Rental companies buy up used cars as chip crisis deepens

The semiconductor shortage has slashed vehicle production so much that rental-car companies cannot get the new cars they need, so they have resorted to buying used vehicles at auction.

This is uncharted territory for the likes of Hertz and Enterprise, which have made their profits by purchasing new vehicles cheaply in bulk, renting them out for as much as a year and selling them at auction. In the past, they have bought some used cars to shore up an occasional unforeseen burst in demand, but rarely for the mainstays of their fleets...