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Uber’s forthcoming luxury robotaxi service with Lucid Motors and Nuro is getting a fourth partner: Hertz.
The companies announced Thursday that Hertz will provide “day-to-day vehicle asset management, including charging, maintenance, repairs, cleaning, and depot staffing.” The service, announced last year, is supposed to launch by the end of 2026 in the San Francisco Bay Area, using Lucid’s Gravity SUVs and Nuro’s self-driving tech.
Hertz is handling this work through a newly-established affiliate it’s calling Oro Mobility, which the rental company says will “provide integrated fleet management solutions across a range of mobility segments.”
“As the industry transitions from personally owned vehicles to commercially operated driver-led and autonomous fleets, Oro aims to fill a critical orchestration and operations gap,” the Hertz press release reads.
This is not the first time Hertz, which went through a bankruptcy restructuring process in 2020, has followed new mobility trends.
The company made a big splash in 2021 when it announced it was buying 100,000 EVs from Tesla, news that helped Elon Musk’s car company reach a $1 trillion valuation for the first time (and helped Hertz’s image as it emerged from bankruptcy). Hertz also announced plans in 2022 to buy up to 175,000 EVs from General Motors, and another 65,000 from Polestar.
None of those deals were ever fully realized, and Hertz started a fire sale of the EVs it had bought in early 2024. It did that in part because of higher-than-expected maintenance costs due to Uber drivers renting the EVs, and because Tesla slashed prices to stave off competition and boost sales.
Starting up a fleet management and operations arm, though, should be closer to Hertz’s core competencies as a rental car giant. Competitors like Avis are already doing this kind of work for Waymo. And with robotaxi companies seemingly keen to use third parties to manage this piece of the puzzle, Hertz could build a decent business with Oro.
To wit, Hertz and Uber said Thursday that they will “explore expansion opportunities in 2027.” Uber has deals with dozens of autonomous vehicle companies around the world, and has plans to order at least 35,000 robotaxi-ready vehicles from Lucid Motors alone in the coming years. It’s starting with 10,000 Gravity SUVs, and recently announced plans to order another 25,000 EVs from Lucid Motors that will be based on its upcoming mid-sized platform. (Uber also now owns more than 11% of Lucid Motors as part of investments it has made alongside the vehicle orders.)
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Sean O’Kane is a reporter who has spent a decade covering the rapidly-evolving business and technology of the transportation industry, including Tesla and the many startups chasing Elon Musk. Most recently, he was a reporter at Bloomberg News where he helped break stories about some of the most notorious EV SPAC flops. He previously worked at The Verge, where he also covered consumer technology, hosted many short- and long-form videos, performed product and editorial photography, and once nearly passed out in a Red Bull Air Race plane.
You can contact or verify outreach from Sean by emailing sean.okane@techcrunch.com or via encrypted message at okane.01 on Signal.
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