Hertz sells 20,000 electric cars after being burned by Tesla price cuts

The car rental company blamed the sharp decline in the value of electric vehicles and rising repair costs for its decision to sell 20,000 cars .

Car rental company Hertz will sell about a third of the electric vehicles in its fleet after losing value faster than expected, the company announced Thursday . The drop in value is a blow to the company's efforts to replace gasoline-powered vehicles with cars that produce no tailpipe emissions.

The electric vehicles the company owned were also more likely to be involved in crashes, Hertz said, and proved costly to repair. The company said it plans to buy more gas-powered vehicles to replace the 20,000 battery-powered cars it sells.

“Some of these vehicles electric vehicles have become unprofitable for us,” Stephen Scherr, chief executive of Hertz, said in an interview Thursday.

The company's decision to sell 20,000 vehicles, which Mr. Scherr blames in part on Tesla's "unprecedented" price cuts, which have reduced the resale value of cars, provided fuel for opponents of the Biden administration's policies to promote the technology as a tool of struggle against climate change and air pollution.

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