German-based rental car company Sixt has announced that it’s phasing out Tesla electric rental cars from its fleets because of reduced resale costs.
Sixt isn’t the first rental car company to push back on EVs. A few months ago, Hertz announced that its EV rentals were a money loser, with many of the benefits extolled by EV advocates never materializing.
The cars broke down more often than expected and were more expensive to repair than the comparable ICE car. The resultant price cuts and surge in sales have hurt resale value, Hertz said that residuals of EVs as a whole have dropped by about a third. For a rental company that will periodically replace its fleet, that’s not great news.
