Over the next five years, rental car company Hertz will order 175,000 electric vehicles from GM to expand its fleet of rental vehicles.
GM has just announced that, as part of the deal, it will supply Hertz with compact and full-size SUVs, pickups, luxury vehicles and more from its Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick, GMC and BrightDrop brands. According to GM’s press release announcing the contract, Hertz and GM believe that the agreement represents the “largest expansion of electric vehicles among fleet customers.”
“Our work with Hertz is a huge step forward for emissions reduction and EV adoption that will help create thousands of new EV customers for GM,” said GM CEO Mary Barra. “With the vehicle choice, technology and driving range we’re delivering, I’m confident that each rental experience will further increase purchase consideration for our products and drive growth for our company.”
GM will deliver its electric vehicles to Hertz through 2027, with the first models becoming available to rent in early 2023. Over this five-year period, Hertz estimates that its customers could use its EVs to travel over a combined eight million miles, which would eliminate 3.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions when compared to ICE vehicles traveling the same distance. For its part, Hertz plans for one quarter of its fleet to be electric by the end of 2024 and will have tens of thousands of EVs available to rent across its network of 500 locations in 38 states.
Hertz expects to begin taking deliveries of the Chevrolet Bolt EV and Bolt EUV in the first quarter of 2023. Deliveries will continue to ramp up as GM scales up EV production. The automaker’s goal is to release 30 new EVs over the next three years across all brands globally, and to be able to support the production of one million EVs annually by 2025. These EVs will feature its state-of-the-art Ultium Drive motors and Ultium battery technology.
Subscribe to GM Authority for more General Motors EV news, General Motors business strategy news and around-the-clock GM news coverage.
Comments
Hilarious!
That’s 35,000 EVs per year. It will certainly help to have a secured supply of sales at rental companies, but the big question remains: how many EVs can gm make per year?
Also the Bolt doesnt use the Ultium battery
Whatever, hopefully Hertz also maintains a partial fleet of ICE vehicles for people unfamiliar with EV’s. Also business travelers might be unwilling to assume the hassles associated with finding available chargers and free time in unfamiliar cities. Probably a bad idea.
I think you underestimate the intelligence of Business people. Doesn’t get much simpler than Plug n Charge, which EV’s are headed towards. Associating the vehicles VIN with a Rental Fleet Provider, and then to the customer who is under an agreement at that time for that VIN. Will be billed.
Business travelers are the number 1 market, because certain big tech companies, governments, and many colleges are already mandating or at least giving preference to EVs on company-paid travel.
Business travelers aren’t going to use the range up driving from the airport to the hotel, to work, and right back to the airport.
Not me.
Hertz’s experience with the BOLT will be much superior than ENTERPRISE’s experience with the LEAF from 10 years ago.
Each Enterprise location (here in Buffalo, NY where it gets a bit BRISK in the winter months) was forced to take 3 Nissan Leaf’s – and the manager at one of them said HE’D NEVER TAKE ANOTHER EV. The subject came up since I saw they had installed a charger docking station, but then removed it.
The Leaf would get less than half the advertised range in the cold – what with the heater on high all the time… People would get 40 miles from the rental store and then SCREAM that they are stranded… So this Enterprise Store had to obtain a few vehicles just for several extra Part-Timers hired just to go GET the stranded people – and put them in ICE vehicles – so that they needed 3 vehicles to service those customers in the winter.
1). for the LEAF rental.
2). For the part timer to do the rescuing, and then spend the rest of the day towing the dead battery leaf someplace to charge up enough to get back to the store, or if they tried to save cash by having the customer ride with the towing vehicle – they would have to wait until the car was hooked up to it, so that they could retrieve the dead vehicle and the customer back to the store at the same time. Most towing policies allow for ONE extra passenger, so if the LEAF was full of family and luggage – then that wouldn’t work !
3). For the ICE rental to the former LEAF rental.
Now the BOLT has the same issues – that of getting less than half the listed range in this area’s weather….But 259 miles is more than 105.
Of course, that also means that the Bolt Rentals can drive MUCH FURTHER away from the store before they call and say they are stranded.. haha.
Thanks for making my point.