, the company is planning to purchase more gasoline-powered cars to replace the EVs eliminated from the fleet.