Swedish electric vehicle maker Polestar has signed a deal that would see it deliver tens of thousands of vehicles over the next couple of years to car rental company Hertz. First starting out as a racing team that helped Volvo during the 1996 Swedish Touring Car Championship, Polestar pulled away from Volvo in 2017 and became a company that built and sold luxury electric vehicles.
This isn’t the first time the American rental company has had dealings with electric vehicle companies; in October 2021, Hertz ordered 100,000 EVs from Tesla. The move heralded Hertz’s foray into the electric vehicle segment and was the largest-ever order of electric vehicles from a sole buyer.
At the time, interim Hertz CEO and former Ford CEO Mark Fields said that Hertz intended to build the largest fleet of electrified rental cars in the country. The move may also have been sparked by the global chip shortage, which forced many automakers to pause production of internal combustion engine vehicles. Tesla was able to rewrite the software used in its EVs, allowing it to swap out the scarce computer chips with ones that were in high supply.
The car rental company has now set its eyes on Polestar’s luxury electric vehicles. Sales figures from Polestar show that it sold 29,000 cars in 2021, with current CEO Thomas Ingenlath saying that the company’s goal was to sell 65,000 EVs in 2022. It currently has two vehicles on the market, the Polestar 1 and the Polestar 2.
Hertz plans to buy the compact Polestar 2, a mid-sized, five-seater EV that comes with up to 270 miles of range and an infotainment system with built-in Google. In a press release sent from both companies, Ingenlath said the partnership with Hertz would allow a greater percentage of the population to experience what it is like to drive an EV.
Hertz will first roll out Polestar EVs in Europe this spring before heading to Australia and North America later this year. The contract will be a godsend for Polestar, which currently has only two EVs on the market and hasn’t sold as many electric cars as Tesla, which sold almost a million cars last year compared to Polestar’s 29,000 cars sold.
By partnering with Hertz, Polestar will be able to showcase its products to a wider range of people, many who have never driven an electric car before in their lives. As more people drive these EVs in the lineups of car-rental companies, they may gradually gain interest in owning an electric vehicle, such as those manufactured by Lordstown Motors Corp. (NASDAQ: RIDE), once the motorists are sold on the performance of these vehicles.
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