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(Zero Hedge)—CEO Stephen Scherr’s barely two-year ride with Hertz came to a screeching halt on Friday. In his wake, he leaves a company still working to recover from a big bet on electric vehicles gone bad. It will do so under new CEO Gil West, whose previous posts include executive roles at Delta Air Lines and the Cruise unit of General Motors.
Scherr, who came on board in February 2022 after 30 years at Goldman Sachs, ushered the company through its emergence from bankruptcy. Hertz’s EV push began in the previous year, with a splashy move to order 100,000 Tesla Model 3 vehicles. After taking the reins of the Estero, Florida-headquartered company, Scherr doubled down on the green vision, committing to purchased another 65,000 EVs from Polestar, a Swedish company.
Traveling in the US. @Hertz has rows & rows of EVs that no-one wants to rent. They claimed I booked one when I didn't. Gold member & they mess me around like this.
I refused the EV & eventually I got a real car. What a hassle.
Go woke. Go broke. Rethinking my loyalty to Hertz.
— FermiLevels 🚚🛻🚛🏎 (@FermiLevels) September 10, 2023
In December 2023, Hertz emphatically demonstrated that its massive EV push just wasn’t working out, throwing 20,000 EVs into the used-car market to start a systematic liquidation planned to extend through 2024. “The company expects to reinvest a portion of the proceeds from the sale of EVs into the purchase of internal combustion engine vehicles to meet customer demand,” Hertz said at the time, adding, “The company expects this action to better balance supply against expected demand of EVs.”
The resale of fleet cars is a key driver of rental car companies’ profitability. On that front, Tesla threw a wrench in Hertz’s financials by aggressively slashing prices across its product line, crushing the resale values of not only Teslas, but the entire EV market. Top-selling EV’s saw their secondary-market prices plunge by almost a third in 2023.
Poor resale value isn’t the only EV liability biting Hertz — the company also pointed to the high cost of collision repairs. “For context, collision and damage repairs on an EV can often run about twice that associated with a comparable combustion engine vehicle,” Scherr noted in an October third-quarter conference call.
Guess the cost to repair this?
$5,000?
$10,000?
$12,000?NO….. estimate cost is $14,000 😂
No wonder why renting companies are ditching Tesla! $TSLA $TSLAQ pic.twitter.com/CcgiTLrnov
— Little John 💎 (@biotechpain) January 17, 2024
Then there’s the issue of consumer demand. It’s fair to assume that most rental car customers don’t want their first EV experiment to come on a business or vacation trip, where they may be in an unfamiliar area and unenthused about spending 20 minutes at a recharging station on the way to the airport, to say nothing of the hassle of figuring out how the whole EV-thing works.
There are many horror stories about consumers unpleasantly surprised to be issued an EV when they didn’t ask for one. Others say they picked up a car that was only half-charged and missing the charging cable. Earlier this month, Sen. Tom Cotton — one of the most sinister foreign-policy interventionists to ever walk Capitol Hill — decided to intervene in the rental car market, by introducing a bill that would make it illegal to force EVs on customers.
@Hertz Any help available? I’m on day three of rental and still can’t get help. I was given an EV (that I didn’t want) that can’t fast charge. The employee laughed when I called and said they know. I’m driving to and from the hospital every day and knew a car I can fuel up. 🙏
— Stack (@SmyrnaStack) February 19, 2024
In a statement issued Friday, Hertz vice chair Tom Wagner said, “We are appreciative of Stephen’s contribution over the last two years, including on a number of key strategic initiatives.”
…but definitely not that EV one.
Afghan Who Plotted Election Day Terrorism Was a CIA Contractor
by Headline USA
It looks like the FBI may have entrapped a former CIA contractor in a plot to commit a terrorist attack on Election Day. The Justice Department announced this week the arrest of Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, a 27-year-old Afghan man, alleging that he was planning an Election…
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Genetically Modified Crops: A Growing Threat to Health and the Environment
by Olivia Cook
(Natural News)—Bioengineered foods and genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are commonly confused with each other, but they have different meanings. “Bioengineered” describes food and products that are enhanced with scientific techniques to add particular traits. In contrast, “GMOs” involve changing the genetic makeup of animals, plants or microbes in ways that…
United Nations Expands into “UN 2.0” to Turbocharge Sustainable Development Goals
by Liberty Sentinel
The United Nations (UN) has not gone rogue, argues journalist Alex Newman on American Family Radio’s show, At the Core , but they have always existed to achieve one goal: one-world government. This goal is not only un-American, but it is unbiblical. Newman and AFR host Walker Wildmon also dive…
Congressman Matt Gaetz Says Epstein Was Killed as Part of a ‘Foreign Operation’
by Modernity
Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz says sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein was killed as part of a ‘foreign operation’, but refused to divulge which government was responsible for his death. Gaetz made the comments during an appearance on Benny Johnson’s show. In August 2019, Epstein was found unresponsive in his jail cell…
DOJ Takes Aim at Breaking Up Google
by Infowars
On Tuesday, the United States announced potential plans to request a court mandate directing Alphabet Inc to divest significant segments of its operations, including its Chrome browser and Android operating system. This move aims to dismantle what is described as an illegal monopoly held by Google in the online search…
Is Gavin Newsom Hoping that Kamala Harris Loses the Election?
by American Greatness
Two minutes of airtime during the Democrat National Convention in Chicago gave California Governor Gavin Newsom his latest opportunity to build his national stature. As part of the announcement of Kamala Harris’s clinching of the Democrat presidential nomination during a symbolic roll call of state delegates, Newsom portrayed Harris as…
Is It Time for a Nationwide Ban on Fluoridated Water?
by Natural News
Do community leaders reserve the right to mass medicate every person in their community using the water supply as a vector? What if that medicine was eventually exposed as a POISON decades later? What if that POISON was damaging the brains of children and stunting the cognitive development of the…
GOP Rep. Luna: We Need to End FEMA Migrant Spending and Boost Disaster Relief Funding
by Breitbart
On Wednesday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Ingraham Angle,” Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) stated that FEMA’s funding for migrants should be zeroed out at once and that while there is FEMA money for hurricane victims, we should also boost emergency relief funding “that will go directly to Americans…
Earth’s Continental Crust in America and China Is Breaking Apart
by End Times Headlines
Researchers, who have been studying the dramatic changes in the continental configurations of Earth over the past billions of years, have made a stunning observation: that the oldest continental crusts are disintegrating. According to experts, the Earth’s crust went through expansion and contraction and has transformed not only its positions…
“Line All Those Guys Up and Shoot Them”: Professor Says Men Who Don’t Support Female Candidates Should Be Massacred
by Daily Caller
(Jaryn Crouson, DCNF)—A professor at the University of Kansas (UK) told a class that men who would not vote for a female president should be lined up and shot, according to a video posted on X Wednesday. The university confirmed the professor is employed at UK and made the comment…
