Car rental company Hertz Global Holdings HTZ is selling used electric vehicles for as low as nearly $12,000 in a bid to offload them from its fleet.
What Happened: A used model year 2023 Chevrolet Bolt EV in Denver is listed for sale on the company website for $11,985. While most of the low-priced EVs are Chevrolet Bolts, the company has also listed EV models from rival brands such as Tesla and Subaru.
For instance, a model year 2022 Tesla Model 3 base sedan in Oklahoma is priced at $17,921 on Hertz’s website. The model year 2023 Subaru Solterra Premium SUV in Denver, meanwhile, is priced at $20,581.
The website has 199 electric vehicles listed for sale, the highest priced of which is a Ford Mustang Mach-E GT SUV in Phoenix which has traveled barely 4000 miles. The vehicle is priced at $65,000 on Hertz’s website.
The Mach-E, in fact, accounts for over half of the EVs listed for sale on the company website. The vehicle’s premium variant has a starting price of around $59,000.
Hertz is also reportedly sending cheap buyout options to rental customers, as flagged by a Reddit user. The screenshot shared by the user shows Hertz pitching the model year 2023 Model 3 to the renter for $17,913. The vehicle had reportedly traveled less than 30,000 miles, making the offer a steal deal. A brand new Model 3 in the U.S. starts at $42,490 without offers.
Why It Matters: Earlier this year, Hertz announced that it is looking to reduce its EV fleet by 20,000 units through 2024, citing high repair costs and depreciation as the driving factor. However, at the company’s first-quarter earnings call in April, then company COO Justin Keppy said that it has increased the EV disposal plan by another 10,000 units, taking the total number of EVs it intends to remove to 30,000.
“Upon completion, we anticipate that the remaining EV fleet will be better aligned with attractive demand for EVs with a priority on our rideshare business,” Keppy then said.
The company then also said that it expects to see the benefits of reducing EVs from the fleet in the second half and for EVs deployed outside of rideshare to comprise just about 5% of its global fleet as of the end of 2024.
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