An electric car, nope! The rental firm Hertz has decided to sell 20,000 vehicles of this type, or a third of its fleet, three years after announcing with fanfare record orders for Tesla automobiles. The reason is the disaffection of customers, who do not want to live in the anxiety of being unable to recharge their battery or refuse to download applications to find the ideal charger.
Furthermore, driving a heavy vehicle with high acceleration has caused numerous accidents among the uninitiated.
Added to this was Elon Musk’s policy of cut prices, which reduced the value of used Teslas and seriously complicated Hertz’s financial equation. Finally, electric vehicle batteries are expensive to maintain and repair. “The Tesla is one of the best-selling cars in America, but it’s not yet the best rental car”said Stephen Scherr, CEO of Hertz at New York Times on January 11.
The company’s announcement came in a context of distrust of electric cars. Former President of the United States, Donald Trump, made it a campaign argument in the Midwest, where the cold and the distances make this vehicle unreliable. The Republican senator from Wyoming, John Barrasso, took the opportunity to denounce, the same day in Congress, Joe Biden’s policy of supporting “wattage”.
“We are about to spend hundreds of billions of dollars we don’t have to subsidize electric cars that the vast majority of Americans don’t want”accused Mr. Barrasso. “This is especially true in Wyoming, where electric cars simply cannot compete with conventional vehicles”he added.
Price war
Noting that 40% of electric cars were sold in California, a Democratic stronghold, he denounced the fact that “Hard working families in Wyoming… [retrouvaient] stuck subsidizing the rich in California”. He criticized a policy favorable to the Chinese, since the manufacturer BYD now overtakes Tesla in the Middle Kingdom and in Europe, while Ford is losing billions of dollars in this sector. “No one really believes that two-thirds of new cars sold in the United States in 2032 will be electric”he said.
It is true that, after years of euphoria, Tesla, the company developed by Elon Musk, is facing headwinds. Even if its sales increased by 38% in 2023, to reach 1.8 million vehicles, it is no longer the world leader in electric cars, having been overtaken by BYD.
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