Treating EVs Like Gas Cars Nearly Broke Hertz — Here's What Fleets Keep Getting Wrong

There’s a stubborn assumption in the rental and fleet world that an electric car is just a car with a different plug. You get in, you press the button, you drive. That logic sounds harmless until you try to run a business on it — and according to reporting on Hertz’s recent troubles, that exact mindset came close to sinking the rental giant.

The problem isn’t that EVs are complicated to drive. It’s that they demand a different operating model behind the scenes. Charging schedules, staff training, depot infrastructure, and how customers actually use the vehicles all diverge from the gasoline playbook. Hertz’s leadership, described as business-school outsiders with plenty of capital but little operational grounding, apparently underestimated how much of that back-end work was required.

For fleet operators, the takeaway is straightforward: buying EVs is the easy part. Managing them is where the real work lives — and where the financial risk hides. Companies that treat electrification as a simple procurement swap tend to learn this the hard way.

None of this means EVs are a bad fit for rental or commercial use. It means the transition has to be planned as an operational overhaul, not a vehicle substitution.