Hertz CEO Out as Firm Seeks Traction After Big EV Bet Goes Bust

Link: Another Casualty of Climate Change Hoax: Hertz CEO Out as Firm Seeks Traction After Big EV Bet Goes Bust

CEO Stephen Scherr’s barely two-year ride with Hertz came to a screeching halt on Friday. In his wake, he leaves a company still working to recover from a big bet on electric vehicles gone bad. It will do so under new CEO Gil West, whose previous posts include executive roles at Delta Air Lines and the Cruise unit of General Motors.

Scherr, who came on board in February 2022 after 30 years at Goldman Sachs, ushered the company through its emergence from bankruptcy. Hertz’s EV push began in the previous year, with a splashy move to order 100,000 Tesla Model 3 vehicles. After taking the reins of the Estero, Florida-headquartered company, Scherr doubled down on the green vision, committing to purchased another 65,000 EVs from Polestar, a Swedish company...

It turns out the great unwashed are uninterested in Scherr's duracell wannabe pretend cars. The piece contends that fleet turnover & resale are significant components to Hertz's profitability. In December they dumped 20k of their EVs into the used car market, where they're taking a bath. Nobody wants them, and their resale value is in the toilet. Additionally, the price tag for collision repairs is twice what it is for ICE cars.

Hertz is a huge enterprise. It's baffling to me that they evidently didn't do any market research - or hell, just some basic bean counting - before jumping head first into this fantasy, when the reality is that no one even wants to rent the damn things.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Scherr
JD from Harvard Law, followed by Cravath, Swaine & Moore before joining Goldman Sachs.

Led Goldman Sachs' launch of the consumer bank Marcus, which has been less than a roaring success.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/27/why...failed-and-what-it-means-for-ceo-solomon.html

CFO at Goldman before becoming CEO of Hertz. Unclear why he thought he could run a rental car business.