Depreciation is triggered by the tumbling EV prices. Hertz isn’t just making money from rentals, each car is an asset that will be sold after a few years for a lower price than it was bought for.

As EV manufacturers drive prices down through competition, Hertz is having to constantly revise its expectations for how much the cars will be worth at the end of their rental life. That shows up as depreciation.

Each time they revise down their expectations, they’re forced to acknowledge that they’ll make less money from these cars than they thought, and they’re forced to accept that it was not as good an idea as they originally thought.

At some point management says “stop pouring bad money after good, don’t buy any more EVs” and that’s strongly connected to “if the ones we have are losing value faster than expected AND costing more to maintain, get rid of them so we stop burning cash”. That’s why they’re stopping altogether.

Doesn’t mean EVs won’t come back as a rental car. Reliability and price stability would be required for that to happen.