Theoretically, electric cars should be cheaper to maintain than combustion engines, simply because they have fewer wearing parts. In everyday reality, things obviously look different: The US car rental company Hertz wants to sell 20,000 electric cars – because of high costs for repairs and damage.
Instead, the group wants to add combustion vehicles to its fleet. Expenses for repairs after accidents, particularly for electric cars, were high in the fourth quarter, the company announced on Thursday. “Accordingly, this supports the decision to reduce the electric car fleet.” Hertz put the depreciation at around $245 million (224 million Euro). In April 2022, the company announced that it would buy up to 65,000 electric cars from Polestar, and a few months earlier it announced the purchase of 100,000 Tesla cars by the end of 2022. The German competitor Sixt recently announced that it would no longer buy electric cars from Tesla due to weak resale values rent, and also referred to higher repair costs. Insurers confirm higher costs. Car insurers such as Allianz also point to significantly higher repair costs for electric cars. “They are around 40 percent higher than the cost of conventional vehicles,” explained Carsten Reinkemeyer, head of the company’s safety research department. A relatively minor impact in an accident can potentially result in immense repair costs. In Austria, however, the number of electric car registrations continues to rise. In 2023, with 47,621 units, more purely battery-electric cars were registered than diesel for the first time – although only around 20 percent of them were registered by private individuals.
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