Hertz, one of the biggest car rental companies globally, recently reported that it’s making significant savings on maintenance costs with its recently acquired Tesla fleet compared to its average Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) vehicles.
50-60% savings on Tesla fleet
In a call on Monday while reporting financial results, the Hertz executive team revealed that the cost of maintaining its newer Tesla EV fleet is 50-60 per cent below their ICE fleet.
This is not surprising given there are fewer moving parts in an EV, which makes them easier to maintain for both EV owners and fleet operators like Hertz.
The cost of EV maintenance is one of the main reasons more businesses and fleets are leaning towards them. More uptime due to lower maintenance cycles is also an advantage as EVs are not taken off the road as much as the ICE models either.
One area which is slightly more expensive for Hertz so far has been tyres on the Tesla fleet.
Tesla tyre replacement costs slightly more
Tyres were slightly more expensive on the Tesla EVs compared to other ICE cars in the fleet according to Hertz leadership team. That’s not surprising as Tesla uses high-quality tyres with acoustic treatment for lower road noise in the cabin.
Although they were more expensive, Hertz also acknowledged that for their fleet so far, they were not excessively dearer compared to standard tyres.
20% of 100,000 Tesla order delivered to Hertz
Hertz confirmed that about 20% of the big 100,000 Tesla order it placed in October last year had been fulfilled. Even with 20,000 cars delivered, the benefits of EVs from a maintenance point of view are already becoming apparent for fleet operators.
I look forward to finally seeing more EVs locally from rental fleet companies, especially at time when you can’t always test drive an EV for longer than an hour.
The more time you spend in an EV to know it’s the right one for you, the less chance of drivers going back to an ICE car. These experiences would do wonders for EV Uptake in Australia.
Riz is the founder of carloop based in Melbourne, specialising in Australian EV data, insight reports and trends. He is a mechanical engineer who spent the first 7 years of his career building transport infrastructure before starting carloop. He has a passion for cars, particularly EVs and wants to help reduce transport emissions in Australia. He currently drives a red Tesla Model 3.