Hertz to buy up to 65,000 Polestar electric vehicles over next 5 years

Rental car company Hertz said on Monday it has agreed to purchase up to 65,000 electric vehicles from Polestar over the next five years. 

Hertz will initially order the Swedish electric vehicle maker's Polestar 2 sedan, which starts at a manufacturer's suggested retail price (MSRP) of $38,400 after a federal tax credit. The vehicles will be available starting in spring 2022 in Europe and late 2022 in North America and Australia.

HERTZ ADDING TESLA MODEL Y TO RENTAL FLEET

Polestar, a sub-brand of Volvo and Geely Holdings, plans to have its cars available in an aggregate of 30 markets by 2023. Its vehicles are currently manufactured at two facilities in China, with future plans for additional manufacturing in the United States.

Polestar reported that it nearly tripled volumes in 2021 and anticipates more than doubling volumes in 2022. Polestar expects volumes to reach 290,000 vehicles per year by the end of 2025. 

In September 2021, Polestar announced plans to list as a public company on the Nasdaq through a business combination with Gores Guggenheim Inc. The deal is expected to close in the second quarter of 2022.

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The partnership marks Hertz's latest move to electrify its fleet after announcing last year that it would order 100,000 vehicles from Tesla.

Though the company has declined to offer an exact number on how many vehicles it has purchased from Tesla, executives noted on its fourth-quarter 2021 earnings call that Hertz customers can rent Teslas in multiple markets including Atlanta, Fort Lauderdale, Los Angeles, Orlando, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.

Hertz had an average of 471,000 vehicles in its fleet as of the end of the fourth quarter of 2021.