Europe’s largest car rental company wants to get rid of electric cars

Little demand

It seems the electric car is not as much of a hit with renters as thought after all.
The German car rental company Sixt has decided to greatly reduce the number of electric vehicles in their fleet.
This is because customers still prefer to choose a car with a traditional fuel engine.
“We are adjusting our offer to the demand,” Sixt announced.
Last year, Sixt, Europe’s largest car rental company, still had nearly 10,000 electric cars out of a fleet of 170,000 vehicles.

High cost

Declining demand is not the only reason to curtail EV offerings.
For Sixt and Hertz, EVs, especially Tesla cars, are proving less profitable than hoped.
Maintenance costs are higher and due to price reductions from Tesla, the residual value is falling faster than expected.
For car rental companies, the residual value of a vehicle at the end of the rental period is important.
After all, it determines how much they recover from their investment.
With electric cars, this risk seems to be higher than with fuel-engine cars.

Hertz

Competitor Hertz also came out with the same news earlier this year.
They announced plans to remove some 10,000 electric cars from their fleet because they are less profitable.
Lower rental rates and higher maintenance costs put pressure on profits, and the residual value of electric cars drops faster than that of gasoline or diesel models.

Also read: Decline in electric car sales Germany continues solidly