It fascinated me. On a recent trip to Los Angeles, I rented a car from rental company Hertz. A Toyota Corolla LE that I drove from the airport to San Clemente for a media event there. To my surprise, when I arrived, I found that a large quantity of Polestar 2s ready to be put on the road were lined up in the vast parking lot for new cars, adjacent to that of rental cars. It was then that I remembered an announcement that Polestar was going to supply no less than 65,000 Polestar 2s over the next few years to the company that would like to go green in a rather radical way.
After signing the rental agreement at the central building, the clerk sent me to parking lot number 3, where the compact vehicles (which I had rented) were. Kia Fortes, Chevrolet Trax, a few Jeep Renegades and two or three Corollas. Also, a good fifty Chevrolet Bolt EV and EUV, which seemed almost implausible to me. And for good reason, while these cars are highly coveted here, in California they are repatriated to rental parks, for lack of being able to find buyers. When I asked an employee why these cars weren’t selling, he replied with discouragement that the Bolt EV/EUV were a drag on the company. “Nobody takes them, because they are electric,” he said.
Hertz
Deepening the discussion, he told me that recharging is not always easy in California, that traveling customers do not want to complicate their lives with finding terminals and charging times, especially since the company demands that their cars be fully charged when they return. Otherwise, charges equivalent to a full tank of gas may apply. For this last point, however, it seems that the conditions vary from one place to another, since during another trip, this time to Denver, the same company that also rented Chevrolet Bolts (in less quantity) offered as an incentive the return of an electric car without the need for recharging.