Your Next Rental Car Could Be Electric

This week, Hertz announced it had agreed to buy 65,000 electric vehicles from Polestar, a Swedish car manufacturer, over the next five years.  

The plan is for Hertz to start offering the vehicles in Europe starting this spring and then roll them out to other markets, including North America and Australia, later in 2022. The additions will initially be the Polestar 2. 

"We are excited to partner with Polestar and look forward to introducing their premium EV products into our retail and rideshare fleets," Stephen Scherr, Hertz CEO, said in a statement announcing the news this week.

"Today's partnership with Polestar further builds on our ambition to become a leading participant in the modern mobility ecosystem and doing so as an environmentally-forward company. By working with EV industry leaders like Polestar, we can help accelerate the adoption of electrification while providing renters, corporate customers, and rideshare partners a premium EV product, exceptional experience, and lower carbon footprint,” he added.

Hertz expects electric vehicles to comprise more than 20% of its global fleet by the end of 2022, and the news this week is not the first time Hertz has made a major move towards that goal. 

The car rental giant announced last October that it was planning to offer the largest electric rental fleet in North America, and one of the largest in the world.

As part of that plan, Hertz announced intentions to buy 100,000 electric vehicles from Tesla by the end of 2022, news that marked one of the largest purchases of electric cars in history. That deal included a marketing campaign with NFL legend Tom Brady.

While Scherr the bedrock of the shift to electric vehicles is to lead as an “environmentally-forward company,” the move does present some challenges for users, namely the ability to find a charging station for the vehicle while on vacation.

To combat that, Hertz said during the Tesla announcement that it was installing “thousands” of chargers through its network, including 3,000 Tesla supercharging stations in the U.S. and Europe. Hertz is also relying on Polestar to provide charging networks and “charging solutions” for its vehicles as part of the new partnership.