Posted on 03/17/2024 1:53:17 AM PDT by RomanSoldier19
Hertz Global Holdings Inc. is replacing its chief executive officer in the wake of a disastrous bet on electric vehicles that the company began unwinding in recent months.
Stephen Scherr, who ran Hertz for just over two years after three decades at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., has decided to step down, the rental-car company said late Friday in a statement. It’s replacing him with Gil West, the former chief operating officer of General Motors Co.’s Cruise robotaxi unit. West also will join the board of directors on April 1, according to the statement, which confirmed an earlier Bloomberg report.
(Excerpt) Read more at fortune.com ...
“He holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School and an A.B. from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.”
….And he STILL lacked the brains to stay the hell away from glorified golf carts as cars.
Replacing one failure with another! Brilliant!!
Exactly, sounds like they may double down in some way.
I don’t care how many degrees, if no auto industry experience you’re doomed
Wonder how much his golden handshake is worth...
He wasn’t there to do anything more than be a rubber stamp for the institutional investors.
No auto experience needed for that.
Shaking my head no that such a division even exists......
Environmental Vehicles ,LOL
First thing any car rental agency should do is set an example of NO EVs for rent...period. They would save themselves a lot of trouble. Then the manufacturers of these aberrations could sell off their stock to misguided individuals (at a loss of course) who think they would like to own one. Maybe junk dealers would be interested in them for like-new parts cars.
““He holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School and an A.B. from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.””
Which means if you take him to a restaurant and ask him what he wants for dinner, his head will explode.
True but this is also blaming the victim. Many of these corporations have no one else vying for their CEO positions. The capable CEO candidates know enough to stay away.
Trust your government.
Trust your government.
Trust your government......
He is a very rich man. He was very rich before taking the job. He probably could have purchased the cars out of his own pocket. I would bet he has a house in Naples, FL. A big one. The Hertz board would have had to go along with the car buying. We may laugh with scorn; he laughs with delight when driving through the bank drive-up window in his Bently.
Virtue signaling can be expensive.
Guess who paid for Hertz’ millions in subsidies to buy those lemons?
“Tague inherited an aging fleet from ousted CEO Mark Frissora and went long on passenger cars as consumer tastes were shifting to sport utility vehicles. He lasted a little more than two years in the job.”
Well, I’m not so sure SUVs are such a great idea now that most cities don’t even punish vehicle break-ins. Kind of ruins a trip when you pick up your rental at your destination airport and then decide to ‘grab a bite’ in that particular DEI-infested area...just to see a smashed-in window and all your luggage gone since it’s practically ADVERTISING itself when loaded up in the back of an SUV. I suspect the move to sedans will return as ‘Criminal Justice Reform’ again forces people to have more secure means of transportation.
As to EV’s, that needs to be studied in business school for eternity as perhaps the DUMBEST DECISION in corporate history, considering the size and scope of the decision. Having put my time in near the higher rungs of the corporate world, we ALWAYS would test-market a major decision.
So you start with a survey, carefully worded in this case, to make sure that the respondents understand the full scope of renting an EV (adding charging apps to phones, range anxiety, broken charging stations, range downgrades in non-optimal conditions, etc.), as you want to get the respondents through the ‘coolness effect’ and the tendency to appear Woke (such as vowing to never go to McDonald’s and Walmart).
Only if the survey goes well do you proceed to the next step, which is to TEST MARKET the idea - no more than 1000 cars, distributed carefully throughout the country, and see how they’re received by drivers. It should have stopped there...game over, the loss wouldn’t have been too bad.
While I know there’s a feeling of ‘missing out’, being left behind, as the transition to EVs continue, is it really that bad to wait, considering the price for being wrong? You can keep a few EVs around as toys for renters who want to ‘try out’ and EV, but the other 95% of renters are likely married to women, so they already have enough drama in their lives, so they don’t need more when they rent a car.
Idiots.
In Europe, at least, the used EV market has also cratered. The problem there is that PRESENTLY, companies selling cars in Europe have to make a 22% EV quota on their overall sales (ratcheting up to 100% in 10 years), yet no one wants to buy those cars.
So some numbskull who bought an EV several years ago shows up at a dealer hoping to trade-in his EV to buy another car (gas or EV, doesn’t matter) but the dealer has no use for his EV, as the dealer can hardly find anyone to even buy them new, and yet still has the mandate (for now)...so used prices CRASH.
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